I am a gamer and I'm not dead.

[KingDragonlord]

(I apologize if this is the wrong forum).

I am a gamer. I like playing games and I'm not ashamed of the label.

I'm not personally vicious towards people even online, even in jest (well, not anymore, you have to learn somehow that sarcasm is risky online). At worst I'm snide and condescending and I'm not proud of it when I am. But I otherwise try to have a reasonable discussion with other reasonable people who are also gamers. Because there are plenty of reasonable gamers. I resolve to do better.

My definition is inclusive. If you're enthusiastic about games of any sort and you want to participate, you're a gamer as far as I'm concerned. If you're passionately angry at games for not being all they could be, I have room for you too. Whether you play Candy Crush or Words with Friends or Nethack or Call of Duty, you're invited. It should go without saying but for those who feel it needs to be said, you're welcome regardless of gender, personal politics* or religion* or nationality or whatever. For this reason, the gamer label does not include those who are hateful and exclude others. We're about having fun and hate is not fun.

The gamer is alive. We've survived attacks before and we will survive this one. Because of course we will. Gaming is about overcoming challenges.

To our fair weather friends who wish to renounce the gamer label, good luck in your endeavors. We understand that for a while it was starting to be trendy to be a geek and a gamer and many people began to identify with us because of that. But we were here before it was popular. A few articles aren't going to send us running.

*Well, as long as it doesn't make you anti-game. In which case you're welcome but not as a gamer. You understand right?

** Ok, so this is all a bit self important but if the other side gets to make bold self-important declarations, why can't we?

 

[KingDragonlord]

I'm not sure what you're here to discuss. Is this supposed to be an open conversation about whether the rest of us feel like gamers are dead? Whether we feel like gamers are alive? Or is just a statement?

I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm trying to figure out what you want the rest of us to do. We can't properly respond without some prompting from the OT about where the discussion is meant to flow. It may not always flow that way, but you might want to give us a heads up so we can at least start some dialogue.

Fair enough. I thought about adding a "WHO'S WITH ME?" but the first post already sounds a little grandiose.

I think we can reclaim the word while addressing some of the things that made those journalists decry it. So, who's with me?

I guess its an open conversation.

 

[Idon'tcareanymore]

I don't think gamers are dead. While I read the articles and found reading from another point of view to be enlightening, I disagree. I've been board and card gaming since I was 6 years old and only started recently playing video games (About 4 years ago.). I'm still a gamer, but it's not all that I am. And I don't think that "gamer" should be anyone's main adjective towards self, which is something I've taken from all of this. Secondly, I think that "gamer" as a trend is dead. I think that people will be playing games, both table top and video, but I think it'll be reduced, bot as "hip." Whether that is a good thing or not, I don't know. I just know that I'm not gonna stop just because the tide is turning.

 

[Diablo2000]

"Gamers are dead!", "Film goers are dead!", "Book readers are dead!"

Oh please, just because some people decided to be dickheads don't mean that entire community is dead.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Why do you even care? It's just one dumb person who wrote one dumb article. Opinion of one person is pretty much meaningless.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

People have been saying things are dying and dead forever and will continue to do so as long as there are people. There are plenty in gaming like PC gaming is dead, Console gaming is dead, MMORPGs are dead, etc. So I wouldn't bother myself about it.

 

[KingDragonlord]

Why do you even care? It's just one dumb person who wrote one dumb article. Opinion of one person is pretty much meaningless.

It was about 8 or 9 journalists doing articles on the same day and some others are falling in.

But that's not the only issue my post or articles with similar points are addressing. We should be making a firm statement that the term has room for everybody who wants to be a gamer except for those who want to hate or to exclude others.

I know what some of you are thinking because part of me thinks it true "We shouldn't even be dignifying any of this. Not the trolls, not the knee jerk journalism. That gives it more power than it deserves."

But I don't think we have to concede anything to make a simple positive statement that says "We're still here, we're still playing games. Lets stop with all this nonsense and get back to geeking out about games." And I think this has gotten to a point where we should speak up. Those of us normal reasonable gamers who don't have an axe to grind don't show up as often as the trolls because we don't feed off it like they do. The extremists are always over represented.

 

[Stg]

Those journalists are what you would call "band-wagoners". They make their notoriety by writing about the current controversial topics and I'd be willing to bet money that they will completely forget about this whole ridiculous matter when the next hot topic arrives.

As someone who has been gaming for over 25 years of their life (still in my late 20s), I don't give a shit what people call me. I'm a gamer and I'm proud to be one. I work in a profession that most of the world criticizes, yet has no idea what my profession really entails, but that doesn't stop me from telling people in other states and countries what I do for a living (field operator in the oil field, by the way). Games survived Jack Thompson and they will survive all this nonsense.

I guess it all boils down to if you're the type of person who will let something like one or two people on Youtube make you feel ashamed for what you feel you are. Personally, any public figure who tries to make a valid statement while only looking at one side of the argument is an idiot and an ignorant idiot at that. The thing I find funny about this whole ordeal is that this should affect someone like me (who has spent the greater portion of their life playing video games) a great deal more than someone who has just been introduced to gaming, but I'm the type of person who laughs at this type of stuff and completely ignores it for the most-part. A few people's opinions will never make me feel inferior or make me stop playing any video game just because it may or may not be sexist.

 

[KingDragonlord]

Those journalists are what you would call "band-wagoners". They make their notoriety by writing about the current controversial topics and I'd be willing to bet money that they will completely forget about this whole ridiculous matter when the next hot topic arrives.

As someone who has been gaming for over 25 years of their life (still in my late 20s), I don't give a shit what people call me. I'm a gamer and I'm proud to be one. I work in a profession that most of the world criticizes, yet has no idea what my profession really entails, but that doesn't stop me from telling people in other states and countries what I do for a living (field operator in the oil field, by the way). Games survived Jack Thompson and they will survive all this nonsense.

I guess it all boils down to if you're the type of person who will let something like one or two people on Youtube make you feel ashamed for what you feel you are. Personally, any public figure who tries to make a valid statement while only looking at one side of the argument is an idiot and an ignorant idiot at that. The thing I find funny about this whole ordeal is that this should affect someone like me (who has spent the greater portion of their life playing video games) a great deal more than someone who has just been introduced to gaming, but I'm the type of person who laughs at this type of stuff and completely ignores it for the most-part. A few people's opinions will never make me feel inferior or make me stop playing any video game just because it may or may not be sexist.

As someone reminded me recently, we survived Jack Thompson because we called him on his B.S. and showed him he was wrong.

 

[Gatx]

Statements like that are starting to get acknowledged as an overreaction on the part of the people who said them. It kind of goes along with the tuning out of the masses because it's filled with so much vile, and it ended up by lumping all "gamers" into one group. It's not a good thing to do however unintentional, and is how stereotyping and eventually discrimination happens. It's like if you accused every white person of being racist. That was my main problem with this whole thing but it's starting to sort itself out.

On the other hand I fear that the term may be damaged now and people will be ashamed, embarrassed or even too proud to identify themselves as such. I know some of you out there say that you don't care what people think about you, but there are others, myself included, that do care. I don't want people to have negative assumptions about gaming or come to negative, ill-informed conclusions about gamers.

We don't live in a vacuum, and it's most definitely not a perfect world, so what other people think of you will matter at some point in your life. It can affect your professional and social life if the social group you belong to is perceived as being bad. Think about companies that discriminate against people with tattoos for instance because of the societal perception of the people who get them.

Because of that, I can agree with the journalists who call for change and reform within the current gaming industry and the gamer culture, which I believe is the ultimate point the other side is trying to make. Even though I don't respect the overreaction and think that fighting fire with fire is only going to make more fire, I will recognize that there is a need to reexamine not necessarily ourselves as individuals who play games (I'm sure you're a great guy) but our culture as a whole because I want to be able to identify as a gamer without any negative baggage.

As someone reminded me recently, we survived Jack Thompson because we called him on his B.S. and showed him he was wrong.

Jack Thompson claimed that videogames made kids violent and were the cause of mass shootings. The mass shooter vs. average gamer ratio is pretty skewed, thus by not going out on crazy rampages, we showed that Thompson was wrong.

On the other hand, the current critics are saying "gamers" and "gaming" is sexist, and there exist gamers, whether you believe them to be a vocal minority or a majority of dumbasses, are responding in ways that reinforce those criticisms. We're not only not showing them that they're wrong, but letting those who are proving them right run rampant.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

As someone reminded me recently, we survived Jack Thompson because we called him on his B.S. and showed him he was wrong.

That didn't stop him from perpetually pushing his agenda to ignorant people until he was finally disbarred for malpractice. I'm not convinced we, the real victims, had anything to do with it.

 

[Stryphoon]

You are not a pair of shoes (I assume), you do not need a label. People are made up of a myriad of different traits, such as the highest number you have ever counted to sequentially (that one is important. When it happens, you'll know). Enjoying games, be it video, table top, cards, hopscotch, etc is just a single aspect of the greater whole.

It just seems there was some confusion caused be people putting the cart before the horse and letting the label define them, rather than the other way around. It was not necessarily the case but it was interpreted as such because social media is pretty terrible at emulating social interaction accurately.

Labels are mostly quite bad, they lead to generalizations which leads to prejudice (which leads to the dark side).

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Pretty sure the last escapist editorial covered this, and it covered this phenomenally well. Just because one writer made this statement, doesn't mean we all need to suddenly feel we're under attack. Learn to just relax, it makes everything so much easier.

 

[Nanondorf]

Enough. This whole matter was given undue attention for no significant reason. Games will keep being sold, and people will keep buying, and in sharing their enthusiasm with other like-minded individuals, they will join the gaming community as gamers. That's all there is to it. We are faithful clients of that one industry, and follow its developments closely, and in voicing our impressions online we form an international subculture.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Why do you even care? It's just one dumb person who wrote one dumb article. Opinion of one person is pretty much meaningless.

It was about 8 or 9 journalists doing articles on the same day and some others are falling in.

It doesn't matter. They can't do anything. They can't just decide that gamers are dead. The only thing they could do is lose the majority of their audience writing shit like that, which only makes their opinion even less relevant.

 

[The Preened Mr. Fust]

So long as attitudes and behavior like this continues:

We must not be silent. We do not need the people who are supposed to be iconic of our interests behaving like this. It is unacceptable and until accountability is established we must press on.

 

[Lieju]

I have never really identified as a 'gamer' because I have very little reason to. I'm not a fan of labeling myself in the first place, and it's not like I'm equally a fan of all games everywhere.

I never play simulators or racing games for example, and am a casual RTS or fighting-game fan if even that.

I tend to more tell people I'm a fan of certain series or something.
People I hang out tend to play games in some capacity, even if it's some casual game on their bus journeys, so what point does saying I'm a 'gamer' have?

 

[Verlander]

So long as attitudes and behavior like this continues:

We must not be silent. We do not need the people who are supposed to be iconic of our interests behaving like this. It is unacceptable and until accountability is established we must press on.

Behaving like what? Having a drink? You guys are prohibitionists??? Aw hell no!!