Standards of a Gamer

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Someone who plays the latest Call of Duty games with his friends may not, by my standards, be a "true" gamer.

Really? Oh, ok. I've been into gaming since I got my first ZX Spectrum back in the 80's, I remember gaming long before two fledgling companies 'Nintendo' and 'Sega' started duking it out on these new fangled inventions called 'consoles', I remember saving up to buy a 256 colour VGA graphics card for my 186, and if the average age of people on this site is anything to go by I've probably been gaming longer than you've even been alive, but apparently I'm not a 'true' gamer.

Understand that I'm not having a pop at you, but I hope the above paragraph highlights to you how irrelevant any attempt to define 'true' gaming is. If you play games, you're a gamer.

 

[scorptatious]

I honestly don't like to set up standards for someone to be called a gamer. Just because someone hasn't played something I'm really into or plays something I'm not into doesn't make them a lesser gamer than myself.

I find this kind of elitism (especially towards people who are into games like COD or Halo) kind of a disturbing trend really. Do we really need to segregate ourselves from people just because they're into different kinds of games or don't reach our imaginary standards for what a true gamer is?

Grow the fuck up people.

 

[Wintermoot]

if that person likes games that require time and effort to master.
a true gamer is respectful to other people, doesn't make serious "your mom" jokes and doesn't use the word "gay" in describing a bad player or game that isn't a military FPS.

 

[Archer666]

People who play games are gamers. Even COD. Or Farmville. Being a GAMURRRRR is not some super secret clubhouse. You don't need to MASTER THE ART OF GAMING(The art of pushing buttons and potentially moving a mouse around, which only Bruce Lee was able to master thanks to his mastery of the human body.) to be a gamer.

 

[Palademon]

My rules are slightly elitist in that I like gaming being a slightly exclusive club of people who enjoy games, which is still sounds like a reasonable definition.

The elitist part comes in from by bias of people I hate who play maybe two series of games and belittle all others. Also people who only play iPhone games etc. The good thing is they probably don't care to label themselves a gamer so it doesn't really matter.

I just don't like a fragile industry being effected by people who don't care about it. Kinda how I imagine movie reviwers. They like to have really good movies, and can appreciate when a movie is just trying to be fun, but when something awful comes out and makes tons of money, and something great comes out and is ignored, you can see how they'd be annoyed. Although I wouldn't say popular games are bad, just a bit overrated. If a game is genuinely bad in how it works it will take a lot of ignorance or acceptance to enjoy it, so it can't be that bad.

So I like to put myself in the category of gamer, as it is a big part of who I am. I understand some people hating this as an elitist thread because they're standards are more open, or they'd say it's only a small part of who they are, but I am aware that was not your purpose.