The terms "casual" and "core" gamer, as well as the word "gamer" itself is oft-debated in gaming forums, I know. For the most part, I tend to avoid the argument. It always seemed pretentious, silly, and exclusionary: a way of heaping scorn and derision on the people who don't play the games that you play (e.g. "people who play shooters are casuals!", "people who play JRPGs are casuals!", "people who play iOS and Facebook games aren't real gamers!", etc. ad nauseum).
But the other day something happened to me that forced me to reconsider my perspective. So let me frame my discussion with a recounting.
I was set up on a date with a certain gentleman by mutual friends. While I've dated non-gamers in the past, my preference is to date gamers. I spend a considerable amount of time on my hobby, I'd like to be able to share it with the person I care about. Besides, my BFF isn't always around to play co-op. Anyway, I've made this preference known - my friends set us up because, I was assured, we both had that hobby in common. Now, this gentleman was a little old for me and I don't usually go for older men, but since he was a gamer, just think of what he must have played in his youth! The old King's Quest games, or the original Fallout! I was certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on account of our shared interests.
After breaking the ice with the usual - professions, schools, travel, etc. - I asked him what games he'd played lately. I was curious to see what sort of gamer he was. My friends had no specifics. I have my own favourites, but my tastes are pretty broad. Shooters, RPGs, platformers - all good!
"Oh, I've been busy - you know, work." He replied. "What about you?"
Fair enough, I thought. We're both busy professionals. And showing an interest in me is good sign! I told him that I was busy too with projects, and had finally gotten around to picking up Skyrim.
"Skyrim?" He asked. "I've never heard of it."
"...Uh, you know, Skyrim." I was puzzled. I hadn't name-dropped an obscure Japanese-language only import from a decade ago - this was 2011's Game of the Year. "It's an RPG? By Bethesda."
No recognition.
"They made Fallout 3."
"Never heard of it. What system is it for?"
"It's, uh, on both of them, as I understand it."
"Both?"
"Both PS3 and 360. Oh, and PC too, I think."
"I only own a PC."
Oh, I thought, with relief. He's a PC gamer. Personally, I'm primarily a console gamer, but I have a gaming laptop and a Steam account. This could work. "So what did you think about Diablo 3?"
"I haven't gotten around to it yet."
"You played the first two?"
"I played the first one."
"Yeah, that was a classic, wasn't it? What was your favourite class?"
"Uh... I don't really remember. I don't think I beat it."
He sounded surprisingly disinterested in the topic; a marked contrast to the enthusiasm I'm accustomed to when talking to other gamers. Something wasn't right. But, hey, he'd told my friends he was a gamer. He'd mentioned it himself at the beginning of the date. So, he must be one, right? And I'm no gaming snob - anything he plays is fine. Maybe it is just Robot Unicorn Attack, or World of Warcraft. I play far too much pew pew myself. "So... what have you played lately?"
He doesn't respond. He sits there deep in thought, dredging through memories. And I begin to wonder...
As it turns out, the original Diablo was probably one of the last games he'd tried. His entire knowledge of Final Fantasy comes from 7; he's never heard of Crysis. But he doesn't really know classic games either. He played a few rounds of Quake at a friend's LAN party, but Wolf 3D and System Shock don't garner so much of a flicker of recognition.
And that's when it hits me. He is not a gamer. Maybe back in the 1990s and 80s he sort of was one - a very casual one. I can't talk to him about anything more in depth than "so, about that Super Mario World, eh?" and yet he clings to the identifier because he knows what "zerg rush" means (although not how to effectively perform one).
But surely, the argument goes, anyone who plays any games at all is a "gamer"? After all, we don't have words for "movie watcher" and "book reader". Everyone does those things.
Well, that's part of the problem. Gaming, at least to people of a certain again, has become virtually ubiquitous - like reading books or watching television. Everyone does it. While back in the 90s calling yourself a "gamer" might have meant identifying with part of a subculture, these days "I play video games" is tantamount to saying "I use the internet". Or, "I breathe air and drink water". "Gamer" must necessarily mean something other than "has played any video games at all" because it is fast becoming interchangeable with "human being on the planet Earth".
And actually, we do have exclusionary terms for those people who turn book reading and movie watching into a hobby or a passion: avid readers and film buffs. While you might not expect everyone to have watched Citizen Kane, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect someone who claims to be a cinema aficionado to have done so. And it would be very strange indeed if a self-professed avid reader had never even heard of Tom Clancy, even if their tastes don't include his work. If you listed "listening to music" as a hobby on your eHarmony profile, but you last listened to an album of any kind ten years ago and even then only listened to a handful of bands back then your potential romantic partners would feel (rightly) that you had misrepresented yourself to them.
Yet, because there was that subculture of "gamer" versus "non-gamer", people cling desperately to the descriptor because that's how they want to identify, that's where they want to belong, even though in truth they slid into "non-gamer" status years ago. Especially now that geek is the new cool, and gaming is mainstream.
How do we solve this problem? How do we salvage the word "gamer" from the utter meaninglessness it has come to hold? Do we pry "gamer" out of the clutches of those who don't really game and make it a term like film buff? So that someone who'd last watched a movie in the 90s and then only Independence Day would feel utterly ridiculous telling someone they were one?
Or do we remove the stigma from the word "casual" - stop using it as an insult directed at those who don't play games we like, and use it on those who rarely play games at all. Make "core" not a badge of honour, but a simple point of fact. After all, "casual filmgoer" is not an insult, and no one would take it as such. Most of us probably are this, and unless we've seen hundreds, if not thousands of titles, we wouldn't dream of calling ourselves "film buffs". Similarly, "core" could be reserved for those who have more than ten or twenty games from any given generation.
My suspicion is that the damage is already done. "Gamer" has become a meaningless non-word to describe everyone born after 1970, but has enough subcultural cache that no one wants to let it go. And that removing the "core" versus "casual" stigma will be next to impossible (not to mention that the industry has started to use these terms themselves to talk about something entirely different altogether). I expect that we'll have to invent a new, neutral, generic term for "game buffs" that separates them from the "gamers" without insulting them.
So if I go out with a guy who calls himself a game buff, he'll probably have at least heard of Skyrim.
But the other day something happened to me that forced me to reconsider my perspective. So let me frame my discussion with a recounting.
I was set up on a date with a certain gentleman by mutual friends. While I've dated non-gamers in the past, my preference is to date gamers. I spend a considerable amount of time on my hobby, I'd like to be able to share it with the person I care about. Besides, my BFF isn't always around to play co-op. Anyway, I've made this preference known - my friends set us up because, I was assured, we both had that hobby in common. Now, this gentleman was a little old for me and I don't usually go for older men, but since he was a gamer, just think of what he must have played in his youth! The old King's Quest games, or the original Fallout! I was certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on account of our shared interests.
After breaking the ice with the usual - professions, schools, travel, etc. - I asked him what games he'd played lately. I was curious to see what sort of gamer he was. My friends had no specifics. I have my own favourites, but my tastes are pretty broad. Shooters, RPGs, platformers - all good!
"Oh, I've been busy - you know, work." He replied. "What about you?"
Fair enough, I thought. We're both busy professionals. And showing an interest in me is good sign! I told him that I was busy too with projects, and had finally gotten around to picking up Skyrim.
"Skyrim?" He asked. "I've never heard of it."
"...Uh, you know, Skyrim." I was puzzled. I hadn't name-dropped an obscure Japanese-language only import from a decade ago - this was 2011's Game of the Year. "It's an RPG? By Bethesda."
No recognition.
"They made Fallout 3."
"Never heard of it. What system is it for?"
"It's, uh, on both of them, as I understand it."
"Both?"
"Both PS3 and 360. Oh, and PC too, I think."
"I only own a PC."
Oh, I thought, with relief. He's a PC gamer. Personally, I'm primarily a console gamer, but I have a gaming laptop and a Steam account. This could work. "So what did you think about Diablo 3?"
"I haven't gotten around to it yet."
"You played the first two?"
"I played the first one."
"Yeah, that was a classic, wasn't it? What was your favourite class?"
"Uh... I don't really remember. I don't think I beat it."
He sounded surprisingly disinterested in the topic; a marked contrast to the enthusiasm I'm accustomed to when talking to other gamers. Something wasn't right. But, hey, he'd told my friends he was a gamer. He'd mentioned it himself at the beginning of the date. So, he must be one, right? And I'm no gaming snob - anything he plays is fine. Maybe it is just Robot Unicorn Attack, or World of Warcraft. I play far too much pew pew myself. "So... what have you played lately?"
He doesn't respond. He sits there deep in thought, dredging through memories. And I begin to wonder...
As it turns out, the original Diablo was probably one of the last games he'd tried. His entire knowledge of Final Fantasy comes from 7; he's never heard of Crysis. But he doesn't really know classic games either. He played a few rounds of Quake at a friend's LAN party, but Wolf 3D and System Shock don't garner so much of a flicker of recognition.
And that's when it hits me. He is not a gamer. Maybe back in the 1990s and 80s he sort of was one - a very casual one. I can't talk to him about anything more in depth than "so, about that Super Mario World, eh?" and yet he clings to the identifier because he knows what "zerg rush" means (although not how to effectively perform one).
But surely, the argument goes, anyone who plays any games at all is a "gamer"? After all, we don't have words for "movie watcher" and "book reader". Everyone does those things.
Well, that's part of the problem. Gaming, at least to people of a certain again, has become virtually ubiquitous - like reading books or watching television. Everyone does it. While back in the 90s calling yourself a "gamer" might have meant identifying with part of a subculture, these days "I play video games" is tantamount to saying "I use the internet". Or, "I breathe air and drink water". "Gamer" must necessarily mean something other than "has played any video games at all" because it is fast becoming interchangeable with "human being on the planet Earth".
And actually, we do have exclusionary terms for those people who turn book reading and movie watching into a hobby or a passion: avid readers and film buffs. While you might not expect everyone to have watched Citizen Kane, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect someone who claims to be a cinema aficionado to have done so. And it would be very strange indeed if a self-professed avid reader had never even heard of Tom Clancy, even if their tastes don't include his work. If you listed "listening to music" as a hobby on your eHarmony profile, but you last listened to an album of any kind ten years ago and even then only listened to a handful of bands back then your potential romantic partners would feel (rightly) that you had misrepresented yourself to them.
Yet, because there was that subculture of "gamer" versus "non-gamer", people cling desperately to the descriptor because that's how they want to identify, that's where they want to belong, even though in truth they slid into "non-gamer" status years ago. Especially now that geek is the new cool, and gaming is mainstream.
How do we solve this problem? How do we salvage the word "gamer" from the utter meaninglessness it has come to hold? Do we pry "gamer" out of the clutches of those who don't really game and make it a term like film buff? So that someone who'd last watched a movie in the 90s and then only Independence Day would feel utterly ridiculous telling someone they were one?
Or do we remove the stigma from the word "casual" - stop using it as an insult directed at those who don't play games we like, and use it on those who rarely play games at all. Make "core" not a badge of honour, but a simple point of fact. After all, "casual filmgoer" is not an insult, and no one would take it as such. Most of us probably are this, and unless we've seen hundreds, if not thousands of titles, we wouldn't dream of calling ourselves "film buffs". Similarly, "core" could be reserved for those who have more than ten or twenty games from any given generation.
My suspicion is that the damage is already done. "Gamer" has become a meaningless non-word to describe everyone born after 1970, but has enough subcultural cache that no one wants to let it go. And that removing the "core" versus "casual" stigma will be next to impossible (not to mention that the industry has started to use these terms themselves to talk about something entirely different altogether). I expect that we'll have to invent a new, neutral, generic term for "game buffs" that separates them from the "gamers" without insulting them.
So if I go out with a guy who calls himself a game buff, he'll probably have at least heard of Skyrim.
he's definitely not a gamer if that was the case XD or at least not a "hardcore" one.