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| Thread: What is a gamer? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT» |
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Shares
Supreme Hero
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posted October 30, 2014 08:36 PM |
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What is a gamer?
Recently there have been a lot of discussions about gamers and gaming. In particular the whole thing with Gamergate has been reaching out even into non-gaming mass media even, but I don't want to talk about that specifically. The whole reason the discussions have been all over the place seem to stem from several topics that often seem to boil down to the simple question; How do you define the word "gamer"?
Generally it seems to come down to one of three options.
The first one is that anyone that plays games is a gamer.
The second one is that it's a culture term, meaning that you're not a gamer just because you play games or even because you've got a strong interest in them, but rather you're a gamer because you're part of the gamer culture and communities. It makes it just as much a stereotype and archetype as anything else. Just like a metalhead isn't necessarily just anyone that likes metal music, but rather someone that fulfils certain stereotypes about metalheads (where liking metal is just the first criteria).
The third one is someone that's got an investment in games in general, not just in one game as a pasttime like any other. Either as an art-form, entertainment form, sport, media and/or something like that. Someone that not only cares about the game that happens to be in front of them at the time, but about games as a whole and the people involved in them, and how they affect people, society and games.
What're your thoughts on that? Do you have a different definition?
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JoonasTo
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posted October 30, 2014 08:40 PM |
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I've actually been called a gamer only once in my life.
Back in Korean lecture when I told I had spend the last three days marathoning XCOM: The Enemy Within.
So I quess that's one way of defining it.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 30, 2014 08:58 PM |
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Someone who at least plays video games once in a while.
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Adrius
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posted October 30, 2014 09:06 PM |
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Never really thought of it, but I guess being part of the culture surrounding games is what I think of when I say gamer.
Like, when someone says they're a gamer I know I can use certain terms and references that are culture-specific with them.
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DagothGares
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posted October 30, 2014 09:12 PM |
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MLG! The legend never dies!
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Doomforge
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posted October 30, 2014 09:16 PM |
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A miserable little pile of secrets.
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mvassilev
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posted October 30, 2014 10:07 PM |
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Just playing games does not by itself make you a gamer, it requires certain attributes and/or cultural traits, so I generally agree with the second definition as opposed to the first. And it is this gamer subculture that the social justice community is attacking. Some of the attacks are justified (e.g. there really is too much sexism among gamers), but a lot of it is misguided and actually shows the Social Justice Warriors' hypocrisy.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 30, 2014 10:18 PM |
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What exactly is there being referred to?
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Stevie
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posted October 30, 2014 11:06 PM |
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A gamer. Interesting.
I would say that a gamer is a person very implicated in playing a game, as opposed to a casual player. There is another requirement that I can see that none of you mentioned - the game in question must be competitive. PVP, not PvE. In my case, I have just one game that I play competitively atm - DotA 2. I used to play more of them, like CS 1.6, WoW, EvE, etc. I cannot say that I'm a gamer for playing Heroes for example, although I played a lot of it. And that's because I didn't play it competitively against other players.
So I would say that being a gamer depends on both what you play and at what level of competitiveness you play it.
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Shares
Supreme Hero
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posted October 30, 2014 11:29 PM |
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Stevie said:
A gamer. Interesting.
I would say that a gamer is a person very implicated in playing a game, as opposed to a casual player. There is another requirement that I can see that none of you mentioned - the game in question must be competitive. PVP, not PvE. In my case, I have just one game that I play competitively atm - DotA 2. I used to play more of them, like CS 1.6, WoW, EvE, etc. I cannot say that I'm a gamer for playing Heroes for example, although I played a lot of it. And that's because I didn't play it competitively against other players.
So I would say that being a gamer depends on both what you play and at what level of competitiveness you play it.
I don't hear that one that often, since games like Deus Ex, Mass Effect, FTL, Diablo, WoW, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, X-COM and so on are usually considered "gamer" games. And I know that Diablo and WoW both have PvP elements, but they're primarily PvE. More so than HoMM, I'd say.
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Minion
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posted October 30, 2014 11:43 PM |
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I'd say a gamer is someone who spends a considerable time playing games. As a term it is too vague though. Being active on the internet is not required imho to consider someone a gamer.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 30, 2014 11:51 PM |
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Yes, I'm pretty confident that the far majority of people on b.net 10+ years ago was mainly into pvm. Things may have changed since with dsjp and their forum gold or whatever it's called popping up since then.
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DagothGares
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posted October 30, 2014 11:56 PM |
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You can be competitive in pve too, stevie.
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Stevie
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posted October 31, 2014 12:05 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 00:08, 31 Oct 2014.
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Shares said:
I don't hear that one that often, since games like Deus Ex, Mass Effect, FTL, Diablo, WoW, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, X-COM and so on are usually considered "gamer" games. And I know that Diablo and WoW both have PvP elements, but they're primarily PvE. More so than HoMM, I'd say.
I dunno man, that's how I feel about it. You can't be a gamer if you play PvE. You're a gamer if you're somehow engaged in competitive play. If you're not, you're just... a casual, lol. Take my father for example. I think he has triple my WoW hours, and I can't say he's a gamer. He just explores, kills all he can kill by himself, makes professions, completes all the quests, and just soloes the entire game. That's all he does, no party, no raids, no guilds, no arenas, no duels, no battlegrounds, no nothing!
Let's take a more.. difficult example let's say, StarCraft 2. If you're enjoying the campaigns and pve maps, to me you're just a casual player, no matter how good you are or how long you've played. But if you're engaged into competitive play, like 1v1 and such, then yea, to me you're a gamer.
Just how I view it. Player vs. Environment = casual; Player vs. Player = gamer.
DagothGares said:
You can be competitive in pve too, stevie.
If you're competing on stats with another person, sure. If you're purely vs Environment, not by a mile. Artificial intelligence doesn't provide the kind of competitiveness that'd make me consider someone a gamer.
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DagothGares
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posted October 31, 2014 12:34 AM |
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MMO raids are still pve, man. And pretty competitive. or at least, they're hardcore.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 31, 2014 12:38 AM |
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Stevie said:
Artificial intelligence doesn't provide the kind of competitiveness that'd make me consider someone a gamer.
Try to beat a chess computer then. 
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Storm-Giant
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posted October 31, 2014 12:47 AM |
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OhforfSake said:
Stevie said:
Artificial intelligence doesn't provide the kind of competitiveness that'd make me consider someone a gamer.
Try to beat a chess computer then.
#rekt
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DagothGares
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posted October 31, 2014 12:48 AM |
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Chess computers disgust me.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 31, 2014 01:04 AM |
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How come? Because to a degree they disgust me too.
When I grew up, the first introduction to a chess program was one my father played against. It wasn't very strong compared to todays standards, but it was rated 400 more than my dad, so it usually won against him. However he'd be so proud when he very rarely won. I really only remember him winning twice.
I'm not sure about what program it was, but anyway I got some dos games as I grew older and I got 3 different chess programs I could play against, first one was battle chess, second one was a "computer" (in the form of a chess board) only designed to play chess and finally lego chess. I could beat all three of those programs fairly easy and back then I was only ~250 rating above new player, while the program my dad played against was ~1000 over.
Later again I found various free chess programs one could play against online, which I at first didn't do very well against (at a time I hadn't played the game for years), but then I learned how to beat them, and that's what I found so disgusting.. they never evolved. We could play more or less identical games, and sometimes I'd no clue why the computer fell for this particular trap and not some other.. sometimes I could place my pieces at odd positions and the computer would start to play worse (from my perspective).
On the positive side I found the chess program my dad played against and I managed to beat it after having been behind most of the game via a cool rook sacrifice taking a knight and isolating the opponent king.
Also I really like that with today's engines (which is what I referred to before) you in principle get the opinion of someone who's better than the best players today about your moves.. it can show you exactly why your plan won't succeed, or why its plan is better.. especially when it comes to tablebases which are equivanelt to "playing chess with God" since all possibilities have been analyzed. Using those it's possible to even hold a draw / defeat the best engines once the game is sufficiently simplified.
Edit: Btw. chess engine quality does not only depend on how well the algorithm is written, but on your hardware too, so it stand to reason with older pc's back when I was a kid, the programs were easier to defeat. But I did try both a harder setting of Battle Chess and Lego Chess on a very fast computer and in Battle Chess I thought I was about to get my behind done with for quite some time until I realized I had a very narrow but undefendable win. Against Lego Chess I was freaking chanceless.. so I tried to let one of the really strong Engines have a go and see it tear Lego Chess to pieces on its weakness, which turned out to be the end game.
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Stevie
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posted October 31, 2014 01:08 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 01:17, 31 Oct 2014.
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DagothGares said:
MMO raids are still pve, man. And pretty competitive. or at least, they're hardcore.
Sure, I already said that above, in the sentence about my father. It's just the human element that counts. The more I played raids, the more I realized that I was not the boss that I was competing against, but my raid group. The goal in a boss fight was to adjust my raid to a specific pattern to be able to finish the job. And that's like competing with yourself and the others to achieve that pattern. To put it in other words, it was more about how we danced than anything else.
So to me raids are a mix of PvE and Player co-op, which can be competitive to a certain degree as far as co-op goes, but limited to the raid group only.
OhforfSake said:
Stevie said:
Artificial intelligence doesn't provide the kind of competitiveness that'd make me consider someone a gamer.
Try to beat a chess computer then.
Try reading my quote again, see if it still makes sense. Chess computers don't think, they don't improve or change approaches, they just execute a pattern. Crack that pattern down, you're no more of a gamer than beating the AI of any other game.
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