|
Reveilled posted:Did you call yourself a gamer before the recent splits and controversies? I'm of a similar mind as you, but ten years ago I'd have comfortably called myself a gamer, and even though I've stopped like you have, I've never felt comfortable surrendering that term to those people, and I'm sure as poo poo not going to do something like start calling myself a ludophile or whatever term people might come up with in future. It bothers me that just as gaming has started to move into the mainstream, the term we used to us to describe ourselves as hobbyists has been wrenched backward into a niche of social malcontents. When I was younger I looked forward to the day when describing myself as a "gamer" would have connotations no different than describing myself as a "film buff". But that day looks as distant as ever, even as games have become mainstream. I still call myself one sorta, but as i said earlier, its not everything or nothing part of me, its major hobby, and i mostly play mainstream stuff with the occasional divergent.
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2016 18:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 02:21 |
|
|
Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:The gamer label carries connotations of homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-intellectualism, and a whole host of other problems due to extremely loud assholes creating an association between calling oneself a gamer and in their next tweet saying "shut up Sarkeesian you stupid oval office." Nazareth posted:The gaming community is mainly comprised of "hardcore" gamers that scoff at mobile gamers who don't buy consoles and high-end gaming PCs, but I really don't understand the stigmatization of the casual gamer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2016 21:31
|
|
|
Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:The gamer label carries connotations of homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-intellectualism, and a whole host of other problems due to extremely loud assholes creating an association between calling oneself a gamer and in their next tweet saying "shut up Sarkeesian you stupid oval office." I'm curious who you're hanging out with where saying you're into something relatively innocuous like gaming automatically lumps you with bigots. Most people have no idea about any of the things you mentioned.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2016 22:05
|
|
|
Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:The gamer label carries connotations of homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-intellectualism, and a whole host of other problems due to extremely loud assholes creating an association between calling oneself a gamer and in their next tweet saying "shut up Sarkeesian you stupid oval office." Why label yourself? At what point would you need to be calling yourself a gamer? Do you go around asking people "Are you an Otaku too?" You don't need a tag to be part of a community, just talk about/do something you have in common together.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2016 07:08
|
|
|
I'm a "friender" I hang out with and do activities with people that call me their friend. Some of these activities include playing "games", watching "movies", or discussing "books" we have read. Obviously we are all also extremely sexist, racist, and terrorist.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2016 17:43
|
|
|
wiregrind posted:Why label yourself? At what point would you need to be calling yourself a gamer? Do you go around asking people "Are you an Otaku too?" It's a useful shorthand in conversations about hobbies. If I tell people I meet that I'm a film buff, that communicates that I go to the cinema more frequently than the average person and probably quite like those movies which mainstream cinema-goers might not have much interest in. If the other person I'm speaking with is the same, this indicates we could have a conversation about, say, the cinematography in Our Kind of Traitor, as opposed to a conversation about whether the Warcraft movie was any good. I can also play the harmonica, badly. I might possibly mention that if someone asked me what I do for hobbies. But my sister would describe herself as a musician, since she plays eight instruments and is in two orchestras. People just have names for practitioners of hobbies, that's all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 05:32
|
|
|
As a wrestling fan, I consider a "gamer" the same as a smark in wrestling lingo. They're mad as hell and incredibly insular about their specific hobby, politics bleeds into it a little, but the overall moral is that you can make fun of them. They've earned the mockery, honestly, just like any other hardcore hobby group who thinks their recreational activity is important in some way. They'll be a little less misogynistic about it than the usual gamers, assuming it's not a review for WWE2k16. But no joke, wrestling fans aren't as idjit as you'd assume, so long as you get away from their echo chambers on Reddit & Youtube. Or maybe I watch wrestling with fellow hippies. Don't know, I just watch it to distract myself from my lovely life. Hippies do have an odd amount of wrestling fandom among them, though. TheFuglyStik fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jun 16, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 05:55
|
|
|
lynch_69 posted:Yeah the whole "I need impartial reliable fact based game review scores out of 100 so I know if I should buy this game" rings hollow in an age where you can see hours of unedited gameplay footage of every new AAA $60 game that will ever be released. I mean who really sits an reads reviews for the scores to decide if they should buy a game or not? I have a feeling it's a bunch of 30+ year old men like us who grew up with video game magazines and still have some nostalgic attachment to numbered review scores. It's an anachronism in this day and age with endless streaming footage of every new game that's coming out. The streaming stuff is big, but it exists largely because games don't have the copyright vigilance that movie studios have, and like a movie a lot of people would like to go in blind in terms of the experience but also would like to know if the product is technically broken in some way. In other words, "but spoilers!" For me anyway, I have an attachment to this stuff because it's also how I experience whether or not to go to a movie. I only have so much money to spend, and RottenTomatoes averages will usually determine whether I see something in a theater or wait for home video. You can't really metacritic rate a YouTube player (which is another thing affecting the industry, given that bonuses etc often hinge on Metacritic scores that ignore Joe Blow On YouTube.) computer parts posted:The point really is that in the not so distant past a guy was fired because he gave a video game a low review. That's not a sign of an industry that has "reliable, down the middle of the plate buying advice". That's entirely a managerial decision. The manager that decided to do that replaced a long-timer who left to go into developing games, and the old manager was strident about editorial freedom. The new guy had barely been around long enough to establish a tone, and so he established one by setting an example. Describing that as representative of the entire workforce is not accurate, either. The people that score games at other sites were appalled by what happened, generally with the tone of, "my boss wouldn't do that, but I'm afraid he might start if this guy somewhere else can and gets away with it." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jun 16, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 07:03
|
|
|
wiregrind posted:Why label yourself? At what point would you need to be calling yourself a gamer? Do you go around asking people "Are you an Otaku too?" Group dynamics often require some precise words and labels to convey hidden meanings to other group members. For example, there is a big and important difference between calling yourself "birdwatcher" and calling yourself "birder". The label and its proper use carries more information than many think. At many points having a tag is needed to identify the carrier as a member of certain subculture.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 08:19
|
|
|
Online, gamers are the worst thing about videogames. Offline, they're anyone who videogames are a good source of smalltalk with.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 12:09
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:The streaming stuff is big, but it exists largely because games don't have the copyright vigilance that movie studios have, and like a movie a lot of people would like to go in blind in terms of the experience but also would like to know if the product is technically broken in some way. In other words, "but spoilers!" Something like this that wouldn't spoil a game would be a paragraph at most and probably not that helpful because everyone's machine is different. It's a lot like asking a random person "is this game fun?"
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 12:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 02:21 |
|
|
Reveilled posted:When I was younger I looked forward to the day when describing myself as a "gamer" would have connotations no different than describing myself as a "film buff". But that day looks as distant as ever, even as games have become mainstream. Like most hobbies, the vast majority of gamers really don't openly advertise or discuss things on the internet or in public quite as obsessively as any given group of enthusiasts. If you feel comfortable now that you DON'T call yourself a gamer just because there's a vocal group of assholes out there who also happen to be gamers, more power to you, I guess. But I don't think "gamer" is a term that can't be like "film buff" or "reader", mostly because it already is. If some people get their kicks out of saying "gamers are all losers who are misogynists/can't take 'criticism' and they deserve all mockery they get", and you think that is really what the label means, even more power to you. But I think you have other problems outside of the scope of the conversation if the mere word is so distasteful or toxic to you that you fear even being remotely associated with it. If you're surrounded by friends who would readily make you feel like an outcast for simply saying that you're a gamer, you should probably find new friends. I don't call myself a gamer because I subscribe to a specific set of politics, or because I hate the opposite sex, or hate certain ethnic/religious groups. I play videogames a lot in my spare time, so I could be called a gamer. The End. Whenever someone says poo poo like quote:Losers who identify with space marines and are uncomfortable around real people. Usually teenagers or sexless adults. quote:Gamers are the kind of people who can't handle provocative articles about their particular hobby or games within it. I can pretty much ignore them. At best they're making GBS threads up a given conversation or trolling for replies. Most gamers are not part of gamergate. Most gamers don't associate with it, much less support how loony it really is or whatever goal they've decided to shift the goalposts to. The majority of gamers are just people who play videogames often. That there are enthusiasts who take this to greater levels, that things like gamergate even exist, doesn't necessarily reflect on all gamers. It might define "gamers" to people who I quoted above, but nobody should really care about what they think about anything anyway, least of all you. Basically: Powercrazy posted:So when people say "X is bad" because of "Y" it seems like they are doing a substitution. They take a thing they don't like, specific types of video games, find assholes on the internet that like the thing, then point them out and imply everyone that likes video games is like that. Which is an intellectually bankrupt position and one that should be dismissed out of hand regardless of the speaker. Like I said in the thread before, "gamer" is bait for some people in Debate and Discussion to drive-by shitpost about the subject, rather than actually discuss it. It's easier for them that way, they don't want people to prove them otherwise, they don't want to be convinced of anything.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 17:18
|
|
