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Post-PAX, Dennis considers the fluid definition of "gamer" and why he's not ready to abandon the term. This ever-simmering debate has bubbled up a lot lately -- for more on a related topic, check out Zynga and Rovio's assault on the "casual gamer" term.
In her column on Kotaku this month, which anyone invested in gamer culture really ought to make time to read, Leigh Alexander argues that the word “gamer” has become more divisive than useful for our culture, tied as it is to narrow definitions that don’t embrace the wide variety of gamers. Perhaps it was the column's subtitle, “‘Gamer,’ No More,” that made me think Alexander was suggesting we abandon the word "gamer" altogether.
When I asked her about that, she responded that her point was to let the word mean what it means to me, and let it mean what it means to everyone else, and not worry about it. I do worry about it, though, because the word “gamer” is part of my self-definition, and I imagine that a large part if not most of the Bitmob audience feels the same way. Therefore, I want the word to mean something concrete at some level and in some context, even if it stretches to include multiple definitions outside of that one, basic meaning.
A friend of mine recently asked me how I defined a "hardcore gamer." I told him, "Someone who plays a lot of video games, without worrying about what kind of games they are." Farmville is certainly some kind of video game, and I know people who play it for three or four hours a day. I think that's fairly defined as "hardcore."
But then I thought about PAX, and how it is meant to be a celebration of "gamer culture.” They’re not just talking about video games. Collectible card games, board games, tabletop wargames, and pen-and-paper role-playing games all have their place and representation at PAX. So, is a "hardcore gamer" someone who is really, really into any of those kinds of games?
On the one hand, I have no problem with “gamer” meaning “video gamer” by default, because I’ve waited a long time to have my chosen pastime validated in any larger sense. When I was a kid, there was no word for someone who went to the arcade to drop first quarters, and then tokens, into the coin-op machines. The people who bought Atari 2600s, and then Commodore 64s, and then Nintendo Entertainment Systems weren't part of a group; not in any recognized way. Maybe they were "people who like video games," but more often than not they probably would have just been "nerds." Social rejects. The bottom of the youth culture barrel.
Others have surely done a better job of writing about the rise of geek culture than I could, so I'll just take it for granted that everyone here in the Bitmob audience realizes the degree to which the tables have turned, even if they're young enough not to know what a Commodore 64 was, or how the rubber grips always, ALWAYS, fell off those damned Atari 2600 joysticks. I think a big reason why those tables have turned is because we finally have a word for ourselves collectively and the culture of which we are a part: "gamer." And because I so easily fit into the normative use of the word as “someone who plays video games,” I’m okay with maintaining the status quo on a selfish level.
On the other hand, I think about Wil Wheaton's keynote speech at PAX East 2010, which reflected on the idea that everyone who had assembled for the event was a gamer, and they were all gathered at PAX to celebrate their communal, gamer culture. He wasn’t just talking about video games. He spent a lot of time talking about playing Dungeons & Dragons with his childhood friends, and how those friendships stood the test of time into the present day. I felt the spirit of community he was trying to convey, and that’s what I think we need to get at with the word “gamer.”
Yet even at PAX, video games define the space. Almost all of the panels have to do with video games. The size of the exhibition floor, which is almost entirely populated by video game publishers and developers, is massive compared to the smaller spaces allotted to collectible card games, tabletop role-playing games, wargames, and board games. My wife, the social justice activist, who is ever curious about the experiences of marginalized groups of people, says that she spoke to plenty of “analog gamers” who felt ostracized at PAX, or who, after stating that they were attending the Expo mostly to play analog games, were quick to add, “But I play video games, too.”
I don’t see the word “gamer” exiting our lexicon anytime in the near future. The word itself may even be the hinge upon which our culture revolves. I’m therefore not satisfied with the idea of just letting the word mean whatever it wants to mean to anyone and not worrying about it, as Alexander suggests, because while I agree with the idea conceptually, I don’t think that’s enough. I also disagree that “gamers” aren’t one, unified audience, because at some basic level, I feel that we are.
The guy playing Magic: The Gathering has something very specific in common with the guy playing Halo, and the guy painting Warmachine models, and the guys playing Risk, and the LARPers wearing full period costume and hitting each other with fake swords. I don’t know what that commonality is, but I feel it exists because I believe in the idea of “gamer culture” that PAX espouses, and I would not point at any of these groups of gamers who aren’t primarily video gamers and say that they didn’t belong at PAX.
If the word “gamer” has become troublesome for invested cultural observers like Leigh Alexander, I think that’s an alarm bell that needs to be recognized and acted upon. If cultural observers can figure out where the common bonds lie between all the different kinds of gamers that are part of our collective group, we can claim ownership of the word and define it accordingly. Because I have no intention of ever giving up my identity as a “gamer,” it’s a conversation I’d like to have.
Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston, MA. He has written for Gamasutra, GamePro, The Escapist, G4TV.com, Joystick Division, and @Gamer magazine, and maintains a blog at punchingsnakes.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DennisScimeca. First Person is his weekly column on Bitmob.
