I'm Game(r)

I love being a gamer, but I hate that there’s a term that defines me by that one leisure activity. Even if we are still clinging to the lower case ‘g’. We are gamers, hear us eat Wotsits and forlornly sigh into our noise reduction microphones attached to our 5.1 headsets. When I was younger and fitter I played football but no-one would ever have called me a footballer. I watch a fair amount of movies and television so should I also be defined as a watcher? I could change my name to Chancy Gardener. I play a number of instruments, though the only sub category of musician I am sufficiently proficient in that I would be comfortable claiming it is drummer. Drummers being musicians with their brains removed jokes notwithstanding.

Other than the activities I do as part of my current employment for which I am defined by my job title (itself a rather meaningless label), there are so many things I do that are surely as equally valid as the ‘gamer’ tag (see what I did there?). I once described myself as an ass kissing, jive talking, soda slurping, crisp chomping, camera clicking, guitar strumming, drum bashing, bullshit spouting, candy assed white boy. I think that pretty much still holds water, particularly as candy assed middle aged fat baldy man doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. It certainly is more encompassing and gives a better idea of who and what I am than defining me as a gamer simply because one of the things I choose to do to entertain myself is play video games.

The latest statement from South Australia’s Attorney-General Michael Atkinson about fearing gamers has highlighted to me that continuing to use the term marginalises everyone who plays video games, and so while the majority of people I know now play games at least on a semi-regular basis, that is to persist with the notion that people who play video games are an insignificant minority group. He has consistently shown himself to be ill informed and lacking in a basic understanding of the medium or the people who play games, but when individuals start name calling or loitering around his house, all people who play games are labelled by association and any moral high ground is lost. As an aside, I notice his crusade against mature video games had now spread to movies too and I do wonder when he’ll start on books. But I digress.

As more and more people play games the term ‘gamer’ loses any significance. It’ll be like defining yourself as human (real world remember, you can still be an elf in Dragon Age:Origins). Can I just be a fat bloke who plays games? Can I be game without being a gamer?

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Fifteen:

Hardly Revolutionary

Paul: Curious without being in any way intriguing wouldn’t you say JC?
JC: What is and would I?
Paul: Trademarking the term revolution as part of the title when the suggestion has always been that augmentation was a technical evolution.
JC: They could have gone with Creationism for all the difference it will make.
Paul: At least you’re talking about it.
JC: Talking about what?