Surprised to never see this come up in these discussions (which I’ve seen a few of now) but Leigh Alexander wrote a polemical version of this post in then-Gamasutra (I think?) and it basically kicked off Gamergate. Now it’s basically conventional wisdom.
Not a knock against you, btw. I just think it was such a big thing 10 years ago that has now been mostly memory-holed (which maybe speaks, again, to the broader point about who “gamers” are)
Upon re-reading, it really was such a major salvo in the opening acts of that particular chapter of online culture war. She saw the bigger picture, too—the connection between advertising and the media's "product-guide approach to conversation." Fascinating to go back and read this now.
What about twitch streamers who play new releases all year? I'd consider them gamers and as long as they're around I don't think the identity as gamer will disappear.
They fit the bill more than most, tho some differences do stick out. The old 90s and 2000s era joke about people who worked as testers at game studios was that they were "paid to play video games." It was never really true, as much of that job is drudgery and paperwork. With streamers, it's much closer to the truth—they really are getting paid to be gamers (and to perform for a camera, of course). But making games consumption into a paying job does probably deserve its own category aside from "gamer," which was intended to describe a hobbyist class.
Great piece! I wrote a piece this week on a local Aus biannual gamer study, and I wish this came out a week earlier.
Would have influenced my questions on method, and whether that’s useful in understanding the various groups of people who game. Though the study did track hours played per age group? Something I guess?
We had this debate a lot when I was at Zwift, because the vast majority of Zwifters (aka people who ride their bikes on Zwift) would not have *self-identified* as gamers as Zwift was the only "game" they "played." There was even a lot of debate at Zwift about whether or not it even was (is) a game. I always maintained that it was. And that we'd benefit if we thought of our customers as gamers (even if they didn't think of themselves in that way) in the way we approached development.
If Zwift is a game, then you have a whole bedrock set of principles in game design to fall back on. Raph Koster's "Theory of Fun" is my favorite here, but it's not really about books, it's more that games are an established medium, and there's actually quite a lot we know about how to make games good/fun/engaging/etc.
You and I have joked that the NYT is now basically a gaming company that happens to run a newspaper. If I play Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, and Strands every day, am I more of a "gamer" - by virtue of number of different games played - than someone who only plays, I dunno, Tarkov?
To me, if you love to play games, you are a gamer. Whether that is defined by breadth, depth, or simply a fundamental appreciation for the art form feels inconsequential.
Yeah you're onto something with this. The upside of continuing to look at games as a unified field (even if, in many ways it is fragmenting) is that there are many fruitful ideas discovered by people who've explored the space the deepest. There are lessons applicable to spaces that might not obviously seem gaming-related.
There’s something to this, but I think the nature of games as a medium makes it different from movies.
A lot of games are deep enough that you can just play one or two games all year. The same can’t be said for movies, which are generally 3 hours at their longest.
I think that time spent playing, not variety of games played, is a better measure of whether someone is a gamer.
But if they're only playing one or two games, are they a gamer—or are they, for ex, a League of Legends player? There are FFXIV players who put in more hours into it than their real lives, yet rarely or never touch other games. Surely there is some more specific term than "gamer" that describes that specific activity. (FFXIVer? idk)
Think of how many games are contained within that one game, though. Big games are collections of diverse game systems. A single quest line in FFXIV is more analogous to a single movie than the whole of FFXIV.
Surprised to never see this come up in these discussions (which I’ve seen a few of now) but Leigh Alexander wrote a polemical version of this post in then-Gamasutra (I think?) and it basically kicked off Gamergate. Now it’s basically conventional wisdom.
Not a knock against you, btw. I just think it was such a big thing 10 years ago that has now been mostly memory-holed (which maybe speaks, again, to the broader point about who “gamers” are)
Oh wow, I'd forgotten about that piece: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gamers-don-t-have-to-be-your-audience-gamers-are-over-
Upon re-reading, it really was such a major salvo in the opening acts of that particular chapter of online culture war. She saw the bigger picture, too—the connection between advertising and the media's "product-guide approach to conversation." Fascinating to go back and read this now.
You're right, a lot of things got memory-holed.
What about twitch streamers who play new releases all year? I'd consider them gamers and as long as they're around I don't think the identity as gamer will disappear.
They fit the bill more than most, tho some differences do stick out. The old 90s and 2000s era joke about people who worked as testers at game studios was that they were "paid to play video games." It was never really true, as much of that job is drudgery and paperwork. With streamers, it's much closer to the truth—they really are getting paid to be gamers (and to perform for a camera, of course). But making games consumption into a paying job does probably deserve its own category aside from "gamer," which was intended to describe a hobbyist class.
Great piece! I wrote a piece this week on a local Aus biannual gamer study, and I wish this came out a week earlier.
Would have influenced my questions on method, and whether that’s useful in understanding the various groups of people who game. Though the study did track hours played per age group? Something I guess?
We had this debate a lot when I was at Zwift, because the vast majority of Zwifters (aka people who ride their bikes on Zwift) would not have *self-identified* as gamers as Zwift was the only "game" they "played." There was even a lot of debate at Zwift about whether or not it even was (is) a game. I always maintained that it was. And that we'd benefit if we thought of our customers as gamers (even if they didn't think of themselves in that way) in the way we approached development.
If Zwift is a game, then you have a whole bedrock set of principles in game design to fall back on. Raph Koster's "Theory of Fun" is my favorite here, but it's not really about books, it's more that games are an established medium, and there's actually quite a lot we know about how to make games good/fun/engaging/etc.
You and I have joked that the NYT is now basically a gaming company that happens to run a newspaper. If I play Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, and Strands every day, am I more of a "gamer" - by virtue of number of different games played - than someone who only plays, I dunno, Tarkov?
To me, if you love to play games, you are a gamer. Whether that is defined by breadth, depth, or simply a fundamental appreciation for the art form feels inconsequential.
Yeah you're onto something with this. The upside of continuing to look at games as a unified field (even if, in many ways it is fragmenting) is that there are many fruitful ideas discovered by people who've explored the space the deepest. There are lessons applicable to spaces that might not obviously seem gaming-related.
There’s something to this, but I think the nature of games as a medium makes it different from movies.
A lot of games are deep enough that you can just play one or two games all year. The same can’t be said for movies, which are generally 3 hours at their longest.
I think that time spent playing, not variety of games played, is a better measure of whether someone is a gamer.
But if they're only playing one or two games, are they a gamer—or are they, for ex, a League of Legends player? There are FFXIV players who put in more hours into it than their real lives, yet rarely or never touch other games. Surely there is some more specific term than "gamer" that describes that specific activity. (FFXIVer? idk)
we'd call ourselves Eorzean (27k hours in)
lfg
Think of how many games are contained within that one game, though. Big games are collections of diverse game systems. A single quest line in FFXIV is more analogous to a single movie than the whole of FFXIV.