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Gamer Food For Thought: Let Go Of Your Elitism

by GH Staff
The Console War

I am a gamer that takes pride in what I do and what I play. I seek and crave innovation, I love to rabble on about my favorite exclusives as a member of the PlayStation family, and I used to think with an ‘elitist’ ideology. If you’re not sure what it means to be an ‘elitist’, or have ‘elitist’ qualities, but it’s essentially the feeling that your community (or in this case, a gamer community or specific platform/console) is superior to another. You may have heard the term ‘PC elitist’ on your favorite gamer forum or in the comments of a YouTube video, or maybe the nicknames ‘Sony-Pony’ or ‘Nintendork’? I used to poke fun at my friends who played primarily on the XBOX 360 or Nintendo consoles, but soon, I became increasingly aware that this has become a subsequent form of bullying.

My best friend is even more of an intensive gamer than I am, and has dipped into the ‘elitist’ feeling as well. One day, he proposed the question, ‘What is a hardcore gamer?’

He then followed up with ‘What does it mean to be a gamer?’

Originally, I thought to be a gamer, you played intensively every single day. You knew the best titles, were current with all the coolest and trendiest gamer news, equipment, poked fun at ‘noobs’.. but as I branched off to different kinds of games, and met different kinds of gamers, my attitude and my ‘playstyle’ so to speak, have definitely changed.

It’s been a long time since my best friend asked me that question, and I decided to take that question to my campus. I interviewed a few people, and here was my most interesting answer.

“What does it mean to be a gamer? I think all it really means is that you play games and you enjoy them. I don’t think ‘being a gamer’ is an exclusive club for anybody.” -Carlos, 20, major in Game Design.

[promo title=”Video games are for everybody.”][/promo]

Should we condemn the casual player that plays Call of Duty from time to time? Is it okay to make fun of our friend that plays nothing but Donkey Kong games? Should they not be labeled as ‘official’ or ‘hardcore’ simply because they didn’t play ‘Bioshock Infinite’, ‘The Last Of Us’, or ‘Skyrim’? Are they not a ‘gamer’ because they don’t play on any of the cool, latest consoles or have a properly optimized PC?

“Oh, I just play Madden and FIFA, I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer.”

I hear comments like this all the time. Due to the elitism we’ve developed within gamer culture, those we dub ‘casuals’ feel as though they must match a certain criteria to be involved in our community. Yet, if you have a game or a series of games that you like to play, aren’t you a gamer? We’ve all started out as a ‘noob’ once, right? There was this cool game that all of our friends were playing! We wanted to jump in on the action and have fun with all of our pals! Soon, after an hour or two, we started playing ‘Super Smash Bros.’, we were playing ‘Banjo Kazooie’. These were experiences that we shared together because we wanted our friends to see for themselves what it meant to us.

[promo title=”Experiences we share”][/promo]

My last girlfriend was a workaholic with an Equestrian major, so she didn’t necessarily have a particular interest in video games, but there was still a curiosity there. She saw the way I obsessed and talked about my favorite titles and one day, I decided to try and share that world with her. We went to my best friend’s place and she started playing ‘Pac-Man’. Simple, right? However, I saw that she was having a lot of fun. She moved on to things like ‘Critter Crunch’, and later that evening she tried out TellTale’s ‘The Walking Dead’.

A week later, I bought her a controller, and some games for her to try. She dipped her hand in builder games like ‘Terraria’, and of course, ‘Minecraft’, and she even scored higher than me and my friends when we all played ‘Little Big Planet 2’. However, she found her love with the LEGO games. ‘LEGO Harry Potter’ to be exact. She glorified in the feeling of collecting little pieces that ramped up her score, and being rewarded with secret treasures and funny hidden secrets when exploring the likes of Diagon Alley and Hogwarts castle.

In her eyes, she was the farthest thing from what a ‘gamer’ was. However, there she was: playing the games, figuring out strategies, developing her skills, enjoying the stories, laughing and smiling all the way through.

Those feelings, those accomplishments; shouldn’t this be a community to share with everybody?

[promo title=”The Player”][/promo]

My best friend’s answer to ‘What does it mean to be a gamer?’

“It’s a lifestyle but also a self-actualized identify. Whether you’re getting lost in the land of Skyrim or if you’re shooting goals in FIFA, it is an important distinction to make. My lifestyle won’t be the same as another gamers, but my identification will.”

All kinds of hands are behind that keyboard & mouse, the Wii Remote & Nunchuck, the Dualshock, and that XBOX Controller. The gamer culture belongs to people of all ethnicity, race, religion, age, and I feel as though that should be something to be celebrated.

For me, being a gamer means to escape and to enjoy something. Whether you’re an ‘Angry Birds’ fanatic or an indie game reveler, you’re having fun, and that should mean something to all of us.

The Occulus Rift is making virtual reality a more tangeable way to play, and the next-generation consoles have just arrived, which prompts the question: has there ever been a better time to hop on board and give gaming a try?