How would you define a "Gamer"?

[ComradeNapoleon]

Hey guy's, I have to do a presentation for my GCSE English, and we were allowed to do anything we wanted; so I picked gaming. While planning, I thought it would be a cool idea to ask you guys what you think a gamer is. So:

How would you define a gamer?

 

[warpus]

Gamer - plays games

NEXT

 

[BvBPL]

So my girlfriend, who plays solitaire on her iPod while on the train is a gamer? I don’t think so.

A gamer is a person whose game playing or game-related activities comprise a significant amount of his recreational activity.

 

[Communisto]

real gaming involves dice, over-complicated rulebooks and toy soldiers.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Someone that plays games as a hobby or playing games is part of his/her routine.

Just like anyone can be running down the street, but not be a runner. A runner would be someone that runs routinely or as a hobby.

 

[Lillefix]

real gaming involves dice, over-complicated rulebooks and toy soldiers.

Why? Why are complex boardgames more "real gaming" than complex computer games. Or why has it anything to do with complexity.

 

[Communisto]

Just my own elitism

 

[bhsup]

real gaming involves dice, over-complicated rulebooks and toy soldiers.

WHile I disagree, I do understand where you're coming from. Not even a marathon Civ game will ever match the experience of having an Avalon Hill "FlatTop" game going on with big brother on the kitchen table for two weeks, totally disrupting the family routine.

 

[Takhisis]

Or maybe an epic Risk battle or settling Catan…

 

[Communisto]

Indeed, or ripping over a cardboard Flanders in Wings of War. And no game win in Company of Heros ever felt as satisfying as watching my 15mm 25 pounders smash charging Tiger tank models into cotton ball wrecks. Or when my pewter scots greys crash headlong into a hastily prepared square formation of Napoleon's imperial guard in a way no total war game could ever match for cinematic or nail biting quality.

 

[mrt144]

I would define a gamer as someone whose recreational and hobby interests are primarily focused on playing computer, war or board games.

My wife and I are gamers. We enjoy going traveling, going to movies, etc etc but our main hobbies and interests lie in gaming together. I also love running, weight lifting, snowboarding, etc etc but I would really say that my wife and I bond a lot over our gaming experiences together.

 

[CaptainF]

Or maybe an epic Risk battle or settling Catan…

Settlers of Catan would be much more fun if you could, you know, conquer things.

A gamer is someone who games habitually or as a hobby.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I'd define it as a word that didn't seem to exist beyond about 10 years ago, and has no real need to exist.

 

[MobBoss]

Hey guy's, I have to do a presentation for my GCSE English, and we were allowed to do anything we wanted; so I picked gaming. While planning, I thought it would be a cool idea to ask you guys what you think a gamer is. So:

How would you define a gamer?

Gamer - plays games

NEXT

Warpus shoots, he scores...GOOOAAAAL!!!!

 

[Maniacal]

Someone that plays games as a hobby or playing games is part of his/her routine..

More or less this. "Gamers" are not a unified group with any strict definition beyond a love of games and playing them, its also one you can stop being and pick up again later.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Technically speaking, the guy who is thumbing through a John Grisham paperback at the airport is reading and thus a reader, but if he only reads every once in a while I doubt anyone would call him a "reader" and mean it in the same way they mean the guy who reads a little every day. It's the same with games. I play PC games most every day, I visit gaming forums like this, and so I consider myself a gamer...but I never go to LAN parties, so maybe in somebody else's eyes I am not a "real" gamer. Who knows? I think it's fairly subjective.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

I always think that the definition of a hardcore gamer is the one who only spend the majority of their leisure time on video games.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I really don't see the point in suddenly inventing a word that there is no real need for, especially if no-one can then actually decide what the specific definition is anyway.

People have been eating cheese for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Some people rarely eat it, some people regularly eat it and like to sample lots of exotic varieties, some people have never had any in their entire lives. But at no time has anyone suddenly decided that there is a need for the word "cheeser" to exist. And if anyone ever DID decide such a word needed to exist, it would just lead to debates like this, where people argue over precisely how much cheese one needs to consume, or the quality of said cheese, before one can legitimately be called a cheeser.

Unless gaming actually becomes a profession and there is a need for an official job title, the word "gamer" is equally as pointless.

 

[KMRblue1027]

Unless gaming actually becomes a profession

MLG?

 

[Earthling]

Someone that plays games as a hobby or playing games is part of his/her routine.

Just like anyone can be running down the street, but not be a runner. A runner would be someone that runs routinely or as a hobby.

In both cases there's also the implication that you have to actually be moderately competent to good at the hobby as well.