Ok, so I can say most people on team liquid are actual gamers, not "Call of Duty Gamers" who only want a better fps online experience and nothing else. Actual gamers want a little story line in their games, like remember when you bought games to play the campaign? Now debatably Starcraft is a gamers game, it had an awesome story, the campaign was long (especially back in BW), but it also had a nice multiplayer community. My philosophy is if you can't even appreciate a RTS than you have no right to call yourself a gamer. Now this is just a modern gamer of course, if you want to refer to your self as an old school gamer, that's another story.
If you want to call your self an old school gamer, you have to be a fan of Nintendo, or at least the games they produced. Now I realize that other systems were around, but Nintendo was one of the biggest and came out with some of the best games. Now unfortunately I'm not old enough to be around when these games were huge, when I was old enough to understand and play games, at least at a noob level, Nintendo and all the legendary consoles were slowly being replace by the PlayStation and Xbox. I haven't been fortunate enough to play some of the most famous old games, but I have played a few. When I was old enough to actually play games well, these legends had sadly been almost completely replaced by the newer consoles.
My main point in this blog is to try and define what a gamer actually is. Your not a gamer if you play games on the iPod or iPad...they may have a few decent games, but lets leave actual games to the consoles and pc. You’re not a gamer if your not appalled at the fact that now almost all FPS games, their campaign is just a waist of time to do. You’re not a gamer if all you’re looking forward to in the new games is better graphics, better sounds and effects, and the promise of something completely new, even though that promise is never actually followed through with.
You are a gamer if you see a new game with an amazing storyline to the campaign but no actual multiplayer and aren't turned off by it. You are a gamer if you think the power glove was the worst addition to gaming ever made. You are a gamer if when looking for a game your not just looking for an FPS...there are other types of games. You’re a gamer if you love point and click adventure games. You’re a gamer if you ever became addicted to pokemon, the first ones, not the fucking new ones.
There are many other ways to define a gamer; these are the ones I came up with at the top of my head. Let me say this, If all you play is Call of Duty, and when a new one comes out all your hoping for is better guns and graphics, your not a gamer, you are branded as a "Call of Duty Gamer" I'm tired of every where I go, people misusing the name gamer on people who only play the piece of shit FPS Sony has thrown at us, sure their fun, but what the fuck ever happened to story, the first time I put in sc2 I immediately played the entire campaign before I even looked at the multiplayer. Also a good campaign is not something that you can blow through in an hour or two.
If you have something that defines what a gamer is and isn't comment below, and make sure to rate this, not really necessary, but it's always nice to see what people think.
I personally was born right before the super nintendo came out, so its a huge part of my life! but when 1998 hit and i was 6 starcraft sucked my life in, i found myself coming back over the years playing shit games and just wanting to come back to an old piece of art. But i can say that i have matured i have lost interest in game story in campaign, in fact i don't really enjoy games at all after playing them for a bit i just get easily bored. But i force myself to get better in sc2
The new pokemon are virtually identical to the old ones. Why is a kid that loves them less of a gamer? Why are games on the ipod or ipad not games? What if somebody plays hundreds of them all throughout the day? Why aren't you a gamer if you play fighting games, fps games, adventure games, racing games, but don't really like RTS games?
Obviously a girl who plays CoD every week once when she goes over to her boyfriends isn't a "gamer", but you'd be hard pressed to find a huge CoD fan who has never played or enjoyed any other game ever.
All you're saying is "if you don't like the things I like, you're wrong." I know this is your blog, but you're making us "RTS guys" look bad when you hate.
EDIT: Honestly, you're actually closer to "If you like this one game, you aren't a gamer." than just "Like this or you're wrong."
If you want to call your self an old school gamer, you have to be a fan of Nintendo, or at least the games they produced. Now I realize that other systems were around, but Nintendo was one of the biggest and came out with some of the best games
People in the future will probably be saying this exact same thing about CoD, because that is "the biggest game" right now in most people's minds. Now, most of those people are casuals or people who haven't been exposed to more skillfull games, but it will still be their opinion. I'm not saying I disagree with you, I think a lot of the things you said are spot on analyses of "gamers," or people that you think are mislabeled as "gamers." What I'm trying to say, is why is it so important for us to create, maintain, and defend labels like "gamer" and "eSports." They are just words, and their presence or absence shouldn't affect the legitimacy of the thing they are or are not describing one bit.
Wow, what a narrow viewpoint, full of narrow statements...
1) Need to be a fan of Nintendo to call yourself a gamer There were plenty of good PC games at that time. I'm a PC gamer, not a console gamer.
2) Need to appreciate RTS to be a gamer RTS is only a subset of many other genres out there - just like I don't care so much about FPS, I'm sure there are some who don't care about RTS.
3) Need to appreciate story to be a gamer Maybe go and watch a movie or read a book? I'm sure there are many pro-gamers who didn't play the SC2 campaign (e.g. Idra).
I am what you call and old-school gamer. My first console was a Nintendo, but I was exposed to games since the Atari 2600 and old arcade games.
And I really like playing on my iPhone.
What makes me a gamer? I enjoy a game for what it offers as a game; everything else is icing in the cake.
Storyline? Mario was just a dude stomping on turtles, and was great because of level design and easy to learn mechanics. Link was just a kid walking on mazes, and was great because of good dungeon design. All the storyline you needed was in the instruction manual, unless you were playing an RPG or visual novel type of game. Oundan and Viewtiful Joe would not be any less amazing without the cut scenes.
Try Tiny Wings. It's as simple an iPhone game can be, but I consider it more of a game than many modern games. No fluff, just simple fun that also needs focus and precision.
Although it's nice to see people reminishing ol' times, and I do agree with some of these, I do think your view is a bit narrow.
There were plenty of games to play during the 90's, and the fact that some people just played a few of them and maybe didn't care for the storyline doesn't make them less of a gamer.
Me, I've mostly been a PC gamer all my life, and I've played a bit of everything, so can't really agree with the Nintendo focus (I did have a NES with LOZ and Super Mario 1 and 3 though. And the SNES of my cousing where we 99% played Street Fighter 2). For PC, the FPS genre was booming as well back then, nothing to do with CoD. Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen (favorited FPS ever), Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein...if you ask me, a real gamer should also have played these. Once I was talking with a friend of mine that's pretty hardcore about CoD, mentioned Doom to him and he said he didn't know what it was, told him he lost the "gamer" tag right there.
Point-and-click adventure...ehh, I'll agree there, people should really look back and play a few of these xD Off the top of my head, I remember the whole Monkey Island series, Grim Fandango, Indiana Jones, Full Throttle, probably missing a few.
RTS, sure, there were plenty of them, and most deserved to play through the campaign, although I'm sure alot of people didn't and that's ok. Personally, I played through the SC and BW campaigns twice and WC3 and TFT thrice (yeah, kind of a fan of the lore xD)
However, there are plenty of turn based strategy games that are at least as good as them. I think I've probably played em as much as RTS: Heroes of Might & Magic (3 and 4, although with my buddies we kept playing our HoMM 3 LANs, everyone liked it more), Disciples, Age of Wonders (me and a friend thought it sucked pretty hard at first, but it eventually grew on us and ended up playing huge amounts of LAN games, was pretty fun).
And yeah, although people shouldn't put graphics over gameplay, I think it's perfectly fine at this time and age to expect improvements overall when we wait for a new game. I bet a lot people would have been at least a bit disappointed if SC2 would have kept using the SC engine xD
So long someone has spent a reasonable amount of time playing games, I think it can be defined as a "gamer". Then again, as someone else mentioned already, it's just a tag.
looking at the OPs signature made a capitalized "irony" appear before my eyes, but maybe thats just because its 8:15am and i havent slept yet. then again, it is pretty ironic to waste an hour of your time bashing newbs who play shit games, crying about uniformistic behaviour in middle school whilst your very own signature (which is supposed to contain the very essence of your personality on this forum) contains 2 (two) forced memes thrown together. btw d00d, i still play cs 1.6, ten years ago the same teenage kids like you would call me a faggot over playing "dem stupid shooterz", while they were massively failing at pretty tough games like wc3 (if you'd been around, you'd know how hard ppl transitioning from bw to wc3 were bashed for playing newb friendly shit with units which just don't die and shit).
ill try to make some sense now: let ppl play what they wanna play, 99% of all those GaMerZ dont play for competition, they do it, wait for it, for the lulz (you noticed how i included two of the most terribly haunting memes of all time, one off- the other online, in just one tiny sentence?). i hope using this language makes you understand, playing games, whether analogue or digital, is for fun. if you want to compete, do so in the very game youre playing, dont try to fuck with ppl playing other games, calling them stupid or incompetent. or would you want me to start shitting on the entire US sports scene for having only games for girls and sissys reaching a broad audience?
dunno if i made that much sense afterall, but whatever, this is a shit blog anyhow, so why not just take a crap here?
Who cares about the title "gamer" anyways? Most people who don't play any games use it in a derogatory way anyways. to me a gamer is someone who plays with much or most of there free time. That's it.
Well.. its already been said but you have a very narrow vision on what makes a gamer.
Why is Nintendo superior to any other platform? I grew up with Commadore64 and Playstation (1). To me those platforms are the game history everyone should know because thats how I learned to play. CS and NS where a big part of my online multiplayer experience - together with Doom.
Shooters aren't bad. They are just mainstream. People love to hate what is mainstream.
I loved your blog OP. I gave you 5 stars. But it appears I'm the only one
Original pokemon was the shit. When the new one's came out and they tried to push "gotta catch all 255" or whatever the fuck it was, I knew it was over. I've tried playing FPS. I really have. But they are mind-bogglingly boring and simplistic, after 20 minutes I just quit out of boredom. I mean how many times can you point at something and click? I enjoyed the modern warfare campaign, it was pretty epic, but that's as far as I go. I have a friend who buys shit games just because they show off all the money he wasted on his computer components to be able to play on super-ultra graphics. He doesn't even care that the game is shit, he just loves looking at the pretty pictures. Also Nintendo and Playstation were legendary. Now gamers use a PC, not an overpriced and limited console.
It has nothing to do with age or nostalgia. I happen to think Led Zeppelin is a truly incredible band, and they broke up before I was even born. Some things are just objectively good, relative to other things, no matter how much people want to deny it.
Edit: Sorry, I forgot to make an exception for counter strike. That was a great shooter and a great game.
On February 14 2012 17:03 liberal wrote: I loved your blog OP. I gave you 5 stars. But it appears I'm the only one
Original pokemon was the shit. When the new one's came out and they tried to push "gotta catch all 255" or whatever the fuck it was, I knew it was over. I've tried playing FPS. I really have. But they are mind-bogglingly boring and simplistic, after 20 minutes I just quit out of boredom. I mean how many times can you point at something and click? I enjoyed the modern warfare campaign, it was pretty epic, but that's as far as I go. I have a friend who buys shit games just because they show off all the money he wasted on his computer components to be able to play on super-ultra graphics. He doesn't even care that the game is shit, he just loves looking at the pretty pictures. Also Nintendo and Playstation were legendary. Now gamers use a PC, not an overpriced and limited console.
It has nothing to do with age or nostalgia. I happen to think Led Zeppelin is a truly incredible band, and they broke up before I was even born. Some things are just objectively good, relative to other things, no matter how much people want to deny it.
Edit: Sorry, I forgot to make an exception for counter strike. That was a great shooter and a great game.
Counterstrike and battlefield are both amazing series and great games. You don't need "Story" for games. Let me refer you to this video:
Being a gamer is about playing games, games which include "gameplay". Stories are not "gameplay" tetris has no story, pac man has no story. Why is Starcraft 2 such a popular esport? Because of the story? no. Because of the gameplay. idra doesn't give a fuck about the story in SC2, so is he not a gamer? lol.
I didn't complete the sc2 campaign and have no intention to, yet I have 6-7k multiplayer games played. Guess that makes me not a gamer. Either that or you're a douche and your blog sucks.
This is one of the dumbest things I've read about "gamers." There's so much wrong with it I don't even want to begin. It just reeks of 15 year old who played his brother's SNES so he thinks he's an old school gamer.
EPT
