People seem to fight over this age-old question quite a bit. Just what is a gamer? Is it somebody who plays games all the time? Is it anybody who’s played them at all? What is a gamer? In my opinion, I think it’s anybody who plays any games at any time and enjoys them at least a little bit. That is it, simple as that.

Interestingly, to support my opinion, I enlisted the help of my trusty-ol’ internet dictionary from Google. Gamer: a person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game. What is said in there is less important than what isn’t said. That definition doesn’t state that they have to be a pro to play games, nor do they have to be hardcore and play 25 hours a week or whatever. They just play games. Of course, this probably comes off like me reading the dictionary as gospel.

Just to bring more fire to this fight, Mark Rubin of Infinity Ward said he believes most Call of Duty gamers aren’t gamers at all.

“It’s kind of a weird, ironic thing to say; They aren’t hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night. And those guys are going to continue to play regardless of platform. So I think not only will we continue to engage with that existing player base, but we’ll take next gen and see how far we can go with it.”

Silly, silly, silly talk. I understand there is various thresholds of gaming such as hardcore and casual or whatever, but even if they are just casual COD-players who only play COD, they are still gamers who game and enjoy them.

There is a couple common reasons why people who game don’t call themselves gamers.

First of all, some people think that they aren’t gamers if they don’t spend the majority of their free-time gaming or thinking about gaming. They even say this even if they play little games like Angry Birds on their phone while waiting for the bus every day. I’ve heard people say that calling themselves gamers when they only do that insults other gamers. Why would it? We’d love our hobby to expand whether we say it or not. And it has.

The other reason is the strong stigma and stereotypes attached to the term. It can be synonymous with people who are violent, lazy, fat, entitled, loud-mouthed, insult-spewing, porn-loving, still-living-with-their-mother, COD-players, etc. No offense of course, but that is what a lot of people see when they hear that word.

It’s a shame that our culture as a whole isn’t more welcoming, but hopefully with some work this will change. For now, let’s simply start by opening-up the term gamer to a wider group of people – people who play and enjoy games. We can get rid of this stigma and grow our industry. It’s worth it, whether you like the term “gamer” or not.

I don’t even know why we as gamers spend so much time over-analyzing stuff (like I am right now) when we could just sit down and game. I am a gamer. Are you? I bet.

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