Am I a gamer?

During the first lecture, Kevin brought up the idea of a gamer. Although at the time I did not fully get what he was saying, it came clear to me as we talked about the ideal qualities it would take to be called as a gamer in tutorial. The first idea that made me think was "do we identify ourselves as a gamer?" As a person who played games casually I did not want to call myself as a gamer. As well as some negative stereotypes associated with gamers, my friends were always better than me at games... Probably because they spent much more time on them than I did, but they were always better. (Except for Starcraft I crushed them on that) Another reason was I played games to blend in. While the people I identified as gamers, played games to win and improve, my reason to play games was to blend in and spend time with my mates. (Although winning felt good, I did not care too much about winning or losing) Due to these factors, I identified people like my friends as gamers but not myself.. Mostly because knowing they are always better, I did not want to put myself in the same position as them, admitting they are better than me.

But the interesting incident happened straight after the tutorial. Despite the fact that I believed that I am not a gamer, my friend who is in the same tutorial told me that he would identify me was a gamer, simply because, I played games. He told me that whether or not I spent a lot of time playing games to earn money or for pure entertainment, because I played games, I am a gamer. His thoughts on why I am a gamer made me defenseless... but got me thinking about the concepts about "How we identify ourselves" vs. "How the others identify us". Actually writing it down and looking at it, my thoughts on why I am not a gamer makes absolutely no sense... But it was my way of justifying why I am not as good as my mates... After the little chat me and my friend had, I came to a conclusion to call myself a casual gamer...lol

-Phil Jae Kang-