Would the real gamer please stand up

Something I have noticed that has been debated in tutorials rather passionately is the notion of being a 'gamer'. Now, I must confess, I am a stranger to the wonderful mystical world of gaming so I apologise in advance if my explorations offends any gamers out there. A boy in my tutorial mentioned that the phrase ‘gaming’ doesn’t merely mean the act of playing a game; rather it has its own specific ideas that connote certain aspects of the game culture. It would naturally follow that a ‘gamer’ within the scope of game culture isn’t just someone who plays videogames. Being a ‘gamer’ is an identity, an engagement by an individual with the shared cultural paradigm of gaming. Much like any other subcultures, the parameters of inclusion into that particular subculture is vague and often exclusive.

For reasons I can only speculate at, Farmville gets a very volatile response from many hardcore gamers. Many gamers do not acknowledge Farmville to be a ‘real’ game. But in the literal sense of the meaning ‘game’, Farmville passes on all aspects. This disparity between Farmville and, lets say, World of Warcraft must mean that within the world of gaming, there is an inner more exclusive world of ‘real gaming’. If we look at any art forms, there will always be good art and bad art, good films and bad films, good books and twilight. The same may be said for gaming but the distinction we are trying to make here is not between good games and bad games, but real games and its others because real gamers play real games. Perhaps to qualify to be a real game, a certain degree of skill is required to advance further and further into the game. Perhaps there is a certain aesthetic to games that gamers gravitate towards. Maybe the distinction of ‘gamer’ and non gamer is too vague. But its hard to dismiss the disparities.