There's an awful lot of chatter these days about the death of gamer culture. I do not at all condone the personal attacks and threats that gave rise to this, but I feel that this intolerable navel-gazing is motivated by a misguided neediness for a positive public perception of gaming.
These articles remind us that "gamer" was for a long time an epithet in the mainstream but fail to acknowledge that for this reason today's loud defenders of the traditional gamer should be excused for being possessive of the label, since they had defiantly embraced it before it was cool.
I also reject the notion in all of these articles that misogyny is at the core of traditional gamer culture. There is that subset of the culture, of course, but on the whole gamer culture isn't about exclusion. It's about celebrating a shared experience. And while we should be open-minded, it's only natural to feel uncomfortable that the cohesion of that experience is being diluted by 2deep4u non-games.
There's really no need to feel threatened, though. As much as Gamasutra and others craving "respectability" wish it to be, gamer culture isn't dead. Just as car enthusiast culture survives despite the vast majority of people perceiving cars merely as tools, so too will gamer culture survive despite games now becoming just another medium of expression. The loud defenders are wrong to the extent that they feel "gamers" and "people who happen to play games" cannot coexist.
What do you guys think?
These articles remind us that "gamer" was for a long time an epithet in the mainstream but fail to acknowledge that for this reason today's loud defenders of the traditional gamer should be excused for being possessive of the label, since they had defiantly embraced it before it was cool.
I also reject the notion in all of these articles that misogyny is at the core of traditional gamer culture. There is that subset of the culture, of course, but on the whole gamer culture isn't about exclusion. It's about celebrating a shared experience. And while we should be open-minded, it's only natural to feel uncomfortable that the cohesion of that experience is being diluted by 2deep4u non-games.
There's really no need to feel threatened, though. As much as Gamasutra and others craving "respectability" wish it to be, gamer culture isn't dead. Just as car enthusiast culture survives despite the vast majority of people perceiving cars merely as tools, so too will gamer culture survive despite games now becoming just another medium of expression. The loud defenders are wrong to the extent that they feel "gamers" and "people who happen to play games" cannot coexist.
What do you guys think?