Am I a Gamer?

It finally happened. Someone — not on the internet, but in real life — asked my opinion of Gamergate.

Gamergate began this past August and I only know the slightest of details, but I will try and summarize this nonsense as quickly and generically as I can. The way I understand it, a young woman wrote and released a new video game that got some attention on a few popular online gaming news sites. It was soon revealed that one of the online journalists (a young man) who had given the game a positive review had previously had a relationship with the young lady who developed the game. This came to light when another young man discovered that he was not the only young man in this woman’s life. The whole thing should have been classified as “jilted lover seeks revenge” and ended there, but it didn’t.

Instead, the young woman who developed the game was “doxed.” Doxing is the act of releasing someone’s personal information (anything from their real name to their home address, phone number, social security number, and more) to the general public. After all of this young lady’s personal information was leaked began calling her (and other family members) on the phone and making death threats for some inexplicable reason. And then some people started doxing other women involved in gaming too, I guess because some people are mean.

All of this has led to a lot of conversation on the internet, like how gamergate is terrorism, but more importantly, it has instigated a lot of conversation defining what gamers are, how gamers should act, what gamers should think and what they should be doing.

All that has led me to a conclusion: I am not a gamer.

Not in that sense, anyhow.

I’ve been playing electronic games just about as long as anybody. If you’ve read Commodork you know that we owned a Pong clone in 1977. Over the next couple of years we purchased an Odyssey 2 and Atari 2600 before moving on to owning home computers. We first owned a TRS-80 Model III, and by the mid-80s we owned an Apple II clone (the Franklin Ace 1000), an IBM PC Jr., a Commodore 64, and our own computer store — Yukon Software.

I’ve never been comfortable with labels. I enjoy photography, but I do not call myself a photographer. I enjoy occasionally playing and recording music, but I don’t refer to myself as a musician. There are lots of things I enjoy doing, and that right there is the key — lots of things. I don’t have time to be pigeonholed by a single label. I’ve got too much going on for that.

I suppose by the simplest of definitions, I’m a gamer because I play games. Then again, aren’t most of us gamers? Don’t all those cell phone and Facebook applications like Candy Crush and Farmville count as games? You can delve into semantics real quick when it comes to definitions. Are gamers people who enjoy playing games as their primary source of entertainment? That leads us into multiple categories: there are casual gamers, classic gamers, modern gamers, and hardcore gamers.

Oh, and don’t forget “real” gamers. That’s my favorite, when someone tells you what a “real” gamer should or shouldn’t do.

I don’t know where I fit in to all of that and to be honest I don’t care. I don’t mean that smugly; I mean, matter-of-factly, I do not care one bit what you think about the games I play. Mostly because, I play games for me. I don’t care whether or not you approve of emulation. I don’t care what old system you liked the most (or the least). I don’t care if you don’t enjoy the same types of games I like. I don’t care if you don’t think I’m a hardcore (or worse, a “real”) gamer. It just doesn’t matter to me.

I play the games I play for my own enjoyment. Occasionally I run into people online who enjoy the game things I do, and when that happens that’s great. But when I run into people that don’t enjoy the same types of games that I do and want to convince me to change… I just can’t convey what a dumb concept that is to me. Go play what you enjoy. I don’t need your approval to like what I like.

Y’all go back to arguing about what gamers are and what they should be doing. As for me, I’ve got games to play.