Im about 35 and I am a gamer though probably not to much hardcore one.

(recently played nail'd , oddworld strangers wtarh, gothic 3 - all with pleasure, some like a memorable adventure)

when im tired with programming I need a few days of rest and

there i play - some (many) games are really well done and worth

playing

That culture is heavily male, somewhat younger (mentally if not physically), racially heavily white, etc.

I saw a lecture on youtube where the guy gave the same description about people employed in the computer programming industry. Strange.

That is a subject for another time I think, but it is a problem.

I hold myself against playing games. I either play or not play, if I play, playing is all I will be doing till I get tired of it..I just cant control this. If Im playing a game I need to play till I finish it or till I give up o_ó.

So I just avoid them so I can focus on productive things ( on the making games subject mostly of the time).

I didnt play GTAV yet for that exactly reason, Im a huge fan, I even avoid thinking about it so it doesnt hurt so much <3

Of course i am. I think we should play games even if we are busy. Because games are the best inspiration for us. You never know how terrible your game are till you play an AAA GAME. And you never know how stupid you code till you play and read the source of an open source game. Singer listen to musics. Artist watch drawings. Writer read novels. Teacher learn. So it's absolutely reasonable if we play games !!!!!!!!!!!

I hold myself against playing games. I either play or not play, if I play, playing is all I will be doing till I get tired of it..I just cant control this. If Im playing a game I need to play till I finish it or till I give up o_ó.

So I just avoid them so I can focus on productive things ( on the making games subject mostly of the time).

I didnt play GTAV yet for that exactly reason, Im a huge fan, I even avoid thinking about it so it doesnt hurt so much <3

I got such thinking when i was about 20-30 then i played more often and not yet programmed so much time. If i wouldnt not play but programmed there maybe i would be 1.5 year advanced today (not more, though its hard to count), but i do not find this playing was bad, I find it good experience, maybe even in recent years when i do more programming i should play more, Playing is good for soul imo.

(The one thing I pity is my health problems ('(post)boreliosis' after tick bite) that makes me terribly unhappy) Playing itself as an adventure is some kind more valuable than programming which is somewhat suppressing activity esp if doing at large (thats my opinion)

this said i thing i will run my gothic3 copy right now some orcs in vengard ruins are waiting to be pacified ;/

Promit, Why do you think it's ok to say bigoted things? And not only say bigoted things, then go on to say they are the poisonous people.

Now I don't particularly like the shooter community nor developers have pandered to that crowd or children or both, but to call that group poisonous is ludicrous, to say it is largely white male while doing so as if that is the cause is bigoted and hateful. Firstly, there is no proof that they primarily are white male or that those games are more liked by white males than by black males or asian women or whatever other group or that that would matter considering gaming, when formed was merit based, even up into the FPSs as you still didn't have voice or face as we could do now and so whatever the demographic is has nothing to do with race or gender directly. 2ndly even if it were case, which it likely is, has to do with population percentage. If I were to subscribe to such bigotry I could easily point out many things that you would find very hateful. I find what you said to be very hateful and I don't appreciate that bigotry being brought into worlds that are meritocracy has been followed.

Further more, I no more like what that particular community has caused to happen in gaming than what has been caused by the "casual" gamers. They've both taken the focus off games that are challenging, both on a skill level, and on an intellectual level. They've both inspired poorly designed repetitive games that bring nothing new to the table and they have both fed off of simplistic skinner box tricks and microtransactions which have done nothing but destroyed the credibility of games as legitimate forms of delivering a message. Likewise they have both brought in terrible individuals that no one really wants to deal with. One being those from shooters that are rather bigoted and immature and the other being feminists who think that everything is offensive and needs to be changed, not for the betterment of the community nor as a better practice or any other such thing, but rather because either they just want to be kowtowed to or they believe really rather bigoted lies about a community which were largely generated by the other shooter community before they were the shooter community.

While I dislike the shooter community and think they are problematic for several reasons, they at are far better than the casual gamer feminist group who has caused developers to accept con artist opinions, praising poor products, segregating, and really turned the overall gaming community to turn into a unsafe place for people in general as they are told they they are poisonous, hateful, for enjoying a game or holding a position, or being a normal person.

If you don't believe me about the segregation thing PAX had a room where white men were not welcome, that's segregation and bigotry, and should not be accepted. GaymerX where people are promoting that you are hateful bigot if you don't give gay people money to go party with a gaming theme. I fail to see how playing games has anything to do with being gay, and not giving money to people who clearly think their sexual activities matter and are calling it out rather than promoting that it doesn't matter in the gaming community is somehow hate. I find that to be inappropriate. And another that is to a lesser extent is that Sony has a scholarship named GIRL or "Gamer In Real Life" which implies that yet another scholarship should go to women and not guys, even though most scholarships go to women to begin with, especially in the arts, and even if a guy were to get that scholarship they, along with any woman which finds the whole being called a girl thing offensive, would have to suffer the indignity of having such a poorly named scholarship.

And there are many other things that can be called out to be coming from casual gamer/feminist group that are deleterious as a whole to gaming.

If I recognized them as "gamers" which most of them aren't, at least the ones causing the most problems, I could see reason to back away from that label considering the associations with feminism. And ironically the rejection of the label by Promit is likely caused by that same group, by way of lying that a vast minority of a subsection of a community is somehow representative of the whole. Like I said I wouldn't want to associate myself with hateful bigots either and that is what that group has caused people to believe that all of us are, including you, Promit, whether you call yourself a gamer or not.

As far as the original question do I, myself, label myself a "gamer"? I might have a few weeks ago. The thing that changed my mind is a simple argument from ReviewTechUSA on youtube. Playing or developing a game is a hobby. It is no different than any other hobby so why does it warrant a label to be applied to it? I see no reason for it so I don't self-apply that label, because there is no reason to do so.

And games used to be a way for people to spend time together, and hangout.

And getting controllers smashed over your head by a raging friend when you pull the good old

And games used to be a way for people to spend time together, and hangout.

I have always preferred single player games over multiplayer games. I hated multiplayer local games growing up because you couldn't be sly, sneaky, or use strategy because your friends could see your screen and see what you were up to.

Sony Online Entertainment won't release Planetside 2 for Linux so no, not a "gamer" anymore. I occasionally play The Dark Mod or Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy. But not much (once per week maybe?).

I'm a gamer, it's really rare that a day goes by that I don't spend 2 hours gaming. I get frustrated with the fact that there aren't many games aimed at my demographic (33 year old woman), and even though MMOs are my favorite genre, I haven't found a satisfying one recently. But I do play a variety of games, from online CCG and tactical games to pet breeding sims and time management games, Rock Band, and whatever's new and interesting on Kongregate; more rarely I'll play or replay a single-player RPG.

I do play in-person board games once a month, but it's not my favorite kind of gaming, and I wish any of the people in that group were interested in playing an MMO or something like GTA V online or Gary's Mod - Prop Hunt with me.