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 Member 770 Level 34.03 Mar 2006 
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What is a gamer, anyway?
Lately I've been thinking about things like the release of all the next-gen systems: the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii, and how that has affected the general population of gamers.
For Colonel Skills, for example, the experience of sitting overnight in line for a PS3 was actually fun because he had friends with him. It put a picture in my head of the gaming system as the new kind of communal campfire, which people sit around and tell stories to one another. We have a notion that this is a kind of "hardcore" gamer, separate from the kind of hardcore gamer that might beat Super Metroid in 45 minutes, or be able to school everyone in a Halo tournament. See, most of the articles I've been finding on the topic of the systems or their launches have been pretty technical, going into the specs, or the sales numbers, or whatever. What interests me is the ideology behind the systems. While 360 seems to be going for a kind of online community, connecting players and generally giving a kind of arena space in which people can game, the PS3 is trying to be an all-in-one entertainment and media system, giving users an internet browser and blu-ray player with its systems. Wii, meanwhile, seems to be trying to be a more localized system, working in terms of bringing the whole family together around one system. It got me to thinking about entertainment in general and how that's changed in the past 10 years. Those of you who read my journal should know I did a feature article a while back on nerddom and how that's changed as well. This really follows from it, so I was wondering what opinions you guys have on how the perception of "Gamer" has changed over the years. I'd like to keep this from being a fanboy fight, so please don't turn it into a "this system's better" argument. This is more about the general perception of gaming, in recent years, and as the systems premiered recently. Basically: 1. What did gamer mean 10 or 15 years ago? 2. What does it mean for you and/or your friends now? 3. Has the next-gen done anything to change that? Jam it back in, in the dark. |
Skexis