"Proper" gamer

[Tom]

A proper gamer is somebody who enjoys playing games for the fun of it. They can be shit, really good, whatever, it doesn't matter, so long as they enjoy the experience.

 

[Louster]

How would you define a "proper" gamer. i.e. someone who plays enough games to have an opinion that counts.

This was the original definition of "proper" - you all seem to be taking it to mean "pro", which is a completely different and much more negative thing.

 

[throdgrain]

*one serious post from me on this thread*


Tom is right.

 

[Chilly]

Id say that a proper gamer would have to be of a certain age, basicly above 30 or so to be a TRUE gamer, how can someone like me (only 20) appreciate the exquisite gfx and sound quality in new games when I was barely walking when classics liek pong and space invaders were doing the rounds? Ofc iv played a hundred million pong variants and even the original on some ancient games console me and my bro owned when i was about 4 or 5, I just about remember playing some crap tennis game on a big grey box that plugged into our b/w telly.

Iv played many games in my time, owned more than 5 differnt consoles, built my own PCs mainly for the purpose of gaming and played a myriad games on them all, but compared to a 35 y old programmer who played nethack and rogue and was in the first wave of game coding/developing I am but a novice. I feel I can tell a shite game frmo a good game and atm, I spend most of my gaming time playing stupid mmorpgs but have recently discovered the joy of stupid little 10mb freeware games like Chicken Invaders (another space invaders spin off!) and such.

While I'd probably class my self as a medium real gamer I'm sure there's others who'd tell me I'm nowt but a n00b

 

[PLightstar]

Hey im 20 and I appreciate the GFX in games and sound, heck i'll by a game for only the sound, I have owned pretty much every home console since the Atari 2600 plastic version not the nice Wood finish one. And have built PC's for myself and others to play PC games. I know its gameplay that counts in the end and flashy graphics can only sometimes hide a game just look at Killzone great graphics no gameplay at all, that was a waste of £35 so I took it back and got DBZ 3 instead mainly cause im a huge DB fan.

 

[Guest]

1979 3d asteroids on an Acorn Atom to 2004 with Half Life 2, with retro console and cabinet arcade games in the meantime, so i make that 25 years of playing games (there doesnt seem to be any arcades anymore, sad really, well not in Leeds anyway).

Games like Mortal Combat or Golden axe and Pacman made me want to play games for the rest of my life, i expect i will with my sons help be kept abreast of the newer games that come out when hes a bit older (hes an avid Quake3 arena palyer and fires a pretty straight rail shot in rocket arena too.

I wonder how many others played pinball machines in the arcades as well as the gaming cabinets.

Its come along way since pong and Asteroids (29,000 High Score at blackpool pleasure beach 1980)


I dont think i am a gamer, that's a stupid word to describe people, i would rather not be labelled, but i do enjoy playing games that have playability, sadly some of the newer games that are coming out these days lack playablility and go for the gfx treats, give me a good game of defender anytime over Doom3.

 

[babs]

Played nethack? Past tense? I still play nethack ASCII can almost look like work from a distance

 

[Chilly]

Played nethack? Past tense? I still play nethack ASCII can almost look like work from a distance

cunning!

 

[Paradroid]

I was a 70s & 80s arcade junkie (Defender!) we had a "home entertainment system" in the late 70s (Pong, light gun game etc) - quickly followed by the original Atari 2600 (with the nice wood finish). After that I was a Commodore64 owner (you were either a Spectrum or C64 fan - choose your side...I could never get used to all those multi function rubber pads on the speccies). C64s used the standard "Atari" style connectors, so all those joysticks were used for years after the Atari faded into history - still got the original in my atic....(heh) Attic Attack? So, yeah, I used to spend £1.99 on mastertronix games (and save up for the £10-£15 BIG releases) - or copy them and exchange them in John Menzies claiming "It wont load"....

I spent my mid-teens to early twenties not playing games at all (well, only on occasions), too much to explore outside the house.

After that came the Amiga (which had better graphics & sound than PCs in its day). Then, after I had worked for Compaq building & testing PCs, I finally got one in 1997 - although my mates had had them for years, so I knew all about DOS gaming straight through to current platforms (how many here have experienced trying to free-up as much of the 640K base memory on a PC to play a fekin game? Custom autoexecs, boot disks, etc).

I did own a mega drive at one point (Road Rash was fekin A), loads of peeps I knew had a Nintendo (apart from me) so I've played loads of the console games (I thought Tekken 2 was the dogs bllx).

Pong
Asteroids
Pacman (spent 4 hours straight scoring over a million)
Defender
Galaga
Galaxians
Battlezone
Centipede
Pole Position
Tron (& Disks of Tron)
Star Wars
Paradroid
H.E.R.O.
Hacker
Impossible Mission
Lemmings
Laser Squad
Monty Mole
Parallax
Eureka
V8
UFO
Daley Thomsons Decathalon
Way of the Exploding Fist
Elite (& Elite II - Frontier)
Populous
Simcity
Bruce Lee (see Mofo8s avatar)
Sensible Soccer
Cannon Fodder
Dam Busters
Speedball
Syndicate (what a fekin game that was - first real "questions" over gaming moralities)
Warcraft
Doom (& Doom 2)
Quake (& Q2 & Q3)

...to name a few that I've enjoyed over the years.

 

[DaGaffer]

Fuck's sake. Anyone who defines themselves as a "proper gamer" is showing themselves for what they are; an opinionated arsehole trying to make out they're somehow better than the next person.

 

[Bodhi]

lol "proper gamer". What a shit term. Thought we were all just "gamers".


Anyway, a proper gamer is someone with a PS2. The rest are all nurdling gamers.

 

[WPKenny]

Fuck's sake. Anyone who defines themselves as a "proper gamer" is showing themselves for what they are; an opinionated arsehole trying to make out they're somehow better than the next person.

Who the fuck shit on your doorstep this morning? How about contributing instead of just flaming?

 

[DaGaffer]

Who the fuck shit on your doorstep this morning? How about contributing instead of just flaming?

That is a contribution. Just coz u don't like it and would prefer to look down on those less l33t than yourself doesn't make it any less true. Calling yourself a "proper gamer" is just pathetic. It's like calling yourself "a proper football fan" or some other trainspotterish bollocks. In fact, "proper football fan" probably has slightly more validity.

 

[WPKenny]

That is a contribution. Just coz u don't like it and would prefer to look down on those less l33t than yourself doesn't make it any less true. Calling yourself a "proper gamer" is just pathetic. It's like calling yourself "a proper football fan" or some other trainspotterish bollocks. In fact, "proper football fan" probably has slightly more validity.

Who the fuck is looking down on anyone? The only person doing that is you by thinking you're so 1337 you can call anyone who chooses to call themselves whatever the fuck they like some sort of gimp.

Did you just read the thread and think "I'm going to shit on everyone's parade and take what looks like quite a pleasant thread with people reminiscing about what games they've played over the years and call half the people in it arseholes"?

Take your aggro attitude elsewhere.

 

[Deacan]

Arcades are well shit these days, the glory days of Tekken, Killer Instinct, Time Crises and Ridge Racer are gone.

Fucking Dance Dance revolution, go back to japan! i miss that game with the boxing glove, and you would smack the target for pts, you had to get a certain amoing of pts in 3 hits to get to the next level.

Man that game gave you wrist pains.

 

[Panda On Smack]

i cant believe this thread has created 3 pages

heh, the irony of my post making it 4 pages! how crazy is that?

 

[itcheh]

As crazy as a panda on smack

I don't care if I fall into the 'gamer' or 'proper gamer' or whatever categories.

Been playing games since the late 70's - on many formats - and will continue to do so for the forseeable future as long as I have cash in my pocket*










* yes Trem that is cash in my pocket - no I am not pleased to see you

 

[Tom]

Trem is the new Wij

 

[Louster]

Sure, it doesn't matter what you call the different types of people, but there really are distinctions that can be made. For instance, essentially Clown's definition agreed with mine, it's just he used "people who play games" where I said "gamer", "gamer" where I said "proper gamer", and "proper gamer" where I would say "crazyass pro gamers".
"Looking down on people" doesn't come into at all, it's just differences. With me at college, I haven't yet found anyone interested in having conversations about gaming in general. Plenty of people spend a lot of time playing games, but they're simply not as interested in it as I am. Obviously this isn't saying I'm "better" than them, for God's sake - if anything, it's a dumb thing to actually be vaguely passionate about, and they've got better priorities. But they wouldn't be able to have, and wouldn't be interested in having, an argument with me about the relative merits of a game in the wider scheme of things, which is what this thread was pretty much about.

Essentially I think the initial question answered itself. Someone with an opinion worth listening to is a "proper" gamer, and a "proper" gamer probably has an opinion worth listening to.

 

[DaGaffer]

Sure, it doesn't matter what you call the different types of people, but there really are distinctions that can be made. For instance, essentially Clown's definition agreed with mine, it's just he used "people who play games" where I said "gamer", "gamer" where I said "proper gamer", and "proper gamer" where I would say "crazyass pro gamers".
"Looking down on people" doesn't come into at all, it's just differences. With me at college, I haven't yet found anyone interested in having conversations about gaming in general. Plenty of people spend a lot of time playing games, but they're simply not as interested in it as I am. Obviously this isn't saying I'm "better" than them, for God's sake - if anything, it's a dumb thing to actually be vaguely passionate about, and they've got better priorities. But they wouldn't be able to have, and wouldn't be interested in having, an argument with me about the relative merits of a game in the wider scheme of things, which is what this thread was pretty much about.

Essentially I think the initial question answered itself. Someone with an opinion worth listening to is a "proper" gamer, and a "proper" gamer probably has an opinion worth listening to.

But why use the term 'proper'? You wouldn't do that about say, movies; "Ooh, you're a 'proper' movie fan", would you? The only reason to differentiate with a word like "proper" is to regard "proper" gamers as better than "other" gamers. If you must use terms to categorise gamers, then "serious" or "experienced" are far less perjorative terms.

As for "someone with an opinion worth talking about" - who decides? My five year old niece can probably talk more intelligently about Eye Toy Play than any 10 CS players; does that make her a 'proper gamer'? Well, since most CS players wouldn't regard it as a 'proper game' (notice I said most before collective toys are thrown out of prams), then her opinion isn't worth anything to them. See the problem with the logic here?

 

[Mellow]

A proper gamer is one that can type in sentences and not l33t speak. A proper gamer is also someone that is employed.

 

[Louster]

I meant "opinion worth listening to" insofar as gaming goes, i.e. a decent breadth and depth of knowledge (borne of a passionate interest). You could go so far as to create sub-categories, people that "specialise" in certain genres or whatever, but in this instance I was talking about a general knowledge of gaming.

And arguing over the interpretation of words is, quite literally, mere semantics. WPKenny deliberately put "proper" within quotes, hence implying exactly what you're saying - that it's not necessarily the ideal word for the situation. "Serious" and "experienced" aren't generalised, and both carry irrelevant connotations; instead of spending ages figuring out a term that wouldn't offend anyone, he grabbed at the nearest one and stuck it in quotation marks, which seems fair enough.

 

[Clown]

I already asked what the difference was between "proper gamer" and just "gamer". Nobody gave me a real answer so I used my own meaning. Like when something is good, or proper good, meaning better. I used it in my own south London slang way.

Okay?

But, yeah. Basically I was agreeing with Louster because I didn't agree with what he meant about gamer. Work it out.

 

[Mazling]

I used to spend (up to) 8 hours of my time per week, just watching other people play q3 in leagues. Does that count ?

I'm not going to spoil an interesting thread by revealing to you that a proper gamer is someone who is willing to express themselves fully on something, rather than someone who may have played since space wars or whatever, but is really just interested in looking cooler than the other llamas.

 

[Mellow]

A gamer is someone who prefers real life and intelligent games to rubbish computer games that need no real skill or challenge like you geeks who stay in playing games and being antisocial.

 

[Bodhi]

A proper gamer is one that can type in sentences and not l33t speak. A proper gamer is also someone that is employed.

Oi. I'm unemployed and I'm a far more serious gamer than yuo!

 

[babs]

Fucking Dance Dance revolution, go back to japan! i miss that game with the boxing glove, and you would smack the target for pts, you had to get a certain amoing of pts in 3 hits to get to the next level.

Man that game gave you wrist pains.

DDR > * (cept maybe popn music) and the arcade scene is starting to thrive again.

The game you're thinking of btw is Sonic Blastman.

 

[Sar]

A "gamer" is someone who has gaming as one of their main hobbies, not something they do occasionally. Someone who knows a decent amount about the history of gaming, about what we played to get where we are today. About who the real main players in the industry are.

A "Lifestyle Gamer" is someone who buys whatever EA, Sony & Microsoft tell them to, hence the success of the Sims et al. Because it's "cool" dont'cha know? As soon as it's deemed "uncool" again they'll sell them quicker than shit.



Me?


Began when I was 4/5 (about 25 years ago) on an Atari 2600 then onto a VIC20. Then moved onto several varieties of the Speccy (48K, rubber keyboard -> 128K -> 128K+3), then onto the consoles.

Snes (which I sold years ago, but joy of joys I bought a new one from eBay which arrived in perfect condition this morning! ), then a Megadrive as well. Then I got an N64 then a Jaguar (which I still have upstairs) which I got purely for Doom, just prior to buying my first PC.

I picked up a Dreamcast in the years somewhere down the line, which is in my parents' house somewhere.

Mainly though it's been PCs ever since, along with a Gamecube, PS2 and a huge back catalog of emulated games with respective emulators for the Nes, Snes, Megadrive, Jag, Amiga, Mame etc.


I personally regretted having to sell my original Snes all those years ago, and you can't imagine how happy I was to finally get another one. Even though I have literally hundreds of games for my Snes emulator of choice (ZSnes), I still wanted an original piece of hardware to play on. I still have a load of Snes games upstairs, so I'll be playing those again over the weekend.

 

[Sar]

Console games are all fking toss though arnt they?

Nope, have to disagree strongly with that Throddy. Consoles have given me some of the best gaming moments/experiences of my gaming life.

My favourite all time game is (if you look to your left) Super Metroid. It still stands up to repeated play today, ten years after it was released. The feeling of isolation and exploration is still unmatched by the later Metroids. That said, the later Metroid games are all superb too, including the two Gamecube versions (Metroid Primes 1&2).

Ico on the PS2 is a brilliant game (that I still haven't finished yet!) which is simply beautiful to play.

I personally would not buy an XBox - the only reason I'd be tempted at all would be for Halo 2, as I enjoyed the original. But I played the original on the PC, so I'll wait for H2 to come over to PC as well.

 

[MYstIC G]

As crazy as a panda on smack

you must now die for the good of mankind itcheh.....

Have to say I've done similar to most everyone who's felt there gaming CV was worth posting (Rolling Thunder on the spectrum owes me years of my life), also had a short while working in online gaming & still run me crappy forums (see sig). I still don't consider myself a "proper" gamer as I don't think that's a realistic label.

I think the majority of people here could be described as "passionate" gamers, but proper is just a bit of a wanky word (soz Kenny, can hate on you now the war is over ).

If we do stay with "proper" though I'd say that fits somebody who plays the games but doesn't take it ott to the level of "0mg 1 50 1337" and thinking that shit's important.