Gamer Stereotype? (Games Blog Banter)

Portable Gamer Geek “Welcome to the 4th instalment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!”

Am I a Stereotypical gamer? What is a stereotypical gamer?

I can certainly tell you what I’m not and that is a “hard-core gamer”, someone who spends large amounts of their freetime playing video games – I admit I used to do this much more when I was younger.

Back in my Amiga and early PC days I would spend huge amounts of time playing games such as Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, UFO: Enemy Unknown – mainly because I lived in the middle of nowhere, so I had the time to play these long running, time consuming games – this was obviously before I had access to the Internet as well as I now spend a chunk of my time ‘surfing the net’.
MMO Geek
In the early days of being on the Internet, I stumbled upon the new concept of online gaming, more specifically MMORPGs – it was great! These games such as Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call and Everquest 2 brought a whole new element to gaming, that of interaction and co-operation, this added so much more to a game for me as it meant that there was a more tangible sense of how much you were achieving in comparison to others – it certainly made it a lot more competitive.

These online games also covered the period when I was a student, so I had the time on my hands to play them fully, this obviously changes once you leave that wonderful academic environment and start working – I basically stopped playing online games for a couple of years, kept myself busy with the some good single player games with a strong narrative such as Half Life 2.

Then last year in 2007, I started gaming again on two fronts, I bought an Xbox 360 for some console gaming and also started playing World of Warcraft (WoW) after long dismissing it out of hand (mainly due to the style of graphics admittedly). I don’t get chance to play that much these days though, I find too many things to do online outside of gaming. I usual play WoW an hour a day on average, but luckily games are being made to accommodate the more casual gaming style, certainly if I’d had to dedicate as much time as you had to dedicate to the early MMORPGs I wouldn’t still be playing WoW after nearly 9 months, perhaps that’s one reason for it’s huge success.
Nintendo Geek
So back to the original point of stereotypical gaming, there probably isn’t a stereotypical gamer these days now that it has become much more mainstream, what with World of Warcraft and the Nintendo Wii appealing to people you perhaps wouldn’t have associated with gaming in the past, all of which is a good thing in my opinion – I mean anyone can play board games without being classified as this or that, so I see video games as an evolution of that and am pleased to see them becoming more mainstream, so I no longer having to be a classed as a “hard-core gamer” anymore, I’m a casual gamer just like anyone else!

Do you think there are still stereotypes? Do you fit the stereotype of a particular type gamer yourself?

Check out these other Blog Banter articles! The Average Gamer, Silvercublogger, Gamer Unit, Man Bytes Blog, Game Couch, Delayed Responsibility, thoughts and rants, Hawty McBloggy

Written by Simon Barker on March 27, 2008 · Filed under Games

Tags: blog banter, civilization, commentary, gamer stereotype, games blog banter, gaming, gaming commentary, half life, nintendo wii, stereotypical gamer, world of warcraft

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