#game identity

[theorigamiphoenix]

Do you self-identity as a gamer?

Yes

No

Voting ended onJan 20, 2024

[brionysblogsblog]

Games - Culture and Identity

I’m sure you’ve at least heard someone say “hello fellow gamers” and while I try not to cringe at the term, it certainly makes me question and contradict myself on where exactly I identify with games and game culture. Now, when I say identify I’m not talking specifically about my sexual/gender/cultural identity (THAT happened in high school), no I’m talking about whether people who play games would consider themselves as ‘gamers’. But where is the definition between a ‘gamer’ and just someone who plays games, when is it chosen as an identity, when does it become an identity for people? 

Adrienne Shaw’s article (https://adanewmedia.org/2013/06/issue2-shaw/) tackles this idea from a definitive feminist agenda, which, if it wasn’t exciting for you, it definitely was for me. She debates in what ‘gamer identity’ is and how it is defined in a social space with people outside of the hetero-normative group. 

For myself I’m stuck in a loop where by all intentions and purposes I believed I’d be considered a ‘gamer’, however the term has become so ingrained in pop-cultural memes that it’s enough to make we want to wrench myself away from such a term. Even if it is where I’d belong. This isn’t much of a surprise seeing as games, game culture and pop culture naturally coincide with one another. It is with a begrudging acceptance that I identify with the term ‘gamer’, this is certainly cannot be said for every person who plays games, and it is a big hope of mine that the term falls out of pop culture so that I might not be so embarrassed referring to myself as such.