How often have you basked in the all-encompassing, reflected light from a new gaming disc? To whom do you listen during such great, historical events such as E3 or the GDC? What are the games in which you are most interested? Forget those questions for now; they don't matter. What does matter is how what you do -- how you act -- reflects on you. If I go around punching children and stealing from blind people, chances are I am not a good person. If I have a gaming blog and look forward to reading other gaming blogs, I would say it's a safe bet I also
play videogames. Maybe something just as likely is that spend large amounts of time playing these games and forgo anything else. This is all fine and good, but what about the types of games you buy? Well, that probably says something about you too. How about the consoles? Do you think each console defines who that gamer is? I hope not. Don't be a Gameist.
One day, I will punch these children.
Let's begin with real life in a generic sense: type of console. I have a Wii. I do not have an Xbox 360 nor a PS3. Since I have a Wii, maybe you can assume I'm a casual gamer and that I love playing games like
Wii Sports or
Farmville. Or that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to gaming since anyone who owns a Wii is either 73 or 7. If you think these things, you are one of the flawed Gameists. Similar to Sexists and not as traditional as Racists, Gameists have their own preconceived stereotypes for different kinds of gamers. For my own sake, I hate games like
Farmville. I could never stand to play any Facebook game and I only play
Wii Sports after being dragged into it by the actual casual gamers. I have
Team Fortress 2 and
Mass Effect 2 on my PC hard drive. I love those games. But there are some people out there who willingly accept Wii gamers as childish and it's almost to the point of defining them as not actually gamers. Personally, I have not been a victim of this prejudice, but the victims
are out there. Do what you can to help the less fortunate.
When it comes to the PS3, you may guess these gamers are skinny Asians -- or people who wish they were skinny Asians -- who spend most of their time playing expansive and vastly time consuming JRPGs like the
Final Fantasy series. And, of course, these people always have some new JPOP going in the background, right? Well Think Again! I have friends who own a PS3; one is white, one is Jewish and another is Mexican. None of them take more pleasure in Japan than is appropriate. What is wrong in the minds of these Gameists that such prejudices exist? Do they just listen to the representatives of the products they own and never hear anything from the other sides of the aisle? Are these people set on categorizing everyone into these narrow stereotypes that limit other gamers? It seems like it sometimes, it seems like it indeed.
One of these people own a PS3, the other owns a Wii. You Decide.
And what about the Xbox 360 owners? Are they all shooter-obsessed bros, who buy cases of "amp" and insist every time they die is a lucky shot? Does each Xbox 360 gamer yell into their headset, swearing and hypothesizing about another's sexual orientation? Well... Well, Okay, some are more true than others, but you get the idea. What console one owns does not, for the most part, determine what kind of a person one is. But those damn Gameists and their Gameism. How do they think they can lump so many people together and make them faceless embodiments of a specific type of gamer? Let the gamer community unite under one flag and realize that, even though we are all different on the outside, we are all the same
on the inside. Every gamer is a gamer because of their love for videogames. Let us extend that love to one another and Stop this senseless Gameism. Is this the dream of which Dr. King spoke? Is this what the honored Veterans have fought and died for? I can honestly tell you, without a doubt in my mind, that answer is no. Thank you, everyone, and don't forget to do what's best for the gaming community.
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