Gameism: The Doctrine of Judging Others Based on Their Gaming Practices

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.

When Are Games Not Games

Who am I to follow the great and talented Julian Horan and his glorious, first ever, review here on Super Dope Gaming?  Just a lowly writer, uselessly hoping to compare to such an amazing mind.  Well, never you mind; I’ll try my best to say something worth being posted so close to someone so famous and wealthy (honestly, he’s rich.)  Anyway, enough lollygagging around, I come here to address the topic of Videogames.  Not just any, however, but games that are so casual, so short, that it makes me wonder if they can still be classified as videogames.  Julian was right when he mentioned how games made by every day people are rarely reviewed, so why is that?  Why doesn’t IGN, UGO, or Kotaku review games that are, quite often, solo projects?

One possibility is that they don’t fall into the same category.  Console and PC games are already split, both of which are separate from handhelds, and then further into casual and hardcore; do we really need another distinction between videogames that are independently created in Flash and free to play and those  which have high costs of production and come with an equally steep price tag?  PC games and PC Flash games?  Are games like Alice is Dead, Don’t Crap Your Pants, or Don’t Shoot the Puppy lower on the gaming scale and therefore not worth the time?

 Congratulations indeed.

Another possibility for the lack of reviews is that these games are free.  People don’t need someone else to review the game before they try it.  Who is ever going to think, “This game is free and I have plenty of time, but I don’t know if I want to take some of that free time and spend it on a game I may not enjoy”?  It’s free.  Play it. Find out.  If anyone reading Julian Horan’s last post didn’t look up that game, I need to know why not.  I NEED to know.  But he isn’t the first person to review a free game on this site. Nor the second.

The idea is that these games are viewed differently for some reason.  I have spent so many hours playing games as time killers, but I haven’t gone to Newgrounds in years.  I balk at the very name.  “Those games are mostly junk time killers” I say to myself.  And then I go play Peggle on my Ipod for several hours.  I understand if some people can’t get past the fact that Flash Games bear a certain stigma, but what about other games that millions of us play every day?  Games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, or any other Facebook game? Hell, almost any free, Ipod-only game can be seen in the same way.  To some, usually the more hardcore amongst us gamers, these titles are not even worthy of being called games.

Personally, I think every game mentioned here, as well as countless others, are worthy in their own right.  If it comes down to solely a distinction of casual vs. hardcore games, then where do we draw the line?  Anything free to play is casual? Anything too easy is casual?  I can tell you that the games Julian Horan raves about below are not easy, but they are free to play.  On the reverse side, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 have a normal price tag on them and are seen as two of the Wii’s greatest “core games,” but those games are incredibly easy.  They are cute, fluffy, light hearted and fun.  Many of the same adjectives used to describe casual games.

 HARDCORE!!

For every hardcore game, there are a hundred more games that people play just to pass the time, not looking for anything deep or moving, just a mindlessly fun experience.  Games that one can play while at work instead of working.  The common opinion is that these games are worse, in and of themselves, than any game that is not free to play.  Really?  Has anyone ever played Acme Arsenal (No you haven’t. No one has.)?  But I’m still sure it was worth writing a review for.  I’m sure every game is worth at least that much.  Even if you only play for an hour, you probably have enough experience with it to know it’s terrible.

Maybe Super Dope Gaming should stand behind this belief that all games are worthy of being reviewed and begin reviewing every casual, free-to-play game that comes out to determine whether or not it’s worth the time to play.  But that’s not going to happen, those are Flash Games.