"Over three billion people are now drinkers"
"If you count having a glass of wine once a week then sure"
On the subway, it's not uncommon to see people playing games like candy crush on their commute to and from work. The average subway commute is an hour long each way. Playing two hours a day is a decent chunk of time. Engaging in any other hobby for even 30 minutes a day would put you squarely in at least the "enthusiast" category by most definitions.
Even excluding commutes, it's quite common for me to see people playing mobile games during e.g. their lunch break.
So, I think a better analogy would be more like:
"Over three billion people are now drinkers"
> "If you count drinking a budweiser every day then sure"
Which, yeah, I would.
It may have to do with the difference in "I will play this game instead of staring into the void" vs "I will buy that game and set aside time to play it". Would people on the subway play candy crush if they didn't have to commute? There's a fine line, I believe.
And then there's another fine line with regards to what counts as "video game". Is computer chess a video game because it's played on a computer, or is it simply chess? How many people would say "I'm going to play on the computer" vs "I'm going to play some chess" when they're going to play chess on their computer? "Video games" aren't the same as "mobile games" in my opinion, though there are video games on mobile devices, but e.g. Solitaire isn't a video game.
And last but not least: I'm pretty sure most people who play Minesweeper on their commute but aren't otherwise into computer games would self-identify as "gamers".
That seems like a weird distinction to draw, given the numerous other activities you could be doing with that time (reading a book, for example). Clearly, they downloaded candy crush with the intention of playing it. The time they set aside is their commute.
If I purchase a Switch solely to play e.g. Octopath on the subway, am I no longer a "gamer" simply because I'm just using it as an alternative to staring out into the void?
FWIW: IIRC Candy Crush's most popular "day of the week" is Sunday, meaning people ARE setting aside time to play.
> And then there's another fine line with regards to what counts as "video game". Is computer chess a video game because it's played on a computer, or is it simply chess?
Yes, that's true. I think that leads to interesting questions about what qualifies as a video game. Do all the e.g. sim games (bus sim, flight sim, etc.) count as video games? What about Madden/etc?
However, I don't think any of that's relevant here: There's no real-world counterpart to Candy Crush.
> "Video games" aren't the same as "mobile games" in my opinion, though there are video games on mobile devices, but e.g. Solitaire isn't a video game.
I think that's a pretty reductionist view of mobile games, especially given the roots of video games. Candy Crush isn't any more simplistic than say, Ice Climber or Tetris (or substitute that with most other early NES-era games).
I don't think you want to put arbitrary complexity requirements on games to be considered "true games", otherwise we'll have to re-evaluate a lot of titles: E.g. are Telltale games "video games", or are they just choose-your-own-adventures on a computer? What about Tetris?
And that's to say nothing of the other point you mentioned, which is that increasingly "modern" games are available on mobile devices. One of the top sellers on the iOS app store is Minecraft, which I think everyone would consider qualifies as a video game. Epic is currently going through a massive battle with Apple over them kicking Fortnite off the app store.
> And last but not least: I'm pretty sure most people who play Minesweeper on their commute but aren't otherwise into computer games would self-identify as "gamers".
I will posit that is largely because of the stigma around being a "gamer", partially warranted (gaming communities can be notoriously toxic) and partially not.
This is somewhat self-reinforcing because many adults who should identify as "gamers" don't want to be associated with that term (I count myself in that group, which is partially why I'm so passionate about this topic). Viewpoints like "mobile games don't count as real games" don't help either, by excluding everyone but the most diehard.
Again, I think with any other hobby it would be hard for you not to qualify as at least an enthusiast if you spent an appreciable amount of time engaging in it. If I read novels for 2 hours a day, it would be quite appropriate for someone to label me as a "reader".
I believe it's similar to the difference between running because you're late and need to catch the bus and going for a run because you want to run. One is the end ("I want to play a game"), the other is a means ("I want to kill time on the train and a book is too complicated").
Tetris isn't a video game in my opinion, but it's a computer game. A video game involves video of some kind of world to move in, be that a football field you're running on, a race track you drive on, or a wasteland you crawl through. Maybe you could make the immersion a distinction, but I'm not sure about it.
> I will posit that is largely because of the stigma around being a "gamer", partially warranted (gaming communities can be notoriously toxic) and partially not.
I don't know. I've never been part of any gaming communities, but there has been a time when I played a lot of games and if asked, I would've said that I'm a gamer. I haven't for years, so I don't consider myself a gamer now.
> Again, I think with any other hobby it would be hard for you not to qualify as at least an enthusiast if you spent an appreciable amount of time engaging in it.
I'm not sure. I've watched a lot of movies but I'd never consider myself a movie buff, I just liked cheap entertainment. I believe it's different with books because there has to be intention, reading isn't the path of least resistance, it requires more intention than candy crush, movies, meme scrolling or listening to music or a pod cast.
Similarly, driving a car to work (or using public transportation) isn't really saying anything about you. Biking to work all year, no matter the weather, is different.
I don't think it's about "gate keeping" as much as wanting clear communication. It's not useful to call everyone a gamer that has ever in their life played a game on an electronic device. It's not useful to call everyone a climber that has ever in their life climbed something, be that a mountain, tree or bunk bed.
And my general opinion: don't worry about identifying yourself as a gamer because of some stigma. People who are worth talking to will usually ask and find out what you're talking about. It may be a good litmus test to quickly sort out those that live by factory made opinions. Don't bother trying to be liked by them.
If you chose to bike to work every day, I would call you a biker. If you watched a movie every single day, I would say watching movies is a hobby of yours. If you went to a rock climbing gym every day, I would call you a climber.
Driving, and some other fields like cooking, are quite different. You're not choosing to engage in that behavior - it's a requirement for your life. Same with cooking food. You need to get to work, you need to eat. You don't need to play Candy Crush on the train - and obviously, many people don't.
> And my general opinion: don't worry about identifying yourself as a gamer because of some stigma.
I don't mean to be a negative ned, but I'm not talking about the "neckbeard loser" stigma. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, that's probably for the best.
Video games have been a large part of my life since I could hold a controller. The sooner I can mention the game I played last night in casual conversation without people assuming I'm a controller-throwing, gamerword-spewing child with no impulse control or social intuition, the better.
The last time I mentioned I played Dark Souls the conversation turned to how horrible the community is, with the implication that I spend my time telling people to "git gud" and invading new players to make them miserable. Never mind that I helped probably 10-12 people beat Capra Demon that night with no ingame reward past "humanity" which I already have more than I need.
"There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide"
But then you learned that only 500 million were really fluent, and the rest ranged from broken Spanish that was enough to get by in a Spanish speaking country to people who were forced to take a Spanish class in highschool and never used it again.
I think this concept of "fluency" in games is probably a more useful metric. The question is, if I dump you in front of a game that you've never played before, but it conforms to the language of video game design, how quickly can you beat it? I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example.[1]
You could extend the metaphor further, for example Spanish is spoken in many different ways around the globe, and therefore some people who speak one dialect of Spanish can't understand another dialect of Spanish. The same could be true for games, and we would need to classify and understand these dialects.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw Interesting video talking about what games are like for a non-gamer, shows an example of not understanding how to move the camera and the player at the same time.
Now would someone who only played NES games, or Civilization VI, or Papers Please. Are we defining 'games' as meaning '3D walk-y about-y games', here?
IMO one of the worst aspects of modern "gamer" culture is this insistence on purity tests particularly when they're aimed at games that are extremely popular with women.
Even in terms of market segmentation I don't think the distinction of "overall gaming fluency" is very measurable or meaningful.
You can't have the same conversation between someone who plays only candy crush, and someone who plays a wide variety of games. Its like saying that 8 billion people read books -- but 7.9 billion of that only read harry potter. Suddenly that 8 billion readers is far less notable.
There's a scale to your level of hobbyism -- a lot of people only play games as long as their friends do, because its simply a social tool (replacing the mall). The current flavor just happens to fall under video games, but theres no stickiness -- if the next popular thing is laser tag, they'll shift out and never think about games again.
The notion of trying to define this scale as a problem is also largely unique to gaming -- it exists elsewhere without issue. Painting, movies, programming, literature, music, engineering etc there's no issue saying that someone is dipping their toes into the subject, or has purely commercial interest in it (eg I only watch best selling movies, or only marvel) or has an actual interest in it (a -phile, a hacker, etc)
I think the key difference is the prevailing belief that there is no depth to this subject, so the only difference between a casual entrant and a hobbyist and a professional is an arbitrary checklist.
Obviously I disagree -- there is depth, and therefore, there is a difference between "gamers", as they fall between the ranks in understanding that depth. Ofc theres no great metric, and you can't define it in detail, but the difference between a candy-crush-only "gamer" and a genre-agnostic "gamer" and a genre-loving "gamer" and a read-the-literature (what little exists) "gamer" in recognizing and communicating about that depth is readily apparent
The problem mostly comes from people who define their hobby as their life. I play games a lot and make them professionally but wouldn’t call myself a gamer. I don’t see my wife playing Match-3 games on her phone as lesser than my wife playing Baldurs Gate. Likewise I can enjoy Sage Solitaire and Escape from Tarkov.
Gaming is mainstream now and people who feel threatened by that need to grow up.
It would be the difference of trying to communicate about movies between someone who has only ever seen marvel films, and someone who watched say the entirety of the criterion collection. Or the difference between technical sales and engineers. It'd be fairly meaningless to give them the same label -- one is clearly capable of a more advanced communication on the subject than the other, if only because they've experience a larger subset of the subject.
Of course, you could also play the living hell out of a single game and be extremely fluent about only that one game -- which is clearly different than someone being fluent about games in general. We wouldn't expect someone who only ever played SC2, even if he had put 2000 hours into it, to have anything notable to say about FPS games and RPGs.
As you've opined, the marker of when you'd be considered a "gamer" vs otherwise is an arbitrary meaningless distinction, a random line drawn in the sand, but that's why "fluency" is trying to be introduced as an alternative.
If the same number was cited for beer drinking, I’d be saying “sure, if you count anyone who’s ever had a Budweiser”, and it would be a valid criticism.
Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult.
There's a difference between a casual Candy Crush player and a casual Overwatch player though.
I wouldn't class the Candy Crush player as even a casual gamer.
I know several people that would say exactly that. There are a lot of beer snobs in this world. If it's not Belgian/German/homebrew/etc. it's not beer.
Also mobile games have deservedly earned a reputation as blatant dopamine pumps and many don't deserve to be considered 'real video games' any more than Facebook or Instagram.
It's like measuring how many people know how to cook and then including people who do microwave dinners. It's technically not incorrect and there's nothing wrong with the people who microwave, it's just not a very useful piece of data.
Candy Crush and games like it are closer to https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2796704/trademark-games-el... than https://store.steampowered.com/app/10/CounterStrike/. I wouldn't call the former a video game by any reasonable standard.
I think Candy Crush qualifies as a video game, if only by the most technically narrow of definitions. But it's a pretty hard sell to put the stereotypical Candy Crush style game player in the same category as someone who owns and regularly utilizes a console. There is overlap, obviously, but that's also clearly not what we're discussing.
At some point the casual application of "video gamer" will make the term meaningless--especially as we move toward almost ubiquitous electronic interfaces and devices for even the most mundane of life's activities.
A golfing or racing game isn't similar to golfing or racing, it's clearly primarily a video game. It gets somewhat blurry when you have a high-end setup with a cockpit that's being shaken while you drive a rally. Is it still a video game, or a simulator? I'd say the latter, but it's an edge case.
Angry Birds is, to me at least, closer to a video game (though I'd say it's a different genre "mobile game"), because there's obviously not a directly transferred real-life version.
We do it in many other areas without such issue, e.g., recreational vs. amateur vs. professional athletics, cooking, artistry, etc. If a report were published that said "250 million adult Americans are cooks" I'd find it objectionable. It's not a meaningful number, either in terms of market segmentation or as a description of the actual activity that is purported to be engaged in.
The problem here is that the breakdown is completely arbitrary based on "how much I feel related to people who play it". It is not based on hours played, someone who plays on console less of time can count. It is not by effort spent, someone who plays repetitive grinding games on console still counts. It is not even per who self-identifies as gamer, that is not question in the thread at all. The thread is all about whether candy crush counts as game or videogame.
"250 million adult Americans cook" is perfectly valid thing to write in a report, even of those people don't do special French receipts.
So really, what it is about is that some self-identified gamers take offense on the idea that games which target different demographics can be talked about as a games. And while there are many cultural/emotional things that make it so, it still seem impossible to come up with reasonable definition that excludes candy crush. Candy crush is an insult to most gamers despite majority of them not knowing next thing about that game, except that it was huge success among people they, frankly, find inferior.