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Comment by throwawaytea | Hacker News Reader

Half the world's population is easily too young or too old or too poor or too rich to be gamers. So that 3 billion stat alone shows me people love just counting any moments spent in a video game at all for who knows what reason on any super bad quality 'game' as gamers.

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Anyone with a smartphone can be a gamer.

I think my mom playing Wordle on her smartphone does indeed make her a gamer.

Yes and the world has 6 billion researchers too because we Google things.

It's a lot more useful though when words have meaning and we take them seriously, otherwise nothing really makes sense.

I think you would agree that playing games and being a researcher are very different levels of depth. If you have decent public transit in your area, you'll definitely see at least one person on your commute playing some kind of candy crush-like phone game every single day. Yes, that's a "gamer."

Humans by their very nature use games to pass time and stimulate their mind and body, it's one of the most universal things about us.

That game of Wordle my mom plays once per day is probably what keeps her paying a subscription to NYT. That's real money. She'd probably drop the subscription otherwise.

NYT sells a games-only subscription for $50/year, $80/year per family. I think NYT executives would be happy to consider someone who plays games for 5 minutes per day or even 5 minutes per week a gamer.

I gotta be honest, I personally don't think someone playing wordle is a gamer by the common usage of the word.

I can see where you’re coming from. My side of the argument is basically “money doesn’t discriminate.”

The $50 I spent on Baldur’s Gate 3 is the same $50 as a year’s subscription to Wordle (and the other NYT games).

“Gamer” may refer to a stereotype but there is fundamentally no difference in concept.

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