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crankyoldmanBut how you play it.
There are two people that I interact with regularly IRL that I consider to be hardcore gamers. My mom and one of my interns. Intern and I got into a bit of a discussion concerning his (typical) teenage boy dislike of casual games (and how he automatically gendered it as "something 15 year old girls play" and how problematic that automatic assumption was).
My mom is hardcore because she doesn't just play a game, she plays it to completion and all the extras and would do it twice over if it let her. She doesn't just watch TV, she has a game in hand while watching it. She plays her Wii when she's waiting on laundry/slow roast/whatever. She used to unlock levels for my sister and me when we were kids playing computer games.
But my mom's tastes in games are the "cute" ones. She doesn't like gore, she doesn't like morbidity, she doesn't like "women wearing floss on their buttcracks". For her a game is pure happy escapism. Kingdom Hearts would be too dark for her. She's like this with movies too. As she puts it "there are too many things I've seen in real life to want to have it in my entertainment".
And that's fine.
I buy her Mario and LEGO games and gave her Angry Birds on her ipod touch and she's very happy with that. She was skeptical of Plants vs. Zombies until I showed her it was really meant to be quirky cute and she ate that right up. She doesn't use walkthroughs and will power her way through levels like a fucking boss.
Intern's favorite genre is actually rhythm games, like DDR. He doesn't like a lot of narrative and likes just pure gameplay that will take up hours of his time. He doesn't even watch movies, and gets impatient with anything that isn't interactive. And despite my lack of "hardcore" status, he'll actually check out games I'm playing (he said he actually really liked Monster Tale, which I'm still getting through because I am not as good at platformers as I would like to be, but I just really like the narrative so I'll deal with it). He plays anything he gets his hands on, except for MMOs.
However, he wouldn't assign "hardcore" status to my mom because half the games she plays (obsessively in a completist way) are "for kids" or "casual games". Or that she can't devote 5+ hours a day to playing because she has adult things to do in her life.
I very badly want this stupid attitude to just stop. I'd love to have conversations with other gamers where it doesn't turn into some "cred" pissing contest. We are all people that love something that is interactive and interesting and something that is still in its teenage years as far as media goes.
Can we just admit that once we get to a certain level of obsessiveness we are all in the same boat?
And while we're at it, can we stop with the whole idea of 15 year old girls being the worst beings on the planet in these discussions? And POC and whoever else resides outside the "normal" spectrum being completely invisible?
tl;dr: your gamer peen, I do not fucking care about, so let's just play.
There are two people that I interact with regularly IRL that I consider to be hardcore gamers. My mom and one of my interns. Intern and I got into a bit of a discussion concerning his (typical) teenage boy dislike of casual games (and how he automatically gendered it as "something 15 year old girls play" and how problematic that automatic assumption was).
My mom is hardcore because she doesn't just play a game, she plays it to completion and all the extras and would do it twice over if it let her. She doesn't just watch TV, she has a game in hand while watching it. She plays her Wii when she's waiting on laundry/slow roast/whatever. She used to unlock levels for my sister and me when we were kids playing computer games.
But my mom's tastes in games are the "cute" ones. She doesn't like gore, she doesn't like morbidity, she doesn't like "women wearing floss on their buttcracks". For her a game is pure happy escapism. Kingdom Hearts would be too dark for her. She's like this with movies too. As she puts it "there are too many things I've seen in real life to want to have it in my entertainment".
And that's fine.
I buy her Mario and LEGO games and gave her Angry Birds on her ipod touch and she's very happy with that. She was skeptical of Plants vs. Zombies until I showed her it was really meant to be quirky cute and she ate that right up. She doesn't use walkthroughs and will power her way through levels like a fucking boss.
Intern's favorite genre is actually rhythm games, like DDR. He doesn't like a lot of narrative and likes just pure gameplay that will take up hours of his time. He doesn't even watch movies, and gets impatient with anything that isn't interactive. And despite my lack of "hardcore" status, he'll actually check out games I'm playing (he said he actually really liked Monster Tale, which I'm still getting through because I am not as good at platformers as I would like to be, but I just really like the narrative so I'll deal with it). He plays anything he gets his hands on, except for MMOs.
However, he wouldn't assign "hardcore" status to my mom because half the games she plays (obsessively in a completist way) are "for kids" or "casual games". Or that she can't devote 5+ hours a day to playing because she has adult things to do in her life.
I very badly want this stupid attitude to just stop. I'd love to have conversations with other gamers where it doesn't turn into some "cred" pissing contest. We are all people that love something that is interactive and interesting and something that is still in its teenage years as far as media goes.
Can we just admit that once we get to a certain level of obsessiveness we are all in the same boat?
And while we're at it, can we stop with the whole idea of 15 year old girls being the worst beings on the planet in these discussions? And POC and whoever else resides outside the "normal" spectrum being completely invisible?
tl;dr: your gamer peen, I do not fucking care about, so let's just play.