I'm always happy to let my gamer flag fly. I have no shame (this goes beyond games). A friend once even labeled me a 'Gaming Evangelist.'

Crap. You had to say ordinary.

I have a slew of video game paraphernalia, but the majority of people I tell give me strange looks. Even my mom, who calls almost daily, asks why I don't "get out more," assuming that I play my xbox from 9:00 to 5:00 everyday. Gaming is a hobby just like any other.

Being at college, I'm in a special situation.
Being labeled a gamer here isn't bad. We college students are still in that post pubescent malaise that views technology and competitive games as fun. I've had girls comment on my monstrosity of a gaming rig.

This is very true, and well said. I'm sure one of the reasons that the public still associates gaming with kids is because there are not enough adults who do wear that identity with pride. I also hesitate to describe myself as a gamer to "normal" people.

It's as though there is a transitory period when a culture is seeking to redefine the particulars of the labels that they espouse. For a while we, as gamers, will be associated first with the negative interpretations, and only after enough people show that they are gamers and fathers, mothers, writers, thinkers, artists and adults will we start to disassemble the culturally constructed collage of perceptions about gaming as a hobby.

I'm going to go over to CafePress and make myself some "Gamer" shirts. It's a start.

(edit) Hobbes2099 brings up an interesting subject in casual gaming, because society's perception of gamers is colored by the idea of the "other", games are not something they do or understand, and as we all know that breeds fear and mistrust. Casual games do impressive work in closing that gulf. Since I got my gf playing Peggle, she has been more understanding when I want to sit down and play WoW.

The label of Gamer is something I proudly will answer to, but I try not to limit myself to just that. I do get picked on to some degree by friends who don't the enjoyment I get from watching some avatar get a new set of boots, or that awesome new dagger. However, what always cracks me up, is the friends I have who make fun of me for my gaming, but will then become obsessed with Madden or Call of Duty. I do enjoy pointing it out to them, but they always come back with a FR (fire resistance) joke. I still hope that deep down, they know that it is ok to be a gamer and one day they too will admit it.

I think this sentence needs to be taken out back and whacked around a bit to so I can unwind my parser stack without falling over. Although I sort of understand what you are getting at.

I try to avoid discussions of identity. I program computers, but I am not a "hacker" or something. I play video games, but I'm not really sure if I am a "gamer" per se. Maybe I am just too old to care.

I am proud to call myself a gamer. In fact, if I have any hesitation to call myself a gamer, it is more because I feel that I am not good enough and have not dedicated the hours (although my girlfriend would completely disagree) to call myself a true gamer. In a way, I feel that I am not worthy to carry the label.

However, I would also like to comment on the Scarlett Letter comparison. Contrary to what Mr.Sands said I don't believe the book was a case study on the damage of enforced identity, at least not on the subject of Ms. Prine. I think what the book was getting at was that the label/letter really damaged everyone but Hesther Prine. In fact, she was the only person who acted morally correct. You got to love that irony.

So if we were to compare gamer culture with The Scarlett Letter, could we make a comparison with the way the label pushers, e.g. Fox News, are really the people who are morally questionable, or, in this case, immature?

Or a loan?

On topic, though, I don't think the negative connotations associated with gaming (that is, losers, slackers, etc) will ever disappear until our generation is the generation in power, because then video gaming will have become "normal". And even then, normal is relative... Or so they would like you to think.

Also along those lines, and slightly off-topic, the great debate on violence and video games will most likely not be "settled" until that point anyway.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't associate the term blog with angsty emo teens and incoherent ramblings. Certainly the term stems from the concept of an online diary, but it has evolved over the last few years into something more substantive. When someone refers to blogs these days, it doesn't evoke images of an angry illiterate, railing against that which he does not understand or a pathetic social miscreant pounding away at a keyboard in his mother's basement (an image that is not far off from the stereotypical image of a "hardcore gamer" in mainstream consciousness). For me, rather, the word blog has the connotation of focused, purposeful writing. Certainly there are still diaries and nonsensical writing sitting aside washed out webcam photos that are categorized as blogs, but I hold them in much higher regard than that.

Much the same way, I hold the term gamer in high regard. I am a gamer (as opposed to a blogger) so I have a bit of a different perspective, but it's similar. I have no problem identifying as one, admitting that I've spent a huge chunk of my life as one, or flying the gamer flag. However, we have very little control over how that label is perceived. Unfortunately, there's not going to be a Revenge-of-the-Nerds moment when the stigma suddenly disappears from it.

The label is losing its stigma. At the latest American Libraries Association midwinter conference, a lot of folks attached little "gamer" tags to their conference badges. I didn't, even though I'm doing some work on gaming and learning, mainly because I didn't see where they were handing them out. Apparently more and more public libraries are adding games to their collections and various stuffed-shirts are complaining that games somehow detract from the lofty ideals of the library. Professionally, I know that is horse-pucky. Libraries have been circulating pop music and low-brow films for years. Entertainment media is something that libraries own and lend and games are most certainly entertainment media. Now, I'm not fully behind the movement to get games in every library and I'm somewhat dubious of some of the more utopian claims, but I'm happy the movement exists.

I think games are coming close to being accepted as "real" media. They make enough money to be taken seriously by financial types, and there is starting to be a good body of work on the study of games. I strongly recommend to anyone interested in what academics think of games to read James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Playing games doesn't necessarily make one smarter, but the realization that quality games played with a critical eye and a reflective attitude lead to active and critical thinking is a huge step towards the intellectual value of some games being more widely respected.

So I'm letting my gamer flag fly. I work in higher-ed, but on the fringes. I've had two proposals to present at academic conferences accepted this year, so in June I'll be going to Vegas to talk about Portal and what instruction librarians can learn from quality video game design. Portal teaches players how to use the aperture science handheld portal device in a series of small steps that limit what the player can do until she has practiced certain key skills. Each lesson incorporates the previously learned skills and the universe slowly expands, offering specific challenges that must be overcome until the student is set free to explore with a full set of tools. The way we teach students to do academic research is often akin to starting portal on level 19 and giving them a few hints on "use the double fling if you get in trouble". We set freshman loose in a library designed for research scientists w/ PhD degrees and years of experience and then complain when they rely on Google and Wikipedia to retrieve information. My contention is that good game design can teach us how to teach better.

In October, a colleague and I will go to Cinncinnati to talk about educating a generation of gamers and how instruction librarians who understand gaming conventions can use them as metaphors to help students make connections between the thinking they do in games and the more rigorous thinking they are being asked to do in college. For example: the concept of leveling up can be used to help students understand source evaluation. Someone who has played games will understand that the rusty dagger they used to dispatch the ubiquitous cave rats is entirely inappropriate to combat a greater forest wyvern. In the same way, a reference to wikipedia may have been perfectly appropriate for their high-school essays, but inadequate for their macroeconomics course. Our job can be made easier if we realize that games may have already taught students some of the complex skills needed to survive in school. Our job is to help them make connections between what they already know and what they are asked to do in their classes. My colleague is going to talk about the difference in how Second Life and Wow teaches players to play, and what educators can learn from that. She started playing Second Life, to see what the buzz was about. She entered the world, started looking for something to do, wandered about until some naked guy asked her if she wanted to have sex, then started humping her leg. She logged off. Then she joined a WoW guild and was presented with something within her ability to do at every step of the way. She had purpose, her actions had meaning, and there were constant rewards. When our students walk into the library, which experience do we want them to have? Being lost in a meaningless world, or being rewarded for completing a meaningful task that builds their skill levels to the point of being able to complete more complex and difficult quests?

Even though there are vast differences in the intellectual rigor that goes into leveling a WoW character to 70 and earning a degree, people who profess to care about student learning could do a lot worse than to turn an analytical eye on something that has succeeded so well in capturing the attention of our student population. In the end, of course, it is up to the students to decide how much effort they are going to put into their studies, but educators can learn a lot from game designers on how to capture attention and provide rewards that help students stay engaged and motivated.

Once more people realize this, I think the stigma will erode. Of course, folks who fail out of the University because of their 16 hour a day Wow addiction may outnumber folks who look at WoW guilds and economics as laboratories to test social or economic theories, but the potential is there. I don't think we are that far away from giving certain video game experts the kind of intellectual respect we give to contract bridge players. That is to say, we can recognize that there is active and critical thinking taking place, regardless of the content of what they are thinking about.

This article was brilliantly written in a haphazard but emotional way- which lends it credence. The one part of the article above reminded me of someone...strangely enough

In 1968 Alan Watts spoke at a small college and I happened to chance upon it as a very young man. That bootlegged speech began with a streaming dialogue about the origins of the word person as it is in the latin persona about the "masks of the drama" and all those human-created games that we as a people all tend to play into.

The identity in gaming might be a false front but at least you realize it from the get-go. That seems more honest to me then the identity you place in front of you on a normal day to day basis. Perhaps by defining a fantasy someone is better able to define reality.

Anyway posted a simple Alan Watts speech in video form if anyone has never heard of him. Please be patient if you don't get it right away, anyhoo the video was an early work by Trey Parker & Matt Stone who of course made South Park many years later. I'm still trying to get him...dammit.

http://www.youtube.com/v/XXi_ldNRNtM&rel=1

I think that if the idea is that having another identity as a Gamer would be an important ambition for people having fun then we are radically flawed as a community. The idea is to not worry about it at all.

Because typically it seems once you have an identity you feel the need to justify it. The people building the machines we buy in order to amuse ourselves are hoping we do build an identity around this one thing. Having a solid 'adultised' identity attached to it might force us to justify it by spending all our time, assests, and energy to proving that identity to our friends and more so to ourselves, it would be a disaster.

You, my kind sir, are a friggin' genius. That's exactly what will appeal to this generation of learners, and that's not a bad thing. It's not pandering to make something relateable.

It is, however, difficult to make the Old Guard Educational System understand that "technology in the classroom" isn't just buying a Mac and a printer. You've been warned. Their wrath, and the striking tendrils of their light blure rinsed hair, is swift and mighty.

I loved Oregon Trail.