This week in class we discussed more about Casual, Social and Mobile Games. The article we read from Tama Leaver and Michele Willson titled “Social networks, casual games and mobile devices: The shifting contexts of gamers and gaming” talked about the changes in the gaming landscape and the growing popularity of casual, mobile and social games. For the sake of this post I will be using the term “Casual Games” as an overarching term for social and mobiles games.

The article states ” What is undeniable is that social, casual and mobile games in all of their forms are being adopted by increasing numbers or the population.” With casual games rising in popularity, it poses the question once again of whether or not those who play casual games is classified as an actual gamer. If you search the definition of “Gamer” it will actually tell you that a gamer is defined as “a person who plays video games or participates in role-playing games.” The thing that caught my eye when I Googled the word “Gamer” is that they defined a gamer as someone who takes part in role-playing games. This would mean that anyone who plays a game that allows them to immerse themselves into the story would be a gamer. Now, do I think this is a good way to classify whether someone is a gamer or not? Yes? No? I don’t know… I go back and forth on this a lot. If going by the “role-playing games” definition casual game players may or may not be gamers. Those who play games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing would count as gamers since those games really allows each player to immerse themselves into the story and feel as if they actually are living on that farm or that island and building up their town as if it’s real life. On the other hand, those who play mobile games like Candy Crush or Angry Birds wouldn’t really be gamers because those games aren’t really role-playing games. At the forefront of everything, this looks like a pretty decent way to define whether someone is a gamer or not. But then what about social games like “Farmville” that kinda falls under “role-playing games” but those who play games like Farmville don’t play enough to really immerse themselves into the game. Are the gamers? Something I like about this “role-playing” gamer standpoint is that it takes platform out of the question and looks at it from a game standpoint alone. With the gaming landscape changing so rapidly, this allows us to look at this question from a game standpoint strictly instead of taking the platform it is on into account.

Something else to consider is what counts as a video game? Mobile games currently are seen as their own entity. They’re games but they’re not really seen as a video game and that goes hand in hand with the question of “Who is a gamer.” Mobile games still are not seen as part of the video game world so those who play those games also are not seen as a gamer. We need to first decide what we classify as a video game and from there, we can better define who really is a gamer. How I see it, is that there are two different classification of games, “Video Games” and “Games.” “Video Games” are those role-playing games we discussed and “games” are those social and mobile games that allow to pick up and play anywhere you go. The gaming community may never agree on who classifies as a gamer or what games classifies as a video game, but what we can agree on is that the world of gaming is changing and growing as we know it.