Gamer

A woman playing Go Play One in 2010

A female gamer, or gamer girl or girl gamer, is any female who regularly engages in playing video games. According to a study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2009, 40% of the game playing population is female, and women 18 or older comprise 34% of all gamers. Also, the percentage of women playing online had risen to 43%, up 4% from 2004. The same study shows that 48% of game purchasers are female.[8][5] According to a 2015 Pew survey, 6% of women in the United States identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men, and 48% of women and 50% of men play video games.[9] Usage of the term "girl gamer" is controversial. Some critics have advocated use of the label as a reappropriated term, while others see it as nondescriptive or perpetuating the minority position of female gamers. Some critics of the term believe there is no singular definition of a female gamer and that they are as diverse as any other group. However it is generally understood that the term "girl gamer" implies that it is a girl who plays video games.[10]

A young male playing a video game on the PlayStation 4 console

Although roughly the same amount of men and women play games, the stereotype of a gamer is one that is predominantly male. A justification sometimes given for this is that while many women occasionally play games, they should not be considered "true" gamers because they tend to play games that are more casual and require less skill than men. This stereotype is perpetuated by the fact that at a professional level, most of the teams competing are composed of men, while female gamers of moderate skill are rendered invisible.[14]

A gaymer, or gay gamer, is a person within the group of people who identify themselves as LGBT (gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgender) and have an active interest in video games.[15] This demographic has been the subject of two large surveys, one in 2006,[16] which noted the level of prejudice that gaymers endure,[17] and another in 2009, focusing on the content that gaymers expect in video games.[18][19] The gaymer community provides a "safe place" for LGBT gamers[20] apart from the isolation they feel from both the heteronormative gaming community and the gay community.[21] They also believe that as homosexuality in video games increase, there will be an increased normalization of homosexuality in general. "Gaymers are the future of video games" said Hamed Hosseini, who is married to Mahar Buar, in Valve's gaming convention.[21][22][23]

Warren Moon and Marshall Faulk playing a video game

It is common for games media, games industry analysts, and academics to divide gamers into broad behavioral categories. These categories are sometimes separated by level of dedication to gaming, sometimes by primary type of game played, and sometimes by a combination of those and other factors. There is no general consensus on the definitions or names of these categories, though many attempts have been made to formalize them. An overview of these attempts and their common elements follows.

• Newbie: (commonly shortened to "noob", "n00b", or "newb") A slang term for a novice or newcomer to a certain game, or to gaming in general.[24][25]
• Casual gamer: The term is often used for gamers who primarily play casual games, but can also refer to gamers who play less frequently than other gamers.[26] Casual gamers may play games designed for ease of gameplay, or play more involved games in short sessions, or at a slower pace than hardcore gamers.[10] The types of game that casual gamers play vary, and they are less likely to own a dedicated video game console.[27][28] Notable examples of casual games include The Sims and Nintendogs.[29] Casual gamer demographics vary greatly from those of other video gamers, as the typical casual gamer is older and more predominantly female.[30] "Fitness gamer"s, who play motion-based exercise games, are also seen as casual gamers.[31]
• Core gamer: (also mid-core) A player with a wider range of interests than a casual gamer and is more likely to enthusiastically play different types of games,[32] but without the amount of time spent and sense of competition of a hardcore gamer. The mid-core gamer enjoys games but may not finish every game they buy and is a target consumer.[33][34] Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that they designed the Wii U to cater to core gamers who are in between the casual and hardcore categories.[35] A number of theories have been presented regarding the rise in popularity of mid-core games. James Hursthouse, the founder of Roadhouse Interactive, credits the evolution of devices towards tablets and touch-screen interfaces, whereas Jon Radoff of Disruptor Beam compares the emergence of mid-core games to similar increases in media sophistication that have occurred in media such as television.[36]
• Hardcore gamer: Ernest Adams and Scott Kim have proposed classification metrics to distinguish "hardcore gamers" from casual gamers,[37] emphasizing action, competition, complexity, gaming communities, and staying abreast of developments in hardware and software. Others have attempted to draw the distinction based primarily on which platforms a gamer prefers,[38] or to decry the entire concept of delineating casual from hardcore as divisive and vague.[39]

Professional gamers generally play video games for prize money or salaries. Usually, such individuals deeply study the game in order to master it and usually to play in competitions like Esports.[40] A pro gamer may also be another type of gamer, such as a hardcore gamer, if he or she meets the additional criteria for that gamer type. In countries of Asia, particularly South Korea and China, professional gamers and teams are sponsored by large companies and can earn more than US$100,000 a year.[41] In 2006 Major League Gaming contracted several Halo 2 players including Tom "Tsquared" Taylor and members of Team Final Boss with US$250,000 yearly deals.[42] Many professional gamers find that competitions are able to provide a substantial amount of money to support themselves. However, oftentimes, these popular gamers can locate even more lucrative options. One such option is found through online live streaming of their games. These gamers who take time out of their lives to stream make money from their stream, usually through sponsorships with large companies looking for a new audience or donations from their fans just trying to support their favorite streamer. Live streaming often occurs through popular websites such as Twitch, Hitbox, Mixer and YouTube. Professional gamers with particularly large followings can often bring their fan bases to watch them play on live streams. An example of this is shown through retired professional League of Legends player, Wei Han-Dong also known as "CaoMei".[43] Han-Dong had decided to retire from Esports due to his ability to acquire substantially higher pay through live streaming. His yearly salary through the Battle Flag TV live streaming service increased his pay to roughly $800,000 yearly. Live streaming can be seen by many as a truly lucrative way for professional gamers to make money in a way that can also lessen the pressure in the competitive scene.

A retro gamer is a gamer who prefers to play, and often enough collect, retro games—older video games and arcade games. They may also be called classic gamers or old-school gamers, which are terms that are more prevalent in the United States. The games are played on the original hardware, on modern hardware via emulation, or on modern hardware via ports or compilations (though those 'in the hobby' tend toward original hardware and emulation).[44]

A number of taxonomies have been proposed which classify gamer types and the aspects they value in games.[45]

The Bartle taxonomy of player types classifies gamers according to their preferred activities within the game:

• Achievers, who like to gain points and overall succeed within the game parameters, collecting all rewards and game badges.
• Explorers, who like to discover all areas within the game, including hidden areas and glitches, and expose all game mechanics.
• Socializers, who prefer to play games for the social aspect, rather than the actual game itself.
• Beaters, who thrive on competition with other players.
• Completionists, who are combinations of the Achiever and Explorer types. They complete every aspect of the game (main story, side quests, achievements) while finding every secret within it.

The MDA framework describes various aspects of the game regarding the basic rules and actions (Mechanics), how they build up during game to develop the gameplay (Dynamics), and what emotional response they convey to the player (Aesthetics). The described esthetics are further classified as Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Submission. Jesse Schell extends this classification with Anticipation, Schadenfreude, Gift giving, Humour, Possibility, Pride, Purification, Surprise, Thrill, Perseverance and Wonder, and proposes a number of generalizations of differences between how males and females play.[46]

Games are stereotypically associated with young males, but the diversity of the audience has been steadily increasing over time.[53] This stereotype exists even among a majority of women who play video games regularly.[54] Among players using the same category of device (e.g., console or phone), patterns of play are largely the same between men and women. Diversity is driven in part by new hardware platforms.[53] Expansion of the audience was catalyzed by Nintendo's efforts to reach new demographics.[29] Market penetration of smartphones with gaming capabilities further expanded the audience,[29] since in contrast to consoles or high-end PCs, mobile phone gaming requires only devices that non-gamers are likely to already own.[53]

While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers.[55] This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group. Half of female PC gamers in the U.S. consider themselves to be core or hardcore gamers.[56][57] Connotations of "gamer" with sexism on the fringe of gaming culture has caused women to be less willing to adopt the label.[58]

Racial minorities responding to Pew Research were more likely to describe themselves as gamers, with 19% of Hispanics identifying as gamers, compared to 11% of African-Americans and 7% of whites.[55] The competitive fighting game scene is noted as particularly racially diverse and tolerant.[59] This is attributed to its origin in arcades, where competitors met face to face and the barrier to entry was merely a quarter.[59] Only 4% of those aged 50 and over identified as gamers.[55]

Casualization is a trend in video games towards simpler games appealing to larger audiences, especially women or the elderly.[29] Some developers, hoping to attract a broader audience, simplify or remove aspects of gameplay in established genres and franchises.[60] Compared to seminal titles like DOOM, more recent mass-market action games like the Call of Duty series are less sensitive to player choice or skill, approaching the status of interactive movies.[61]

The trend towards casual games is decried by some self-identified gamers who emphasize gameplay, meaning the activities that one undertakes in a game.[49] According to Brendan Keogh, these are inherently masculine activities such as fighting and exerting dominance. He further says that games women prefer are more passive experiences, and male gamers deride the lack of interactivity in these games because of this association with femininity.[49] Belying these trends, games including The Sims or Minecraft have some of the largest audiences in the industry while also being very complex.[60] According to Joost van Dreunen of SuperData Research, girls who play Minecraft are "just as 'hardcore' as the next guy over who plays Counter-Strike"[62] Dreunen says being in control of a game's environment appeals equally to boys and girls.[62] Leigh Alexander argued that appealing to women does not necessarily entail reduced difficulty or complexity.[63]