So many people are quick to trash "casual" gamers who don't play [insert game franchise here] as somehow not being dedicated enough to gaming to be allowed to claim the "gamer" title. But that's a load of bollocks, really, isn't it?
I mean, I'm pretty old by the standards of people who enjoy video games enough to post on forums about them. Every day, I talk to dozens of people who never played a 90s Cliffy B-era Epic Megagames PC platformer. I bet only a handful of people on this site have even [i]heard[/i] of Jill of the Jungle or Xargon or Jazz Jackrabbit, let alone played them through. But they call themselves "hardcore" gamers because they've played all of the however many CoD titles there are, which are so mainstream that it's laughable.
"Hardcore" is such an arbitrary standard. In my mind, if you want to play mainstream shooters and claim that you're a real gamer, you don't really have a leg to stand on when bashing people who enjoy Wii games or handhelds - or hell, even phone games, for that matter. If you weren't around for when gaming as we know it today was actually starting up, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to throw stones. Maybe we should all stop trying to judge who deserves to be called a real gamer and who doesn't and just enjoy our hobbies, right?
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Shush nerd. Nah, totally agree.