If you love games, you should refuse to be called a gamer

Simon Parkin, NewStatesman:

Video games are the most profitable medium in the entertainment industry. In the early 1990s Nintendo generated more annual profits than all of the American film studios combined. But despite its size, the medium’s audience is often referred to as a homogenous group. Players and commentators talk of the ‘gaming community’, as if the cross-cultural, socially diverse mass of humans who play video games is somehow uniform in gender, race, age and class. The idiocy of the term is only too clear when applied to other media such as literature (the ‘reading community’?), music (the ‘listening community’?) or film (the ‘observing community’?).

A delightfully provocative read about the idea of gaming as a community. I will also recommend that you swing by GamesAndLearning.org and play through Gone Home: