Are you a Gamer?

Gamer.  Its one of those tags that can be uncomfortable, or fun, depending on where you see and what you see from where you sit.  I’m a gamer.  I’m not the most hardcore gamer I know. (I’m killed way too often on Modern Warfare 2 to claim that).  But I’m also a casual gamer.  I play a lot of iPhone games.  The audience for games has grown hugly over the last few years, yet many of the newcomers to games don’t think of themselves as gamers:

And [because the mass market see gamers as PS3/xbox360 owners playing first person shooters] makes me think that the casual, mass-market gamer will *never* classify themselves as a gamer. In the same way that I watch movies but wouldn’t call myself a film buff.

In short, the mass market will never be gamers.

But they will all play games.

Which is a good point.  My wife does not consider herself a gamer and yet I think if you added up all the time she plays games on her iPhone, its probably about the same as me.  Its just she’s playing Flowerz and I’m playing Crysis 2.

It all makes me think of Kevin Butler’s impassioned speech at E3 asking us gamers not to ‘hate on’ the casual gamers.