[tavilach]

I was just thinking about the world "gaming," and how it has evolved. Twenty years ago, "gaming" was rarely used, correct? People played games, but no one usually "gamed." Playing chess was never considered to be "gaming." Why is that? Is it because it was far less common for chess to take over a person's life, in comparison to our modern computer games?

I was also thinking about modern culture, and how computer games have become a prominant part of it. Games like chess and tag (or any "normal" game, for that matter) never came close to really influencing society in the way that computer games have. It's just funny to me when I hear someone proclaim, "I'm a gamer!" When you look at the word "gamer," it refers to one who plays games. Think about the word "game," and then you might see why this seems somewhat funny to me. Tic Tac Toe is also a game. Imagine spending your life playing Tic Tac Toe.

I'm not making any point whatsoever, and I realize that if I were to stop here, it would seem that I should "just get a blog."

The purpose of this post, though, is to ask you all a question. Why has gaming become a way of life, when games are just...games? I understand that they're fun (and in fact, I was addicted to a game for a year), but sometimes society's obsession with gaming really shocks me.

If you have any insight (feel free to bring up comparisons with TV and movies), that'd be interesting to hear. No flames, please. If you think that this is a retarded post, just let it die.

[Randman]

Get a blog. Or a girlfriend.

1. Gaming has been around since the dawn of man and the word gaming has been around for thousands and thousands of years.

2. As computers have become more common, so have computer games.

3. As advanced as these computer games on, I'd have to say I'm old school and think some of these games dampen creativity from kids. There's something to be said about playing outside with a stick and ball and reading a book and letting one's imagination roam.

4. As you get older, gaming means less of WoW and Doom and more of gambling and other types of "gaming" involving chance and risk.

5. As good as computer games are (and I've been playing them since I was one of the first kids on the block to get pong), they still can't beat a lively game of Scrabble, or even monopoly.

6. My dad is close to his mid-70s and he still loves video games (he's near obessesed with the Ratchet & Clank series). He's a huge psp2 fan (we started back in the day on Atari and progressed) and I've been preaching the joys of an XBox.

What goes around comes around (and maybe I should start a blog as well).

[goMac]

Originally posted by tavilach:
I was just thinking about the world "gaming," and how it has evolved. Twenty years ago, "gaming" was rarely used, correct? People played games, but no one usually "gamed." Playing chess was never considered to be "gaming." Why is that? Is it because it was far less common for chess to take over a person's life, in comparison to our modern computer games?

People gamed. Just not on computers. My parents still have a huge collection of boards games they made heavy use of before their first Mac. (Yeah, my parents started gaming on a Mac 128k they loaned from a friend, they bought their own 512ke shortly afterward).

[Chris O'Brien]

Originally posted by tavilach:
It's just funny to me when I hear someone proclaim, "I'm a gamer!" When you look at the word "gamer," it refers to one who plays games. Think about the word "game," and then you might see why this seems somewhat funny to me. Tic Tac Toe is also a game. Imagine spending your life playing Tic Tac Toe.

For that analogy to work, 'gamers' would only play one computer game for their whole life. That is obviously not the case. Maybe you were going for genres? 'Gamers' are addicted just to computer/video games and other people can be addicted to board games? In which case this is definitely not a new phenomenon, there's just a new, more exciting, more prevalent genre around now (depending on your view computer games, of course).