Binks’ comment is the meat and potatoes of what needs to be said. So, read it too and be fulfilled.
All I have to say to Wolfgang is that his narrow mindedness regarding “gamer culture” is disheartening. It is beyond my understanding how gamers develop this paranoid fascination with the gamer culture.
Gaming is an industry.
Binks’ point is grounded deeply in the reality of the situation, and I think he is the best authority on this because Binks’ is not a fanboy by any means. He has dabbled in a bit of everything, but has never become so fanatically attached to a brand or a console to the point where it would cloud his judgment. And he makes an excellent point.
Gaming is not a culture. It is an industry. The industry caters to people with different needs, desires, and expectations for gaming. The “console wars” - so labeled by gamers who wish to give their pastime some level of console importance - are irrelevant because there is no definitive gaming experience. People find entertainment in different things.
Whether you are playing a heated first person shooter with some faceless strangers online or casually harvesting fruits with your girlfriend while you both play Animal Crossing: Wild World, gaming offers a vast assortment of experiences for everyone to enjoy. Not every experience appeals to everyone. Although first person shooters may be popular with the people you know, some ‘gamers’ like my girlfriend wouldn’t go near them. Yet, my girlfriend rocks as Princess Peach in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and was playing Civlizations and Alpha Centauri before a young Danger had introduced me to the genius of Sid Meier.
So, who can we call a gamer and who not a gamer? What can we call part of gaming culture? It is all bullshit! A complex system of naming things to assign importance to our hobbies. If people did this about coin collecting or book clubs, people would get laughed at. Gamers and the console war is a massive discussion over people’s favourite colours. How can you justify saying what is better and what is worse?
Anyway…yeah. The whole thing is completely subjective. I mean…you claim that things must be in HD graphics, but Mega Man 9 just came out purposefully made to look like an old school NES game, and it is the talk of the town. People get different experiences from different things. Myst, Riven, and Myst III are aging games, and yet I still love playing them. Graphics are meaningless. The experience, and the entertainment value we can get out of games is important.
So, as long as we’re all having a good time playing games, who gives a shit about anything else?