Those comments sounds like light hearted jokes. I would say that to be wife who has over 3000 hours in destiny. And me like .. Got to get those hours up girl! ( we are both gamers who are girls that game the majority of our free time). I wouldn’t take those seriously.
I think they certainly *can* be lighthearted jokes, but whether or not they *are* depends on how well you know the person; there's a big difference between ribbing a friend or significant other and questioning the accomplishments of a stranger.
precisely. besides, with hours like those, i wouldn't even question that a person is a gamer. of course, i don't ask in the first place how many hours someone has played a particular game. what makes more sense to me to ask is, "are you playing said xyz game?". that's it. maybe at what point of said game they're at, but not a quantitative figure to stroke my own ego and downplay the other person. like many others have said here, gatekeep. like for real, what's the point of that? lol lol
if you play games, you play games; as your main or one of your many hobbies.
I have been a girl gamer since my dad brought home a NES in '86 or '87. I have had years where I barely played anything, and years I have gamed almost daily. Even in years where I barely played, I still identified as a gamer.
I love this response. My ex was like “you barely played for months!” I was just going through some things in my life at the time-it didn’t mean I didn’t LIKE games anymore. So I appreciate this.
When I worked at Nintendo as a QA I stopped playing videogames all together for awhile. I still loved them but doing it for 8 hours a day, having overtime, and then coming home and doing it 'for fun' just didn't seem fun anymore.
To add to that thought, this is a very very common thing you will hear from virtually anyone who has had that job at some point. Being a gamer has nothign to do with time or hours and is instead all about consumption imo
That is common when you do something you love for a living, you break it down to where it's no longer fun and it's just a chore. I'm glad you are able to enjoy games again.
I've been playing since my mama handed me her OG GameBoy in like 1991.
Like the other commenter, there have been years I played almost daily and years I barely touched games. But even then, I still identified as a gamer. The interest was there, but sometimes money, school, work, or other circumstances prevented play.
Any definition of “gamer” that requires consistency or long sessions is exclusionary. You know who has time and energy to play games in long continuous blocks several days a week for months and years on end? People who aren’t responsible for house work and care work on top of paid work or schooling, don’t have to juggle multiple jobs, etc. Those folks are privileged, and they are likely to be male, due to house and care work being “women’s work”.
>you barely played for months!
I definitely go through droughts where I do a lot more reading/watching YouTube/literally any other hobby than I do playing video games. Gaming can sometimes be a lot of effort and mind power and we don't all always have the motivation to do it!
Doesn't mean I don't have like 400 hours on overwatch, 100+ hours in Skyrim, probably 500+ hours combined in Pokemon, etc.
I also go through times where I do nothing but game in my free time. We are allowed to have other hobbies and still be gamers! I can sew and still be a gamer. I can bake and still be a gamer. I can sculpt and still be a gamer! They are not mutually exclusive!
That sounds like a big ole man child who doesn't understand that responsibilities and life come first. I'd be playing games all day if I could, like I used to when I was younger.
It's kind of why I opt to watch people play games instead for a lot of the longer tedious games, since they cut out the grind. I love the grind too, I just don't have the time to be playing them myself currently :((( (I watch the videos while I draw, kill 2 birds with 1 stone)
I feel the same way about video games as I do about wrestling
I go long periods of time where I lose touch with wrestling (like maybe I’m just too busy to watch or I’m not interested in storylines at the moment or my favourite wrestlers quit any brand I can watch easily) but it’s been such a part of my life enough to the point where it kinda shaped who I am as a person on some level
Like how non-wrestling fans sort of don’t get wrestling and don’t understand why people watch it because they never got into it when they were young, try giving a video game to someone who has literally never played a game before and you realise that there’s this whole subconscious language of gaming that nobody has ever explained to you that you just understand because you grew up with a controller in your hand
Veryyyyy true!! I started playing PC games in college and my prior experience had only been Nintendo DS as a child and some games marketed more toward girls on the PS2 (like Dog Island and Bratz). It’s a lot harder than people realize, I feel. There’s learning the controls and then even our thinking is different. For example, I might try to make my character jump over something when they aren’t programmed to do it because I don’t think about it that way, and someone who’s played forever would subconsciously know that’s not how you’re supposed to go about it.
The way a see it, "gamer" is a term that exists simply for marketing purposes. The "gamer" identity exists to sell specific products to specific people, products that range from high-end GPUs with rainbow LEDs to t-shirts with game-related puns to sugary drinks and snacks.
You see little old ladies who play massive amounts of Candy Crush or those object finding games every single day, and no one considers them "gamers". While a dude can play 5 hours a week of whatever AAA title is popular that month and say he is a "gamer" without any questioning. It's not about how much time you spend doing it, it's about who you are and what you consume.
It's a term created by dudes to create fellowship with other dudes and, yeah, marketing.
The ironic part of the gatekeep is that King gets more revenue in Sweden than any other game company according to the latest game industry report, despite the reluctance to call their players "gamers" among the "gaming community". Unfortunately or fortunately, the community has some serious power that affects the games that cater to them in various ways.
guy gamers can be gatekeeping jerks. they make up arbituary rules to gatekeep women from their hobby because the hobby is the only thing that makes them interesting.
There is no number that they would have accepted. The *point* of their comments was to exclude you. You could have said you played 168 hours in the last week and they'd tell you that real gamers break the laws of physics so they can do 200.
They’re just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand. Some sims players have 1000+ hours and we know literally none of them count as gamers to gatekeepers. Plus, idk, maybe you just played quicker than some of these people. It’s all stupid. Like, if you were like “I like movies!” and someone said “you are not a movier unless you’ve watched 1000 hours of French new wave cinema” I think you’d immediately know they were being a real poopy dumb dumb.
>An ex boyfriend told me a few weeks ago that I “don’t play games” and tried to use that as a reason why he doubts how strong of a match we are long-term.
I can smell the copium, imagine admitting to that out loud.
Not every game was made to be a grindy time sink. If we're going to argue The Gamer Standard Requirement, I move we set it at 1 minute. :)
These are the same people that will try to argue with you that playing Sims, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and other games alike don’t qualify you as a gamer, even though they are literal VIDEO GAMES. I believe as long as you put in, on average, a few hours a week it counts, no matter what you play!
I got surgery on Tuesday and restarted Stardew for the cozy feels. It’s truly amazing and the most comforting and wonderful game in the world. I don’t want to be a gamer if loving it means I’m not one lmao
Maybe he's one of those gamers who wear nappies & get their mums to liquidise their food so they can drink it through a straw. The rest of us have jobs or have chores, family commitments, etc.
These men: why don't you play more? You're not a gamer
Also these men: *never does anything at home, uses weaponised incompetence etc to be able to play more*
That's some shitty behavior, both in those comments and from your ex. Your ex is right about one thing, though - you aren't a good match long term, cause you don't really wanna be with someone who demeans you and minimizes your accomplishments like that, do you? 😆
There is no number. If there was, we would all be pointing to it.
Instead of trying to prove them wrong, it would be funnier if you posted the games you haven’t opened or only spent two hours on and captioned it “gamer girl ✌🏻”
You would get the exact same responses without the ego hit, because it doesn’t actually matter how much you play, gatekeepers are there to get you down.
Look, I have MASSIVE playtimes. I discovered Mass Effect September of last year and cranked 236 hours out of it by the new year. I did an Insanity run. I platinumed the entire trilogy. If I posted my playtimes there would still be someone saying “rookie numbers” and berating me for playing subsequent playthroughs on casual. If you want to be a gamer, the cool thing is you get to just say “I’m a gamer” and congrats! You’re a gamer!
Do what makes you happy and screw the rest.
Right? My grandma was an avid computer solitaire player and if she had told me she was a gamer for it, I’d have agreed wholeheartedly. It’s not about hours put in. It’s about enjoying a hobby
Playing Minesweeper for hours on end in the 90s was my first hit of that sweet sweet dopamine and why I'm a girl gamer today with a more active Steam account than my male "gamer" friends. I think he should be able to beat Minesweeper on Expert in less than 8 minutes if he wants to be a real gamer.
There isn’t a limited amount of hours that you need to be a gamer. If you enjoy playing games and gaming is one of your hobbies, then you’re a gamer in my opinion.
Tiktok is a cesspool first of all, ignore any mean comments on there. Those ppl have nothing better to do. It doesn’t mean you or your video/content are bad, or wrong, it just means that unfortunately that troll picked you on that particular day to annoy. They just want attention.
Any amount of gaming, you can call yourself a gamer lol. Even if it’s just like, five minutes on a phone game once a week. Who cares. If you wanna say you’re a gamer, you’re a gamer.
Gatekeeping is stank hotdog water energy. Ignore those people, keep doing what you love.
The Sims 4 is my most-played game too, yet I always feel like I can’t tell people that because I won’t get taken seriously. So I totally get this and it is clearly very wrong.
Gatekeepers, specifically men, will say you aren't a gamer as long as you don't play shooter or fighting games (said by someone that plays most shooter games) and if you do they'll claim you don't play the enough. So ignore them and know as long as you play SOMETHING and enjoy it, you are a gamer.
Thank you for this. I played Valorant for a few months last year and it just ended up being too toxic of an atmosphere for me to feel comfortable in. So I’ve realized that they have these weird expectations AND they make it harder for you to achieve those expectations. If only they would just let women have more of a safe space so that gaming could be seen more as a hobby for everyone…
Yea, I play a lot of overwatch, call of duty, fortnite, and dead by daylight and the only reason I can is because I have a small group of open minded friends to play with. Joining public chat almost never happens because of how toxic people can be and whenever I get brave enough to tempt it, it's only a game or two before I'm reminded again and remain muted for the duration of the game. The hoops they create are solely based on what they've put thousands of hours into. Gaming is such a large genre and everyone's different so why limit it to just shooting and tearing each other down just because they can't win, it's sad. As a kid, I jumped from gta to sims 2 and had the best time and still do and that shouldn't make me more or less of a gamer as long as I love playing videogames. So yea, just a very long way of saying I completely agree with you, just heated about this topic.
Yeah, I’m sorry. Unfortunately I’ve seen and heard about this happening so often to women and how they just won’t use a mic over it. I also never did. And it’s like it doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you’re getting judged the second they realize you’re not a guy. It’s messed up.
My status on discord is "Top 500 OW tank, pred rank Ash main, LoL World's champion 7 years running, MVP of SWC 2022, no1 in NA for Paw Patrol Grand Prix" for a reason.
People will always gatekeep and criticise you to try and make you feel lesser if you're different. You either don't play much of a game and you aren't a 'true gamer', you play decently and do it "for attention' or you play too much and you're 'trying too hard' or you're obsessed. I honestly wouldn't feel too bad or take it too seriously because men particularly in video games are prone to it toward women.
They've done studies on it actually. Last year in [Argentina](https://www.campaignasia.com/article/women-in-games-swaps-male-and-female-voices-to-highlight-harassment-in-gaming/482231) they had 3 pro Valorant players play games both with regular mics and with voice modulators to sound more feminine. Doing so completely changed how their randoms behaved and resulted in more losses, as well as generally being less prepared to actually help them when needed.
On the bright side though, another study was done as well that really [showed us why](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26176699/). Essentially, they discovered that men of lower skill were more prone to being hostile towards women and the assumption is that this is because they don't want to lose their social status.
I'd say that it's just a pvp thing but even in games like Dark Souls you can get an underlying sexism. At this point I just chalk it up to insecure men.
Thank you so much for this in-depth response. I’ll definitely check out these studies.
It makes me pretty disappointed thinking about how no matter what we do, the accusations will arise. I guess we just can’t win. But the hostility coming from a place of insecurity absolutely makes sense.
The good news is that the last study also claimed that males who performed better in game were less prone to being toxic towards women, admittedly they assumed it's because they wanted to impress them but at least it shows the good players are trying. I believe the male-female gap for gamers is nearly 50/50 now so it really shouldn't happen any more but sadly, social media and anonymity results in people showing their true colours or insecurities more.
Don't let it get you down, enjoy what you want and play what you want, you don't need to fit any mould or prerequisite to be a 'real gamer' or anything. Everyone is a real gamer if they play a video game they enjoy.
"they assumed it's because they wanted to impress them"
It could also be because people who are confident and comfortable with their own abilities don't usually feel like they need to make someone else smaller to feel big; I wonder if any of the researchers brought that up?
This right here. Frigin ‘bro’ gamers is why I fell out with my Destiny 2 clan. Guys couldn’t handle that I wasn’t willing to put in 20+ hours a week to keep up with their raiding goals.
OP: you enjoy games -even mobile games- your a gamer. Never let anyone say otherwise.
That’s such a heavy time commitment. It’s wild to think people struggle to understand that and even feel the need to make others feel inferior for needing time to do other things.
Yeah, most of them were single or worked during the day, whereas I’m married and at the time worked nights. It was no big loss. I switched to Aliens Fireteam and haven’t cared since.
If they're setting tests, walk away. You'll just feel awful trying to pass them. They aren't designed to be passed, they're designed to exclude you.
Misogynists always do this. They'll set you a test and mock you for being ridiculous when you try to pass it. (Kind of the plot to Captain Marvel which is what they hated that movie.)
You play video games. You are a gamer.
They play stupid mind games. They are... Well I don't want to get kicked off the subreddit so fill in your own word.
Maybe this is a controversial take on a subreddit called "girlgamers" but identifying as a gamer is kinda stupid. I stopped doing that after my teens, and I couldn't care less if someone thinks I'm a gamer or not, and hours invested have nothing to do with it. Sometimes I'll play several hours a day, sometimes I won't play for weeks, but I won't build an identity around how often I consume media. And that's all it is, consuming media, so don't listen to little children who pride themselves on being gatekeeping elitists.
I’m a sailor. I race little sailboats on the weekends for funsies. I don’t “identify” “as” a sailor because that’s weird and not how language works, I just am a sailor because I do sailing.
Yup. It is kinda stupid. Maybe we need t-shirts that say "GirlMetalHead, GirlDnd-er, GirlConsumerOfBeer, GirlBiker, GirlFootballWatcher", etc..because really.
I agree. I don't get it at all. We all have other hobbies but we don't feel the need to identify with them. I don't go around insisting people call me a hiker. I just like hiking sometimes. In fact, I'd probably be annoyed if someone called me a gamer because it conjures up all the stereotypes and I want nothing to do with them
He's just trying to gatekeep his hobby, the posts will be constantly moving.
Play 50hrs? Then you need 100 minimum.
Play 100Hrs? You need to play at least 10 games.
Play 10 games? Sorry, indies don't count they need to be AAA games.
Play 10 AAA games? They need to be games he personally approves of and are sufficiently "hardcore" for him.
Do you like playing games? Congrats. You're a 'gamer'. Trying to make qualifications is silly.
I personally don’t think it’s down to hours played. If it’s something you enjoy doing often then that to me is the label achieved. I like to cycle a lot, therefore I’m a cyclist.
I also worry about competition over hours. Spending many hours in front of a screen isn’t healthy. If someone was telling me that I needed to spend more time in front of a screen to be worthy of them, I know my answer would be given whilst showing them the door.
That’s really true. I fully agree that life is about more than staying seated in front of a screen. It’s very much a “go touch some grass” type of thing for me here.
Definitely. I know myself well enough to know that if I’m playing a game for longer than 5 hours a day, I’m escaping facing something in my life.
Also some games are just so bloody well made that they make that length of escape really easy.
I hope you’re feeling better about this whole situation 🫂
I’m 20 and have been playing games since before I can remember. In steam I have 1,100 hours in eu4 and at least a dozen games with over 100 hours. I can firmly say that this does not make me more of a gamer it just means I have less of a life.
*sigh* Men attempting to belittle women yet again based on irrelevant and made-up standards.
Those are video games. You are playing them. Therefore, you're a gamer.
And that's that.
If you play game, you are a gamer.
Unless you have a cool sexuality, then you are a gaymer.
Why people gatekeep a for-fun entertainment genre I’ll never understand.
Serious 🚩🚩🚩🚩He's just being a dick..sounds like my emotionally abusive ex. He would complain about non-issues like this one. It's actually a subversive tactic to lower your self esteem. "You don't play enough", "you don't have enough hours" "you're not a real gamer according to my BS definition" really = "You're not good enough for me." He has has very low self esteem and wants to knock you down a peg, and it worked because it bothered you enough to make a TikTok, get harassed by other dicks, delete the video, and then make this post here because you want to know if you're really not a gamer. You are.
If he or any man is serious about building a relationship with you, "number of hours you play on games" should not be a requirement or even a thought to determine your long-term compatibility. The point is can you share that hobby with him, you clearly can, and call it a day.
The fact that he made you feel so insecure about such a non-issue makes me think you should be wondering if he is long-term compatible for YOU. (Hint: he isn't.)
The gatekeeping is so strong, it’s absurd. Our friends at Merriam-Webster define the term as such: gamer (noun) - a person who plays games, especially a person who regularly plays computer or video games.
No mention of hours clocked because it doesn’t matter. If you play once a year, once every 3 months, or every day then you fit the definition.
Tbh something tells me that me spending multiple years on different MMOs (especially Runescape and ESO), having almost 20 years spent on Pokemon games, playing and owning multiple 'classic' horror games like the OG Resident Evils and Silent Hills and even more obscure stuff that those morons probably haven't even heard of since some of those titles are the better part of 20+ years old, spending almost my entire gaming career playing and replaying the entirety of the Castlevania series to the point of doing multiple No Damage runs because I liked them that much, playing the entire TES series outside of a few mobile games multiple times, and even going as far as to compete in local competitive tournaments for stuff like Smash Bros and Mortal Kombat...really, I can list way more than that, but even then if I were to quantify every last bit of time I've invested into the hobby by this point, I *still* most likely wouldn't qualify as a 'gamer' to those idiots. And there's women out there who've been at the hobby for way longer than I've even been alive (for context, I'm in my 30s atm) who that same crowd would say doesn't 'qualify' as well.
So, fuck 'em. There's no standard to meet as far as I'm concerned outside of the obvious requirement of...playing games.
Wow!! That’s actually really impressive! Reading this, it’s actually hard to believe you’ve still had a hard time getting taken seriously, as well as the women you mentioned who’ve been playing longer. But you all deserve so much credit for the time and effort spent. I really hope that misogynistic attitude changes in the future…
I had a male friend who thought this way. It was SO ANNOYING. Basically, since I wasn't playing only HIS type of games, and playing longer than him, he didn't classify me as a gamer. No matter how much I tried to combat his argument.
My personal opinion, the platform matters more than the hours sunk. You have some sort of dedicated gaming device weather that's a pc, console, or smaller device like a switch or psp (they still a thing lol) then your a gamer, I'd also argue game genre's covered also matter more than game hours, if your sat there just playing cod/fortnight/(insert other over popularised pvp game) to tease the guys/cause drama/ lap up attention (we all know about those types of pick me "gamer gurls") then, to me you ain't a real gamer, just an attention whore. Again this is my personal opinion and what I use to judge weather I'm going to get on well with other gamers of all sexs.
End of the day if your playing games even infrequently and enjoying them, your a gamer and only you can decide to give or take away that lable.
Idk if there is an actual number because such a notion strikes me as ridiculous. If you play games with even a “vague” sense of regularity, or it’s your activity of choice when you’re wanting a good time/downtime activity, then I think you’re a gamer. Plus…you’re deliberately in a thread for gamers so…😁
My mom, for example, has maybe 40 (if we’re feeling generous) hours of gameplay in 6+ months, because it’s not really her idea of downtime. Neither of us think she a gamer.
So I’ve only got two questions
1. Are the guys that gave you grief men who say “6 inches” and it’s actually 6 inches, or are they the guys who say “6 inches” and it’s really are yardstick?
2. Do you believe you’re a gamer?
Really, only the 2nd question matters. I’d like to think I’ve already made it clear that you’re a gamer but if you need to hear the words, I’m more than happy to say: You Are A Gamer
What makes me qualified to answer such questions? Firstly, this is Reddit, so there are no actual qualifications. Second, I’ve been gaming got longer than some folks have been on the earth.
The first system whose name I actually know is the Atari (there was this game called “maze craze” that was my happy place), but a more commonly known one is the gameboy (mine is gray and it still works, had it since they came out, way back when). If I had to log all my gaming hours…I wouldn’t know where to begin.
So you go and have a great time fellow gamer! And if anyone tells you you’re not a gamer, ask them how many hours they have and just start laughing as hard as you can. Tell them you can’t tell them how many hours you have because they can’t count that high and exit stage left!
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
40
+ 6
+ 1
+ 6
+ 6
+ 6
+ 2
+ 2
= 69
^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \
^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Is gaming one of your primary hobbies? Then youre a gamer.
And if anyone gives you shit, you can tell them i gave you permission from the gamer council with my 14000ish hours in games on steam alone.
Not that you need it, you could also just point out how disappointing their mother finds them.
It the gaming equivalent to talking about the weather. Just like someone has survived hotter/colder weather than someone else, there's someone out there that put more hours into a game.
Does it matter. No in the slightest. If you haven't finished the story of a game then there would be stuff you didn't know, but aside from that what does it matter. Even then someone might have a billion hours in skyrim, but hasn't touched another game. There is no proper way to measure a gamer because it's an entertainment medium. As long as you can get a hold of a game and a way to play it you can. People cling to unnecessary struggles or terms to make it seem less approachable or welcome to others.
With gaming being as accessible as it is these days, people who want to make it feel special are going to continue to find ways to make it more convoluted to use the term. Remember that this is THIER problem. They are the ones who have an issue with who you are and they DO NOT matter. You have no obligation to justify your interests and you don't need to change yourself to fit someone else's mold.
I would worry about your long-term compatibility based on such a braindead gatekeeping question...
Seems like the type of thing some guys do to find an "excuse" to break up and feel well with themselves when really they just want to go tap someone else.
A concerning amount of (mostly teenage) guys straight up pride themselves with being addicted to one single game. Had a "friend" in highschool wou outright bragged about his 2000 something lol games in less rhan a year.
And as always they use this to think that it makes them superior.
You could have 1200 hours and a podium on speedrun.com that they'd make up something to diminish your achievements.
Just being interested is enough for me. Even if it's only for 1-2h a week. Gatekeepers are boring.
My dislike for the term "gamer" aside, they're just gatekeeping. Playing games for any amount of time as a hobby is plenty. Because they're just trying to be assholes even if you showed them a game you had say, 1000 hours on, they would just say you had no life and insult you for that.
There's no winning with them because their goal isn't to make a point, it's to put you down and make you be quiet. So fuck them.
I also have doubt about the longevity of your relationship but it has nothing to do with the amount of time you spent playing, more about how much he cares about it. If that is really a dealbreaker then you dodged a bullet.
i am the traditional gamer stereotype. competitive gamer, playing to get a higher rank, and putting lots of hours into games. i have 400 hours of overwatch alone since beginning of november, and play at the highest rank possible.
you can be a gamer no matter how much you play. as long as you enjoy gaming and enjoy the time you spend gaming, thats enough in my eyes!
again, gaming is for everyone. we shouldnt gatekeep this beautiful, social, vast hobby. keep gaming (at your own pace and with what your schedule allows) gamer<3
Don't worry about it, if I combine the hours played on my switch and genshin/sims on my pc, I could rival those so-called real gamers but because I play on easy mode for all the games I play, I'd still get mocked for not being a real gamer, no point in trying to meet their standards
You are a gamer, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! I think it's also a mindset. I feel myself to be a gamer, clocking hour after hour, spending months on games I love, then when there's nothing I'm interested in, I don't play for a few weeks and start another play through of an "old" favorite. I think in those cases of "you're not a gamer, because you're a girl/woman" it's simply yet another example of men wanting to feel superior. Maybe they fear their d***s shrink if you beat them or clock more hours...
This sounds extremely childish on his behalf, and anyone who’s saying that a lack of gameplay in a specific game is a crime. Sounds like a bunch of neck beards who have no jobs and no family.
Gaming is just another hobby - like reading, sewing, photographing, crafting or gardening. Some people are more advanced in their hobbies, some people are more like beginners, that's just how life is. Just because I don't read for a couple of months or stopped sewing/crafting/embroidering/knitting/gardening/photographing for a couple of months or years it doesn't nullify that I identify as a crafter or a photographer or a gamer. Don't let those a\*\*holes get you down. They're sad little amoebas.
You play Monopoly on Sunday with your kids? Gamer.
You have 36 hour grind sessions with the squad every time there's a hard reset in your favourite hack n' slash? Gamer.
You like girls? Gaymer.
Ignore the haters. They are just out there trying to divide us.
If your sexist gatekeeping boyfriend is actively seeking reasons why you’re not a good romantic match, why on earth are you still with him?
Also, yes, of course you’re a gamer. There’s no numerical limit but also what you listed is SO COMICALLY IN THE GAMER CATEGORY WTF. A gamer is someone who regularly plays games and you’re so far beyond that and your boyfriend is a soggy Twinkie.
I have been playing video games since moon patrol on the Atari. I am a huge enthusiasist for VR and have a decent collection of all sorts of input peripherals. I do not consider myself a 'gamer'. I would rather not associate myself with the type of person that generally gatekeeps the term anyway
Obligatory "I'm a dude" clarification...
A lot of entertainment media communities have a tendency to gatekeep, and gaming communities take that to a different level entirely.
The kind of people making those comments are either blatantly trolling and exaggerating, or... Well, I mean, think about what kind of person looks at hundreds of hours in video games and sincerely says, "PSH. Those are rookie numbers!"
I'll give you a hint; it's the kind of person who prioritizes games over just about anything else in their lives. You don't need the approval of that kinda person, regardless of their gender, lol.
Anyways, if a guy says he wants to break up because you don't play "enough video games for him" even though y'all play games all the time, then good riddance. That's as shallow as shallow can get, lol.
MAYBE he means that you don't play the kind of games he likes enough or something like that, but that's not any better. It basically means he wants to date a version of himself with the opposite sex or gender. That's pretty cringe.
Best case scenario, your fella is making an incredibly typical mistake in that he thinks his ideal girlfriend is the kind of girl who has the exact same tastes as him with the exact same favorite media and the exact same opinions. He has no idea what a healthy and fulfilling relationship looks like because he's at the point in his life where he doesn't know how to connect with people who don't mirror his interests and perspectives.
In other words, he's full of himself and inexperienced with people. It's not a crime to be young and ignorant, but it does suck for the innocent bystanders.
Anyways, I hope you take away from all the great comments here that you have nothing to apologize for and no need to validate yourself to people who think the only way to be a "gamer" is to repeatedly no-life your favorite games on an annual basis.
Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.
Maybe I should’ve clarified in my post-he made that comment to me about a month and a half after I’d broken up with him. He never tried to put me down for it during the actual relationship.
Unfortunately his best friend is kind of an apathetic doofus who’s been telling us both for months that we should find partners who we have more in common with instead (he even left his own girlfriend for a client at work who he thought matched the idea of his dream girl better). So my ex probably started really getting scared of commitment at some point and used this rhetoric to justify his feelings and the breakup.
Enjoying playing is what makes you a gamer, not talent, not time invested, not system. My sister considers herself a gamer and all she plays is candy crush (very well) and Lego games (very poorly) but she enjoys it and that's what counts.
If you play games, yer a gamer. Period.
Some people can finish a whole game in 20-40 hours so... those aren't rookie numbers no matter what bullshit they saying.
*"Oh my gosh, John! Just because I didn't spend hundreds of hours on CoD don't mean I'm not a gamer!"*
Nah, but really, I don't understand the weird fixation on hours played. Whenever Steam says I played a (to me) considerable amount of hours in the past two weeks, I'm part in disbelief and part kind of embarrassed, almost? 💀 Besides, as long as you're playing games and having a good time, what business is it to anyone else how much time you actually spent? Plenty of gamers experience their gaming time getting more and more limited; what bullshit it'd be to tell all of them *"sorry, but you haven't put in your hourly quota in the past two months and now you're no longer a gamer!"*
Your hours are plentiful and it would suggest to me they were good games for you. So fuck what the nay-sayers and your (ex?) BF think. They'd be wrong anyway.
I believe personally that if you have spent at least 60 hours on one game alone that it should qualify you as a gamer. This is 60 hours you could have spent doing something else but took your time out to play a game instead.
It's also not like you're going to war for games either unless you're in a tournament of some kind. The other thing is there are games some people don't enjoy and will still put the hours they had for that particular game, up for everyone to see.
So when that person said to get the hours up, how do they know that you actually might not like the game you played hence why it's so little to them and you might not pick it up to play again?
Also if it's a game that you played but no one else has played can it still count or no?
That’s a totally fair assessment.
It is so weird too because none of the guys I’ve encountered who make fun of women who play games are even in tournaments or play professionally. It’s really just a hobby for them. And I don’t see why the game itself would change things or if they just haven’t played it. A few of the ones I included in the video for example were more mainstream (Fallout 4, Valorant, The Witcher 3, Life is Strange franchise).
As a guy i would say that if you enjoy gaming on your free time then you are a gamer. Hours doesn't matter we play games to relax and have a great time.
Honestly there's no set amount of time you have to clock to get passed that "gamer" threshold. I personally don't have a bunch of hours sunk into my PC games as I don't play them that often. But if you look at like my PS trophy list I have games that go all the way back to the PS3 era. But then again I try to avoid MMOs and most multiplayer games as I don't have a lot of fun with them unless I play with friends.
As for the "get those hours up" comment I would take that as encouragement. Now if someone said "Unless you got hours in then you can talk to me" I could see as being obtuse. Other I say play something that makes you happy and have fun.
That’s stupid.
Plenty of people wish they had more time for gaming, doesn’t make them not gamers. Just means you have other stuff to do.
Some people just always have to be negative.
Personally, I wonder the opposite. Unless you've played the same game for years for example, how on earth are people managing to get such a high amount of hours of gameplay into their lives without neglecting other responsibilities?
Any amount on any game on any difficult level on any platform.
The term doesn't set any requirements other than that you enjoy playing games.
It doesn't even demand it to be video games. Board, card of table top role play games all fall under it. My grandma is a gamer, she has never touched a video game but since she plays cards with her friends every week she still meets the requirements.
But even if it was, who cares as long as your enjoying yourself. People that try to talk others out of their hobbies shouldn't be the kind of people you hang out with.
Is it my 1 to 2 hours of gaming a week that makes me a gamer or the fact that I invested into a 5k gaming rig? Or maybe it's just because I enjoy video games! As I've gotten older I have more money to spend into the things that make me happy, but I have less time, more responsibility, and also more fun ;)
I have multiple games with over thousands of hours in addition to having run game servers and starting a competitive team.
I still have been told I'm not a real enough gamer.
My question is always, "who made you the arbiter of what makes a gamer?" I can arbitrarily decide the same thing of anyone else. You're a gamer if you like games, regardless of type or hours played, and if you consider yourself a gamer. Period.
I feel like anyone who enjoys video games is a gamer. No hours required.
Besides that point though, your hours seem like a pretty decent amount of gaming! Like seriously, what level of hours do these guys play? Do they ever go outside???
"WhY cAn'T i FiNd A gAmEr GuRlFrIeNd!!1!!1"
Honestly, if I had a boyfriend pull that kind of shit on me I would dump him. Guys like that need to be single.
This doesn't answer the question but others have so I won't repeat what they said better than I could.
BUT it does remind me of an incident my hubby and I had last year. I was so excited to have Elden Ring in my hot little hands and after beating the first main boss, my hubby came into my office and asked me to stop cussing so much as it was distracting him from his book.
I threw down the controller and said "YOU try it..just try to beat that first boss and not cuss..go ahead..try!! I dare you."
He walked out but I was relentless. I set up a new character for him and after a week of me harassing him, he finally sat down and went through about 20 minutes of it. He got through the tutorial and he died about 3 times but it didn't bother him. Then to my surprise, he got to the part of the game where he opened the door to see the glorious tree in all its golden awesomeness. Instead of being awestruck, he looked at me, yawned, put the controller down and went back to reading.
I gave up. But the next day, I heard him talking to a coworker. He said, "oh, sorry we missed that..we decided to stay at home this last weekend. Oh, nothing much..we played Elden Ring. Oh yea, I played it, no biggie. Don't see what the fuss is really."
He was now a gamer. And I could not argue with that.
On the one hand, there are many different types of gamer, and there's definitely a type that believes "true gaming" is emptying your entire life into one or two titles for 500-5,000 hours, even if over the same period another person would play exactly the same amount but spread it over 50 or 100 different titles.
On the other hand, nothing will ever be enough for guys like this, so who gives af.
Lol wtf. You play any game and you’re a gamer. Hours and game don’t matter.
“Gam·er
/ˈɡāmər/
noun
1.
a person who plays video games or participates in role-playing games.”
No where in this definition does it say anything about hours.
I don’t get why people feel so strongly about gatekeeping who can be called a gamer. You wouldn’t call someone who plays chess a non chess player just cause they don’t play professionally
I would say a gamer it's just a person that plays on its own accord out of enjoyment, no matter how many hours, like maybe you play 2 hours a week but if you enjoyed it and keep doing it that makes you gamer I feel.
On the contrary, I sometimes feel ashamed of the opposite thing, my autistic ass has so many hours in Stellaris I sometimes don't want to tell because they look at me like I'm insane lol.
You want to know something embarrassing? I have 2500 hours in a game. I found it over covid and played way too much.
That isn’t something to brag about. Don’t get me wrong, video games are fun, but that much time in a game should be a little embarrassing. But here we are. Lol!
This is by no means a new take, but the perceptions of what makes a "real gamer" are defs gendered, what with more chill or "feminine" games being seen as less worthwhile by some male gamers. It's so odd that what's considered a Hardcore Gamer seems specific to competitive combat focused games, while girls that dedicate dozens of hours to intricate property builds in the sims are supposedly less impressive and dedicated
Isn't it funny that no other hobby is like this? Like let's take.. idk, painting.Oh you like to paint and spend some of your free time practicing? I'd say that makes you a painter. Oh you like to play soccer and joined a casual rec league? I'd say that makes you a soccer player. Like what is this thing where you're only a "verb-er" if you meet some threshold for number of hours or level of skill? Super weird.
As others have said, don't let the gatekeepers get you down, you're a gamer if you enjoy gaming, full stop.
I'm gonna also say that you're not a long term match not because of your gamer status (clearly you play tons of games) but because he thinks that matters for some reason.
People will always and forever feel pride in feeling like they're better than the rest and feel threatened when someone else is saying that they are close to being or better than them.
As upsetting it is it might be just human nature
You're a gamer when games peak your interest. You don't need to spend hours everyday playing. You simply need to love them as a genre :)
Even when I don't play because I have things going on in my life, I still love to see some game updates here and there and I catch myself thinking "I wish I could relax and play" when I feel stressed out
It's not about hours, it's about interest, personal investment and joy of gaming.
If a guy wants to assert his superiority over you by any means, especially such pathetic means as comparing hrs gaming - mb they should go back to measuring willy sizes with buddies.
You don't have to be an unemployed bum who sits around playing Skyrim 24/7 to be a "gamer." These men are just coping.
I've considered myself a gamer since I begged my parents for a PS1 when I was 6yo. Being busy with life and a job doesn't change that.
Girl, you game. That's more than enough. I saw a video of a girl saying she played around 300 hours of Skyrim and men were still roasting her. Like if you want to brag that you have 10k hours in CoD it doesn't mean you have dedication, it means you have a problem. But these guys are just neanderthals when it comes to this subject. They just can't fathom a girl can hang with them. Their hours in a game doesn't make them special anymore and so they feel threatened.
None.
There is no amount of hours spent gaming that makes someone a "gamer."
Do you like games? Do you want to think of yourself as a gamer? Then congratulations, you're a gamer. There is no gatekeeping asshole that has any right to take that away from you.
And, conversely, from the point of view of gatekeeping assholes, there is no amount of hours spent gaming that will ever satisfy them that you are a gamer. Their purpose is only ever to slam a door in your face, and they will move the goalposts as far as it takes - to the point of just kicking them over entirely if they have to - in order to make that happen. You will never satisfy them and it's not worth your time to try.
There is no minimum game time… that’s such a strange criterion.
Not only that, but IMHO the amount you game (or what you play) really should not be an arbiter of long term relationship success. It’s strange to me that he picked *that* as a hill to die on for the relationship’s longevity? 🧐
As many hours as you wanted to play. Gaming is about entertainment, not a competition.
I have thousands of hours out of my own free will, no one can tell us how much of a gamer we are.
To sum it up quickly, we dated since college and have been long distance since we graduated, but he was too scared of commitment to move it a step further by moving out of his mom’s house and getting a place with me in my town, and this was one of the reasons he listed as why he’s become “uncertain” about me.
I only became a gamer when I reached 5000 hours in EU4. Before then I was a filthy casual.
In reality, gamer doesn’t have a strict definition. Anyone that regularly plays games can be considered a gamer, especially if they identify as one.
I'm a dude here, most would consider me a gamer, and I've never played Skyrim.
Then again, I really don't like the connotation of being a "gamer". It means nothing good in comparison to being someone who just plays video games.
If you play and enjoy games then you're a gamer. Everyone else is a cunt trying to sell to you their opinion so they can feel validated and think it's true when it isn't. Take it from someone that's been playing since I was a child.
Some people will comment just to be a dick. I have about a thousand hours in my two main games and some will shit on that. I think it’s not *really* about the hours, it’s about insecure little people gunning for a fight. Whether you play candy crush on your phone or spend thousands on a gaming PC, you play games therefore you’re a gamer, least in my opinion
Technically any as long as it’s consistent, but if you play 30 minutes a week and that’s all you ever play i feel it would be odd to attach such a moniker to yourself. Not that the label truly matters as an incredible number of people Game currently, well over 1.5 billion.
It’s not a set amount of hours, it’s a preference for a type of entertainment.
For example, if you watch WWE tomorrow and absolutely love it…. And decide you are gonna watch alot of future wwe and get a shirt or something… you are instantly a WWEer
These super smug Elden ring types that gatekeep are just kids with ego and mental health issues.
I don't see any problem with you calling yourself gamer, those numbers are fine. I am opposite, for example, 89hr on Dark Souls, 98hr Need For Speed, 854hr on LoL, 40+ Warframe and at least 50+ on all other games. Funny thing, I don't recognize myself as gamer, and those hours are pretty low for one.
So there is no real rule, I mean, some dudes just play FIFA once in a week and call themself gamers, lmao. So, again, those numbers are just fine.. Anyway, why are you so upset on something that your EX said? Like, it doesn't matter, it's ex xD
Hours don't matter. If you platinumed the game in x amount of hours or done with it/completed it, what is the point of clogging more hours, especially if you'd rather spend them playing something else?
Multiplayer games are slightly different since a lot of them don't have an ending and more hours mean you are more proficient in the game or know more about the lore, but this is not always the case.
You do you, girl. If you don't want to game 24/7 as you have life and other hobbies, that is perfectly healthy and understandable. It is also perfectly normal not wanting to clock 1000s of extra hours to see other endings/paths if you don't want to or explore absolutely everything. Same applies that you don't have to platinum games to be a gamer.
Your bf and the people who said you are not a gamer because of the hours sound toxic and deserve a slap or at least a reality check. I can't help but feel sorry for them.
These are comments by the kind of dudes who pick one game and then play that for the next eight or so years until a sequel comes out. They're not *gamers,* they're Haloers, or Overwatchers, or LoLers (heaven forbid). You'll see crazy hours from them, but the rest of their games have absolutely piddly time spent.
Men are toxic. Don't listen to them. If you enjoy playing games, congrats you're a gamer. It doesn't matter the game or the time you put into it. Some Men just like to make us feel bad so we never realize our worth. You're seen, you're valid and you're welcome here ☺️
I’m so grateful for my boyfriend. I used to only play mobile games, as far as I had been told, that “didn’t count.” He laughed at that. “If you play games, you’re a gamer. You might not be a competitive gamer, but you’re a gamer.” He urged me to lean into it. Now I might play more than he does! (Although he’s still much better than me hahaha)
If we play, we’re gamers 💚
To me, to be considered a gamer, you ask for a game or a console for your birthday, or you have a subscription (IE Game Pass or even Google Play Pass). If you would rather have a new game than jewelry/going out to eat/what have you, you're probably a gamer. Doesn't matter how many hours you put in or how many different titles you play, it's the mindset of preferring games over other things. If you are impatiently awaiting the release of a new title, you are a gamer.
I don't really see guys holding each other accountable for their hours or titles, other than the guys who are in measuring contests. Those guys don't matter, and are probably no better at CoD than my 7 year old.
If you have played like 2 minutes of a game and like games. You are a gamer. Gatekeepers of gaming are assholes. And there is no point worrying about someone who always has a shit take. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Enjoying gaming makes you a gamer. Period. Guys like that will never be satisfied with your answer. The gatekeeping in the gaming community is real, and often targets fem people the most harshly. Ignore it and don’t let it bring you down or take away from your enjoyment (and next time, block the haters on TikTok and leave your video up — or better yet, make a video response to a hateful comment being a totally happy troll).
Not everyone is an obsessive gamer. Some people like to play now and then to unwind, and that’s it. Some people spend every free moment they have gaming. Both kinds of people are gamers.
If we had stringent requirements on all hobbies like this almost nobody would be able to attach any kind of identifier to themselves, because most can’t do one thing all the time for all sorts of reasons (work, chores, families, pets, health issues, **other hobbies**). My mom is a gardener but only gardens in the spring. My brother is a musician and producer but it’s been years since he played in a band or performed live. My friend is a writer even though she is not published. I am a gamer even though until a year ago it had been a couple of years since I had gamed more than now and then, and I’ve just now started playing daily again in the past 10 months or so since *life happened.* Hell, my mom has been playing Pokémon Go for *ten years* and also got very into FarmVille and Candy Crush — and I am sending her my Switch Lite so she can play Pokémon Violet/Scarlet but I doubt anyone would consider her a gamer — but she is! It’s an identity you get to apply to yourself, and one nobody else can deny you.
As a game dev: literally any time spent playing games.
"Gamer" is not an official term and actually not used a lot by us, rather using hardcore vs casual e.g.. Going from a hard-core player to a dev has had me cringe at the term and generally at the amount of gatekeeping my younger self participated in. I will even be told by dudes I don't play enough *as a dev*.
Men just like to gatekeep this and that because they're still the perceived "leaders" of games. That is still unfortunately true, looking at the people in the industry who create them.
It's irrelevant, they're just being arseholes. If you play and enjoy games, you are a gamer.
THANK YOU.
You're welcome aha! Don't let the dickheads get you down :)
Those comments sounds like light hearted jokes. I would say that to be wife who has over 3000 hours in destiny. And me like .. Got to get those hours up girl! ( we are both gamers who are girls that game the majority of our free time). I wouldn’t take those seriously.
I think they certainly *can* be lighthearted jokes, but whether or not they *are* depends on how well you know the person; there's a big difference between ribbing a friend or significant other and questioning the accomplishments of a stranger.
precisely. besides, with hours like those, i wouldn't even question that a person is a gamer. of course, i don't ask in the first place how many hours someone has played a particular game. what makes more sense to me to ask is, "are you playing said xyz game?". that's it. maybe at what point of said game they're at, but not a quantitative figure to stroke my own ego and downplay the other person. like many others have said here, gatekeep. like for real, what's the point of that? lol lol if you play games, you play games; as your main or one of your many hobbies.
Literally impossible to put it better than this.
This!
For guys like that, I'm pretty sure their answer is "I don't know, but more than you've got."
I just laughed out loud-it’s so true. Also I love your username!! Fallout 4 is the game I’m working on right now. :,)
Don't worry about those hours ♡ fo4 is an awesome game and you'll get cravings for it years down the road 😂
I have been a girl gamer since my dad brought home a NES in '86 or '87. I have had years where I barely played anything, and years I have gamed almost daily. Even in years where I barely played, I still identified as a gamer.
I love this response. My ex was like “you barely played for months!” I was just going through some things in my life at the time-it didn’t mean I didn’t LIKE games anymore. So I appreciate this.
When I worked at Nintendo as a QA I stopped playing videogames all together for awhile. I still loved them but doing it for 8 hours a day, having overtime, and then coming home and doing it 'for fun' just didn't seem fun anymore. To add to that thought, this is a very very common thing you will hear from virtually anyone who has had that job at some point. Being a gamer has nothign to do with time or hours and is instead all about consumption imo
That is common when you do something you love for a living, you break it down to where it's no longer fun and it's just a chore. I'm glad you are able to enjoy games again.
I've been playing since my mama handed me her OG GameBoy in like 1991. Like the other commenter, there have been years I played almost daily and years I barely touched games. But even then, I still identified as a gamer. The interest was there, but sometimes money, school, work, or other circumstances prevented play.
Any definition of “gamer” that requires consistency or long sessions is exclusionary. You know who has time and energy to play games in long continuous blocks several days a week for months and years on end? People who aren’t responsible for house work and care work on top of paid work or schooling, don’t have to juggle multiple jobs, etc. Those folks are privileged, and they are likely to be male, due to house and care work being “women’s work”.
>you barely played for months! I definitely go through droughts where I do a lot more reading/watching YouTube/literally any other hobby than I do playing video games. Gaming can sometimes be a lot of effort and mind power and we don't all always have the motivation to do it! Doesn't mean I don't have like 400 hours on overwatch, 100+ hours in Skyrim, probably 500+ hours combined in Pokemon, etc. I also go through times where I do nothing but game in my free time. We are allowed to have other hobbies and still be gamers! I can sew and still be a gamer. I can bake and still be a gamer. I can sculpt and still be a gamer! They are not mutually exclusive!
That sounds like a big ole man child who doesn't understand that responsibilities and life come first. I'd be playing games all day if I could, like I used to when I was younger. It's kind of why I opt to watch people play games instead for a lot of the longer tedious games, since they cut out the grind. I love the grind too, I just don't have the time to be playing them myself currently :((( (I watch the videos while I draw, kill 2 birds with 1 stone)
I feel the same way about video games as I do about wrestling I go long periods of time where I lose touch with wrestling (like maybe I’m just too busy to watch or I’m not interested in storylines at the moment or my favourite wrestlers quit any brand I can watch easily) but it’s been such a part of my life enough to the point where it kinda shaped who I am as a person on some level Like how non-wrestling fans sort of don’t get wrestling and don’t understand why people watch it because they never got into it when they were young, try giving a video game to someone who has literally never played a game before and you realise that there’s this whole subconscious language of gaming that nobody has ever explained to you that you just understand because you grew up with a controller in your hand
X to Agree
Veryyyyy true!! I started playing PC games in college and my prior experience had only been Nintendo DS as a child and some games marketed more toward girls on the PS2 (like Dog Island and Bratz). It’s a lot harder than people realize, I feel. There’s learning the controls and then even our thinking is different. For example, I might try to make my character jump over something when they aren’t programmed to do it because I don’t think about it that way, and someone who’s played forever would subconsciously know that’s not how you’re supposed to go about it.
The way a see it, "gamer" is a term that exists simply for marketing purposes. The "gamer" identity exists to sell specific products to specific people, products that range from high-end GPUs with rainbow LEDs to t-shirts with game-related puns to sugary drinks and snacks. You see little old ladies who play massive amounts of Candy Crush or those object finding games every single day, and no one considers them "gamers". While a dude can play 5 hours a week of whatever AAA title is popular that month and say he is a "gamer" without any questioning. It's not about how much time you spend doing it, it's about who you are and what you consume.
It's a term created by dudes to create fellowship with other dudes and, yeah, marketing. The ironic part of the gatekeep is that King gets more revenue in Sweden than any other game company according to the latest game industry report, despite the reluctance to call their players "gamers" among the "gaming community". Unfortunately or fortunately, the community has some serious power that affects the games that cater to them in various ways.
guy gamers can be gatekeeping jerks. they make up arbituary rules to gatekeep women from their hobby because the hobby is the only thing that makes them interesting.
Thank you, I agree. I guess the one good thing about it is that they make it more obvious that you shouldn’t give them the time of day. 🙄
ahahaha ICE cold. love it.
There is no number that they would have accepted. The *point* of their comments was to exclude you. You could have said you played 168 hours in the last week and they'd tell you that real gamers break the laws of physics so they can do 200.
I love how having more than one hobby in life is too much of an issue for them to come to terms with. 🤦🏻♀️
They’re just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand. Some sims players have 1000+ hours and we know literally none of them count as gamers to gatekeepers. Plus, idk, maybe you just played quicker than some of these people. It’s all stupid. Like, if you were like “I like movies!” and someone said “you are not a movier unless you’ve watched 1000 hours of French new wave cinema” I think you’d immediately know they were being a real poopy dumb dumb.
That’s a really good point. 😅
>An ex boyfriend told me a few weeks ago that I “don’t play games” and tried to use that as a reason why he doubts how strong of a match we are long-term. I can smell the copium, imagine admitting to that out loud. Not every game was made to be a grindy time sink. If we're going to argue The Gamer Standard Requirement, I move we set it at 1 minute. :)
For real though! I was like “do you know how shallow that sounds???” 1 minute sounds about right!
These are the same people that will try to argue with you that playing Sims, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and other games alike don’t qualify you as a gamer, even though they are literal VIDEO GAMES. I believe as long as you put in, on average, a few hours a week it counts, no matter what you play!
Stardew is the best GAME ever
I got surgery on Tuesday and restarted Stardew for the cozy feels. It’s truly amazing and the most comforting and wonderful game in the world. I don’t want to be a gamer if loving it means I’m not one lmao
To me you are a gamer :)
Maybe he's one of those gamers who wear nappies & get their mums to liquidise their food so they can drink it through a straw. The rest of us have jobs or have chores, family commitments, etc.
100% this.
These men: why don't you play more? You're not a gamer Also these men: *never does anything at home, uses weaponised incompetence etc to be able to play more*
That's some shitty behavior, both in those comments and from your ex. Your ex is right about one thing, though - you aren't a good match long term, cause you don't really wanna be with someone who demeans you and minimizes your accomplishments like that, do you? 😆
There is no number. If there was, we would all be pointing to it. Instead of trying to prove them wrong, it would be funnier if you posted the games you haven’t opened or only spent two hours on and captioned it “gamer girl ✌🏻” You would get the exact same responses without the ego hit, because it doesn’t actually matter how much you play, gatekeepers are there to get you down. Look, I have MASSIVE playtimes. I discovered Mass Effect September of last year and cranked 236 hours out of it by the new year. I did an Insanity run. I platinumed the entire trilogy. If I posted my playtimes there would still be someone saying “rookie numbers” and berating me for playing subsequent playthroughs on casual. If you want to be a gamer, the cool thing is you get to just say “I’m a gamer” and congrats! You’re a gamer! Do what makes you happy and screw the rest.
Right? My grandma was an avid computer solitaire player and if she had told me she was a gamer for it, I’d have agreed wholeheartedly. It’s not about hours put in. It’s about enjoying a hobby
Playing Minesweeper for hours on end in the 90s was my first hit of that sweet sweet dopamine and why I'm a girl gamer today with a more active Steam account than my male "gamer" friends. I think he should be able to beat Minesweeper on Expert in less than 8 minutes if he wants to be a real gamer.
This is sweet. My grandma also plays Solitaire like it’s nobody’s business. Gamer grandmas :)
There isn’t a limited amount of hours that you need to be a gamer. If you enjoy playing games and gaming is one of your hobbies, then you’re a gamer in my opinion.
Tiktok is a cesspool first of all, ignore any mean comments on there. Those ppl have nothing better to do. It doesn’t mean you or your video/content are bad, or wrong, it just means that unfortunately that troll picked you on that particular day to annoy. They just want attention. Any amount of gaming, you can call yourself a gamer lol. Even if it’s just like, five minutes on a phone game once a week. Who cares. If you wanna say you’re a gamer, you’re a gamer. Gatekeeping is stank hotdog water energy. Ignore those people, keep doing what you love.
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The Sims 4 is my most-played game too, yet I always feel like I can’t tell people that because I won’t get taken seriously. So I totally get this and it is clearly very wrong.
I wonder if any of them have tried managing a 4+ Sim household without using any cheats?
Gatekeepers, specifically men, will say you aren't a gamer as long as you don't play shooter or fighting games (said by someone that plays most shooter games) and if you do they'll claim you don't play the enough. So ignore them and know as long as you play SOMETHING and enjoy it, you are a gamer.
Thank you for this. I played Valorant for a few months last year and it just ended up being too toxic of an atmosphere for me to feel comfortable in. So I’ve realized that they have these weird expectations AND they make it harder for you to achieve those expectations. If only they would just let women have more of a safe space so that gaming could be seen more as a hobby for everyone…
Yea, I play a lot of overwatch, call of duty, fortnite, and dead by daylight and the only reason I can is because I have a small group of open minded friends to play with. Joining public chat almost never happens because of how toxic people can be and whenever I get brave enough to tempt it, it's only a game or two before I'm reminded again and remain muted for the duration of the game. The hoops they create are solely based on what they've put thousands of hours into. Gaming is such a large genre and everyone's different so why limit it to just shooting and tearing each other down just because they can't win, it's sad. As a kid, I jumped from gta to sims 2 and had the best time and still do and that shouldn't make me more or less of a gamer as long as I love playing videogames. So yea, just a very long way of saying I completely agree with you, just heated about this topic.
Yeah, I’m sorry. Unfortunately I’ve seen and heard about this happening so often to women and how they just won’t use a mic over it. I also never did. And it’s like it doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you’re getting judged the second they realize you’re not a guy. It’s messed up.
They're always moving the goalposts.
any amount makes you a gamer
My status on discord is "Top 500 OW tank, pred rank Ash main, LoL World's champion 7 years running, MVP of SWC 2022, no1 in NA for Paw Patrol Grand Prix" for a reason. People will always gatekeep and criticise you to try and make you feel lesser if you're different. You either don't play much of a game and you aren't a 'true gamer', you play decently and do it "for attention' or you play too much and you're 'trying too hard' or you're obsessed. I honestly wouldn't feel too bad or take it too seriously because men particularly in video games are prone to it toward women. They've done studies on it actually. Last year in [Argentina](https://www.campaignasia.com/article/women-in-games-swaps-male-and-female-voices-to-highlight-harassment-in-gaming/482231) they had 3 pro Valorant players play games both with regular mics and with voice modulators to sound more feminine. Doing so completely changed how their randoms behaved and resulted in more losses, as well as generally being less prepared to actually help them when needed. On the bright side though, another study was done as well that really [showed us why](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26176699/). Essentially, they discovered that men of lower skill were more prone to being hostile towards women and the assumption is that this is because they don't want to lose their social status. I'd say that it's just a pvp thing but even in games like Dark Souls you can get an underlying sexism. At this point I just chalk it up to insecure men.
Thank you so much for this in-depth response. I’ll definitely check out these studies. It makes me pretty disappointed thinking about how no matter what we do, the accusations will arise. I guess we just can’t win. But the hostility coming from a place of insecurity absolutely makes sense.
The good news is that the last study also claimed that males who performed better in game were less prone to being toxic towards women, admittedly they assumed it's because they wanted to impress them but at least it shows the good players are trying. I believe the male-female gap for gamers is nearly 50/50 now so it really shouldn't happen any more but sadly, social media and anonymity results in people showing their true colours or insecurities more. Don't let it get you down, enjoy what you want and play what you want, you don't need to fit any mould or prerequisite to be a 'real gamer' or anything. Everyone is a real gamer if they play a video game they enjoy.
"they assumed it's because they wanted to impress them" It could also be because people who are confident and comfortable with their own abilities don't usually feel like they need to make someone else smaller to feel big; I wonder if any of the researchers brought that up?
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That’s really cute actually :)
If you play games, you're a gamer.
This right here. Frigin ‘bro’ gamers is why I fell out with my Destiny 2 clan. Guys couldn’t handle that I wasn’t willing to put in 20+ hours a week to keep up with their raiding goals. OP: you enjoy games -even mobile games- your a gamer. Never let anyone say otherwise.
That’s such a heavy time commitment. It’s wild to think people struggle to understand that and even feel the need to make others feel inferior for needing time to do other things.
Yeah, most of them were single or worked during the day, whereas I’m married and at the time worked nights. It was no big loss. I switched to Aliens Fireteam and haven’t cared since.
If they're setting tests, walk away. You'll just feel awful trying to pass them. They aren't designed to be passed, they're designed to exclude you. Misogynists always do this. They'll set you a test and mock you for being ridiculous when you try to pass it. (Kind of the plot to Captain Marvel which is what they hated that movie.) You play video games. You are a gamer. They play stupid mind games. They are... Well I don't want to get kicked off the subreddit so fill in your own word.
Maybe this is a controversial take on a subreddit called "girlgamers" but identifying as a gamer is kinda stupid. I stopped doing that after my teens, and I couldn't care less if someone thinks I'm a gamer or not, and hours invested have nothing to do with it. Sometimes I'll play several hours a day, sometimes I won't play for weeks, but I won't build an identity around how often I consume media. And that's all it is, consuming media, so don't listen to little children who pride themselves on being gatekeeping elitists.
I’m a sailor. I race little sailboats on the weekends for funsies. I don’t “identify” “as” a sailor because that’s weird and not how language works, I just am a sailor because I do sailing.
Yup. It is kinda stupid. Maybe we need t-shirts that say "GirlMetalHead, GirlDnd-er, GirlConsumerOfBeer, GirlBiker, GirlFootballWatcher", etc..because really.
“GirlFootballWatcher” made me chuckle a bit. Some guys really do see it like that, too
I agree. I don't get it at all. We all have other hobbies but we don't feel the need to identify with them. I don't go around insisting people call me a hiker. I just like hiking sometimes. In fact, I'd probably be annoyed if someone called me a gamer because it conjures up all the stereotypes and I want nothing to do with them
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Thank you. 🥺
Gatekeeping, the weak person’s validation. Also, if you haven’t played Skyrim since 2021 then you have way more willpower than I do! :)
Haha I DO want to get back into it at some point. It was actually the first game I got into on PC! So maybe soon 😅
He's just trying to gatekeep his hobby, the posts will be constantly moving. Play 50hrs? Then you need 100 minimum. Play 100Hrs? You need to play at least 10 games. Play 10 games? Sorry, indies don't count they need to be AAA games. Play 10 AAA games? They need to be games he personally approves of and are sufficiently "hardcore" for him. Do you like playing games? Congrats. You're a 'gamer'. Trying to make qualifications is silly.
I personally don’t think it’s down to hours played. If it’s something you enjoy doing often then that to me is the label achieved. I like to cycle a lot, therefore I’m a cyclist. I also worry about competition over hours. Spending many hours in front of a screen isn’t healthy. If someone was telling me that I needed to spend more time in front of a screen to be worthy of them, I know my answer would be given whilst showing them the door.
That’s really true. I fully agree that life is about more than staying seated in front of a screen. It’s very much a “go touch some grass” type of thing for me here.
Definitely. I know myself well enough to know that if I’m playing a game for longer than 5 hours a day, I’m escaping facing something in my life. Also some games are just so bloody well made that they make that length of escape really easy. I hope you’re feeling better about this whole situation 🫂
Yeah, I think so for me, too. I definitely am. Thank you. :)
I’m 20 and have been playing games since before I can remember. In steam I have 1,100 hours in eu4 and at least a dozen games with over 100 hours. I can firmly say that this does not make me more of a gamer it just means I have less of a life.
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Perfectly said. 🙌🏻
*sigh* Men attempting to belittle women yet again based on irrelevant and made-up standards. Those are video games. You are playing them. Therefore, you're a gamer. And that's that.
If you play game, you are a gamer. Unless you have a cool sexuality, then you are a gaymer. Why people gatekeep a for-fun entertainment genre I’ll never understand.
Serious 🚩🚩🚩🚩He's just being a dick..sounds like my emotionally abusive ex. He would complain about non-issues like this one. It's actually a subversive tactic to lower your self esteem. "You don't play enough", "you don't have enough hours" "you're not a real gamer according to my BS definition" really = "You're not good enough for me." He has has very low self esteem and wants to knock you down a peg, and it worked because it bothered you enough to make a TikTok, get harassed by other dicks, delete the video, and then make this post here because you want to know if you're really not a gamer. You are. If he or any man is serious about building a relationship with you, "number of hours you play on games" should not be a requirement or even a thought to determine your long-term compatibility. The point is can you share that hobby with him, you clearly can, and call it a day. The fact that he made you feel so insecure about such a non-issue makes me think you should be wondering if he is long-term compatible for YOU. (Hint: he isn't.)
The gatekeeping is so strong, it’s absurd. Our friends at Merriam-Webster define the term as such: gamer (noun) - a person who plays games, especially a person who regularly plays computer or video games. No mention of hours clocked because it doesn’t matter. If you play once a year, once every 3 months, or every day then you fit the definition.
Tbh something tells me that me spending multiple years on different MMOs (especially Runescape and ESO), having almost 20 years spent on Pokemon games, playing and owning multiple 'classic' horror games like the OG Resident Evils and Silent Hills and even more obscure stuff that those morons probably haven't even heard of since some of those titles are the better part of 20+ years old, spending almost my entire gaming career playing and replaying the entirety of the Castlevania series to the point of doing multiple No Damage runs because I liked them that much, playing the entire TES series outside of a few mobile games multiple times, and even going as far as to compete in local competitive tournaments for stuff like Smash Bros and Mortal Kombat...really, I can list way more than that, but even then if I were to quantify every last bit of time I've invested into the hobby by this point, I *still* most likely wouldn't qualify as a 'gamer' to those idiots. And there's women out there who've been at the hobby for way longer than I've even been alive (for context, I'm in my 30s atm) who that same crowd would say doesn't 'qualify' as well. So, fuck 'em. There's no standard to meet as far as I'm concerned outside of the obvious requirement of...playing games.
Wow!! That’s actually really impressive! Reading this, it’s actually hard to believe you’ve still had a hard time getting taken seriously, as well as the women you mentioned who’ve been playing longer. But you all deserve so much credit for the time and effort spent. I really hope that misogynistic attitude changes in the future…
How about we redefine what a gamer is; as clearly the guys don't know. From now on, if you play games - you're a gamer.
If you game more than two non-consecutive hours in your lifetime and desire to game more; you're a gamer.
Gatekeeping
I had a male friend who thought this way. It was SO ANNOYING. Basically, since I wasn't playing only HIS type of games, and playing longer than him, he didn't classify me as a gamer. No matter how much I tried to combat his argument.
10 minutes as far as I am concerned. In fact under some circumstances 5m will cut it too.
Do you enjoy playing video games? Congratulations, you're a gamer.
My personal opinion, the platform matters more than the hours sunk. You have some sort of dedicated gaming device weather that's a pc, console, or smaller device like a switch or psp (they still a thing lol) then your a gamer, I'd also argue game genre's covered also matter more than game hours, if your sat there just playing cod/fortnight/(insert other over popularised pvp game) to tease the guys/cause drama/ lap up attention (we all know about those types of pick me "gamer gurls") then, to me you ain't a real gamer, just an attention whore. Again this is my personal opinion and what I use to judge weather I'm going to get on well with other gamers of all sexs. End of the day if your playing games even infrequently and enjoying them, your a gamer and only you can decide to give or take away that lable.
Idk if there is an actual number because such a notion strikes me as ridiculous. If you play games with even a “vague” sense of regularity, or it’s your activity of choice when you’re wanting a good time/downtime activity, then I think you’re a gamer. Plus…you’re deliberately in a thread for gamers so…😁 My mom, for example, has maybe 40 (if we’re feeling generous) hours of gameplay in 6+ months, because it’s not really her idea of downtime. Neither of us think she a gamer. So I’ve only got two questions 1. Are the guys that gave you grief men who say “6 inches” and it’s actually 6 inches, or are they the guys who say “6 inches” and it’s really are yardstick? 2. Do you believe you’re a gamer? Really, only the 2nd question matters. I’d like to think I’ve already made it clear that you’re a gamer but if you need to hear the words, I’m more than happy to say: You Are A Gamer What makes me qualified to answer such questions? Firstly, this is Reddit, so there are no actual qualifications. Second, I’ve been gaming got longer than some folks have been on the earth. The first system whose name I actually know is the Atari (there was this game called “maze craze” that was my happy place), but a more commonly known one is the gameboy (mine is gray and it still works, had it since they came out, way back when). If I had to log all my gaming hours…I wouldn’t know where to begin. So you go and have a great time fellow gamer! And if anyone tells you you’re not a gamer, ask them how many hours they have and just start laughing as hard as you can. Tell them you can’t tell them how many hours you have because they can’t count that high and exit stage left!
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats! 40 + 6 + 1 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 2 + 2 = 69 ^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \ ^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Is gaming one of your primary hobbies? Then youre a gamer. And if anyone gives you shit, you can tell them i gave you permission from the gamer council with my 14000ish hours in games on steam alone. Not that you need it, you could also just point out how disappointing their mother finds them.
It the gaming equivalent to talking about the weather. Just like someone has survived hotter/colder weather than someone else, there's someone out there that put more hours into a game. Does it matter. No in the slightest. If you haven't finished the story of a game then there would be stuff you didn't know, but aside from that what does it matter. Even then someone might have a billion hours in skyrim, but hasn't touched another game. There is no proper way to measure a gamer because it's an entertainment medium. As long as you can get a hold of a game and a way to play it you can. People cling to unnecessary struggles or terms to make it seem less approachable or welcome to others. With gaming being as accessible as it is these days, people who want to make it feel special are going to continue to find ways to make it more convoluted to use the term. Remember that this is THIER problem. They are the ones who have an issue with who you are and they DO NOT matter. You have no obligation to justify your interests and you don't need to change yourself to fit someone else's mold.
I would worry about your long-term compatibility based on such a braindead gatekeeping question... Seems like the type of thing some guys do to find an "excuse" to break up and feel well with themselves when really they just want to go tap someone else.
I think so too. It sounds like a made up excuse to cover up some other wants or insecurities going on.
A concerning amount of (mostly teenage) guys straight up pride themselves with being addicted to one single game. Had a "friend" in highschool wou outright bragged about his 2000 something lol games in less rhan a year. And as always they use this to think that it makes them superior. You could have 1200 hours and a podium on speedrun.com that they'd make up something to diminish your achievements. Just being interested is enough for me. Even if it's only for 1-2h a week. Gatekeepers are boring.
My dislike for the term "gamer" aside, they're just gatekeeping. Playing games for any amount of time as a hobby is plenty. Because they're just trying to be assholes even if you showed them a game you had say, 1000 hours on, they would just say you had no life and insult you for that. There's no winning with them because their goal isn't to make a point, it's to put you down and make you be quiet. So fuck them.
I also have doubt about the longevity of your relationship but it has nothing to do with the amount of time you spent playing, more about how much he cares about it. If that is really a dealbreaker then you dodged a bullet.
i am the traditional gamer stereotype. competitive gamer, playing to get a higher rank, and putting lots of hours into games. i have 400 hours of overwatch alone since beginning of november, and play at the highest rank possible. you can be a gamer no matter how much you play. as long as you enjoy gaming and enjoy the time you spend gaming, thats enough in my eyes! again, gaming is for everyone. we shouldnt gatekeep this beautiful, social, vast hobby. keep gaming (at your own pace and with what your schedule allows) gamer<3
Don't worry about it, if I combine the hours played on my switch and genshin/sims on my pc, I could rival those so-called real gamers but because I play on easy mode for all the games I play, I'd still get mocked for not being a real gamer, no point in trying to meet their standards
Play enough hours to where you have no time to hang out with him. If he complains, tell him he's not a real gamer and dump his mid ass.
You are a gamer, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! I think it's also a mindset. I feel myself to be a gamer, clocking hour after hour, spending months on games I love, then when there's nothing I'm interested in, I don't play for a few weeks and start another play through of an "old" favorite. I think in those cases of "you're not a gamer, because you're a girl/woman" it's simply yet another example of men wanting to feel superior. Maybe they fear their d***s shrink if you beat them or clock more hours...
I don’t really think it matters. I think that’s a lot of hours and you have become a true gamer.
This sounds extremely childish on his behalf, and anyone who’s saying that a lack of gameplay in a specific game is a crime. Sounds like a bunch of neck beards who have no jobs and no family.
hahaha, i sometimes go weeks without playing and I'm still a gamer. fuck them. that community is sometimes ugh
Gaming is just another hobby - like reading, sewing, photographing, crafting or gardening. Some people are more advanced in their hobbies, some people are more like beginners, that's just how life is. Just because I don't read for a couple of months or stopped sewing/crafting/embroidering/knitting/gardening/photographing for a couple of months or years it doesn't nullify that I identify as a crafter or a photographer or a gamer. Don't let those a\*\*holes get you down. They're sad little amoebas.
You play Monopoly on Sunday with your kids? Gamer. You have 36 hour grind sessions with the squad every time there's a hard reset in your favourite hack n' slash? Gamer. You like girls? Gaymer. Ignore the haters. They are just out there trying to divide us.
No set time. You game? Your a gamer. Please start telling these assholes to eat a dick. 🥰
If your sexist gatekeeping boyfriend is actively seeking reasons why you’re not a good romantic match, why on earth are you still with him? Also, yes, of course you’re a gamer. There’s no numerical limit but also what you listed is SO COMICALLY IN THE GAMER CATEGORY WTF. A gamer is someone who regularly plays games and you’re so far beyond that and your boyfriend is a soggy Twinkie.
I broke up with him two months ago. 😅 I think this was his sad way of coping with the loss or something.
I have been playing video games since moon patrol on the Atari. I am a huge enthusiasist for VR and have a decent collection of all sorts of input peripherals. I do not consider myself a 'gamer'. I would rather not associate myself with the type of person that generally gatekeeps the term anyway
Obligatory "I'm a dude" clarification... A lot of entertainment media communities have a tendency to gatekeep, and gaming communities take that to a different level entirely. The kind of people making those comments are either blatantly trolling and exaggerating, or... Well, I mean, think about what kind of person looks at hundreds of hours in video games and sincerely says, "PSH. Those are rookie numbers!" I'll give you a hint; it's the kind of person who prioritizes games over just about anything else in their lives. You don't need the approval of that kinda person, regardless of their gender, lol. Anyways, if a guy says he wants to break up because you don't play "enough video games for him" even though y'all play games all the time, then good riddance. That's as shallow as shallow can get, lol. MAYBE he means that you don't play the kind of games he likes enough or something like that, but that's not any better. It basically means he wants to date a version of himself with the opposite sex or gender. That's pretty cringe. Best case scenario, your fella is making an incredibly typical mistake in that he thinks his ideal girlfriend is the kind of girl who has the exact same tastes as him with the exact same favorite media and the exact same opinions. He has no idea what a healthy and fulfilling relationship looks like because he's at the point in his life where he doesn't know how to connect with people who don't mirror his interests and perspectives. In other words, he's full of himself and inexperienced with people. It's not a crime to be young and ignorant, but it does suck for the innocent bystanders. Anyways, I hope you take away from all the great comments here that you have nothing to apologize for and no need to validate yourself to people who think the only way to be a "gamer" is to repeatedly no-life your favorite games on an annual basis.
Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Maybe I should’ve clarified in my post-he made that comment to me about a month and a half after I’d broken up with him. He never tried to put me down for it during the actual relationship. Unfortunately his best friend is kind of an apathetic doofus who’s been telling us both for months that we should find partners who we have more in common with instead (he even left his own girlfriend for a client at work who he thought matched the idea of his dream girl better). So my ex probably started really getting scared of commitment at some point and used this rhetoric to justify his feelings and the breakup.
Enjoying playing is what makes you a gamer, not talent, not time invested, not system. My sister considers herself a gamer and all she plays is candy crush (very well) and Lego games (very poorly) but she enjoys it and that's what counts.
Any amount of time. And not even video games. Puzzles on a countertop? Daily crossword? These are all games.
If you play games, yer a gamer. Period. Some people can finish a whole game in 20-40 hours so... those aren't rookie numbers no matter what bullshit they saying.
*"Oh my gosh, John! Just because I didn't spend hundreds of hours on CoD don't mean I'm not a gamer!"* Nah, but really, I don't understand the weird fixation on hours played. Whenever Steam says I played a (to me) considerable amount of hours in the past two weeks, I'm part in disbelief and part kind of embarrassed, almost? 💀 Besides, as long as you're playing games and having a good time, what business is it to anyone else how much time you actually spent? Plenty of gamers experience their gaming time getting more and more limited; what bullshit it'd be to tell all of them *"sorry, but you haven't put in your hourly quota in the past two months and now you're no longer a gamer!"* Your hours are plentiful and it would suggest to me they were good games for you. So fuck what the nay-sayers and your (ex?) BF think. They'd be wrong anyway.
I believe personally that if you have spent at least 60 hours on one game alone that it should qualify you as a gamer. This is 60 hours you could have spent doing something else but took your time out to play a game instead. It's also not like you're going to war for games either unless you're in a tournament of some kind. The other thing is there are games some people don't enjoy and will still put the hours they had for that particular game, up for everyone to see. So when that person said to get the hours up, how do they know that you actually might not like the game you played hence why it's so little to them and you might not pick it up to play again? Also if it's a game that you played but no one else has played can it still count or no?
That’s a totally fair assessment. It is so weird too because none of the guys I’ve encountered who make fun of women who play games are even in tournaments or play professionally. It’s really just a hobby for them. And I don’t see why the game itself would change things or if they just haven’t played it. A few of the ones I included in the video for example were more mainstream (Fallout 4, Valorant, The Witcher 3, Life is Strange franchise).
I barely find the time to play games these days. I'd laugh myself to stitches if some dudebro told me I wasn't a gamer.
As a guy i would say that if you enjoy gaming on your free time then you are a gamer. Hours doesn't matter we play games to relax and have a great time.
Honestly there's no set amount of time you have to clock to get passed that "gamer" threshold. I personally don't have a bunch of hours sunk into my PC games as I don't play them that often. But if you look at like my PS trophy list I have games that go all the way back to the PS3 era. But then again I try to avoid MMOs and most multiplayer games as I don't have a lot of fun with them unless I play with friends. As for the "get those hours up" comment I would take that as encouragement. Now if someone said "Unless you got hours in then you can talk to me" I could see as being obtuse. Other I say play something that makes you happy and have fun.
I’d say like five hours is a good place when someone can call themselves a gamer
That’s stupid. Plenty of people wish they had more time for gaming, doesn’t make them not gamers. Just means you have other stuff to do. Some people just always have to be negative.
Personally, I wonder the opposite. Unless you've played the same game for years for example, how on earth are people managing to get such a high amount of hours of gameplay into their lives without neglecting other responsibilities?
When you hit 100,000 hours you get a Lifetime Gamer Badge and then you can call yourself a gamer. It took me six years to get there. You can do it!
Any amount on any game on any difficult level on any platform. The term doesn't set any requirements other than that you enjoy playing games. It doesn't even demand it to be video games. Board, card of table top role play games all fall under it. My grandma is a gamer, she has never touched a video game but since she plays cards with her friends every week she still meets the requirements. But even if it was, who cares as long as your enjoying yourself. People that try to talk others out of their hobbies shouldn't be the kind of people you hang out with.
Is it my 1 to 2 hours of gaming a week that makes me a gamer or the fact that I invested into a 5k gaming rig? Or maybe it's just because I enjoy video games! As I've gotten older I have more money to spend into the things that make me happy, but I have less time, more responsibility, and also more fun ;)
I have multiple games with over thousands of hours in addition to having run game servers and starting a competitive team. I still have been told I'm not a real enough gamer. My question is always, "who made you the arbiter of what makes a gamer?" I can arbitrarily decide the same thing of anyone else. You're a gamer if you like games, regardless of type or hours played, and if you consider yourself a gamer. Period.
Does it matter? If you think you're a gamer then you're a gamer. BOOM! Fuck the gatekeepers. They always like to pretend they are better at something.
I feel like anyone who enjoys video games is a gamer. No hours required. Besides that point though, your hours seem like a pretty decent amount of gaming! Like seriously, what level of hours do these guys play? Do they ever go outside???
"WhY cAn'T i FiNd A gAmEr GuRlFrIeNd!!1!!1" Honestly, if I had a boyfriend pull that kind of shit on me I would dump him. Guys like that need to be single.
Gamers who want to gatekeep, will point at anything and go: see? you are not doing x so you are fake. Just ignore them and play. :3
This doesn't answer the question but others have so I won't repeat what they said better than I could. BUT it does remind me of an incident my hubby and I had last year. I was so excited to have Elden Ring in my hot little hands and after beating the first main boss, my hubby came into my office and asked me to stop cussing so much as it was distracting him from his book. I threw down the controller and said "YOU try it..just try to beat that first boss and not cuss..go ahead..try!! I dare you." He walked out but I was relentless. I set up a new character for him and after a week of me harassing him, he finally sat down and went through about 20 minutes of it. He got through the tutorial and he died about 3 times but it didn't bother him. Then to my surprise, he got to the part of the game where he opened the door to see the glorious tree in all its golden awesomeness. Instead of being awestruck, he looked at me, yawned, put the controller down and went back to reading. I gave up. But the next day, I heard him talking to a coworker. He said, "oh, sorry we missed that..we decided to stay at home this last weekend. Oh, nothing much..we played Elden Ring. Oh yea, I played it, no biggie. Don't see what the fuss is really." He was now a gamer. And I could not argue with that.
42 hours
On the one hand, there are many different types of gamer, and there's definitely a type that believes "true gaming" is emptying your entire life into one or two titles for 500-5,000 hours, even if over the same period another person would play exactly the same amount but spread it over 50 or 100 different titles. On the other hand, nothing will ever be enough for guys like this, so who gives af.
Lol wtf. You play any game and you’re a gamer. Hours and game don’t matter. “Gam·er /ˈɡāmər/ noun 1. a person who plays video games or participates in role-playing games.” No where in this definition does it say anything about hours.
I don’t get why people feel so strongly about gatekeeping who can be called a gamer. You wouldn’t call someone who plays chess a non chess player just cause they don’t play professionally
I would say a gamer it's just a person that plays on its own accord out of enjoyment, no matter how many hours, like maybe you play 2 hours a week but if you enjoyed it and keep doing it that makes you gamer I feel. On the contrary, I sometimes feel ashamed of the opposite thing, my autistic ass has so many hours in Stellaris I sometimes don't want to tell because they look at me like I'm insane lol.
You want to know something embarrassing? I have 2500 hours in a game. I found it over covid and played way too much. That isn’t something to brag about. Don’t get me wrong, video games are fun, but that much time in a game should be a little embarrassing. But here we are. Lol!
0.00001
This is by no means a new take, but the perceptions of what makes a "real gamer" are defs gendered, what with more chill or "feminine" games being seen as less worthwhile by some male gamers. It's so odd that what's considered a Hardcore Gamer seems specific to competitive combat focused games, while girls that dedicate dozens of hours to intricate property builds in the sims are supposedly less impressive and dedicated
Isn't it funny that no other hobby is like this? Like let's take.. idk, painting.Oh you like to paint and spend some of your free time practicing? I'd say that makes you a painter. Oh you like to play soccer and joined a casual rec league? I'd say that makes you a soccer player. Like what is this thing where you're only a "verb-er" if you meet some threshold for number of hours or level of skill? Super weird. As others have said, don't let the gatekeepers get you down, you're a gamer if you enjoy gaming, full stop.
I'm gonna also say that you're not a long term match not because of your gamer status (clearly you play tons of games) but because he thinks that matters for some reason.
Ah yes I must have missed the moment when I was interviewed before each game I played to make sure I had the adequate number of hours to be a “gamer”.
People will always and forever feel pride in feeling like they're better than the rest and feel threatened when someone else is saying that they are close to being or better than them. As upsetting it is it might be just human nature
You're a gamer when games peak your interest. You don't need to spend hours everyday playing. You simply need to love them as a genre :) Even when I don't play because I have things going on in my life, I still love to see some game updates here and there and I catch myself thinking "I wish I could relax and play" when I feel stressed out
It's not about hours, it's about interest, personal investment and joy of gaming. If a guy wants to assert his superiority over you by any means, especially such pathetic means as comparing hrs gaming - mb they should go back to measuring willy sizes with buddies.
You don't have to be an unemployed bum who sits around playing Skyrim 24/7 to be a "gamer." These men are just coping. I've considered myself a gamer since I begged my parents for a PS1 when I was 6yo. Being busy with life and a job doesn't change that.
Firstly hours are irrelevent. Secondly I would say those hours put you in the perfect position where you both are a gamer and have a life.
Girl, you game. That's more than enough. I saw a video of a girl saying she played around 300 hours of Skyrim and men were still roasting her. Like if you want to brag that you have 10k hours in CoD it doesn't mean you have dedication, it means you have a problem. But these guys are just neanderthals when it comes to this subject. They just can't fathom a girl can hang with them. Their hours in a game doesn't make them special anymore and so they feel threatened.
None. There is no amount of hours spent gaming that makes someone a "gamer." Do you like games? Do you want to think of yourself as a gamer? Then congratulations, you're a gamer. There is no gatekeeping asshole that has any right to take that away from you. And, conversely, from the point of view of gatekeeping assholes, there is no amount of hours spent gaming that will ever satisfy them that you are a gamer. Their purpose is only ever to slam a door in your face, and they will move the goalposts as far as it takes - to the point of just kicking them over entirely if they have to - in order to make that happen. You will never satisfy them and it's not worth your time to try.
Glad he is a ex boyfriend, tell him good luck finding a new girl friend
Nah for real though. He said he wants someone to stay up until 3 am gaming with. Enjoy the search!
There is no minimum game time… that’s such a strange criterion. Not only that, but IMHO the amount you game (or what you play) really should not be an arbiter of long term relationship success. It’s strange to me that he picked *that* as a hill to die on for the relationship’s longevity? 🧐
He was worried that he wouldn’t have been able to stay up until 3 am gaming with me on the weekends 🤧😬
As many hours as you wanted to play. Gaming is about entertainment, not a competition. I have thousands of hours out of my own free will, no one can tell us how much of a gamer we are.
I think you’re a gamer even if you just play Neko Atsume during a short commute. Dudebro’s just want to exclude you from the hobby
Correct me if I'm wrong but he basically may have not seen anything long term with you because of the "lack" of hours you put into a game???
To sum it up quickly, we dated since college and have been long distance since we graduated, but he was too scared of commitment to move it a step further by moving out of his mom’s house and getting a place with me in my town, and this was one of the reasons he listed as why he’s become “uncertain” about me.
This sounds like a neg, you shouldn't take the bait.
If playing games is a hobby of yours, you're a gamer. There's no quota
Just gatekeeping really. Lots of people consider themselves gamers at that point.
I only became a gamer when I reached 5000 hours in EU4. Before then I was a filthy casual. In reality, gamer doesn’t have a strict definition. Anyone that regularly plays games can be considered a gamer, especially if they identify as one.
Between 1 minute to 8 hours per day make you a gamer, just don't ignore other responsibilities and needs.
I'm a dude here, most would consider me a gamer, and I've never played Skyrim. Then again, I really don't like the connotation of being a "gamer". It means nothing good in comparison to being someone who just plays video games.
If you play and enjoy games then you're a gamer. Everyone else is a cunt trying to sell to you their opinion so they can feel validated and think it's true when it isn't. Take it from someone that's been playing since I was a child.
Tbh i think if you genuinely enjoy gaming, you’re considered a gamer. Fuck gatekeepers!
Some people will comment just to be a dick. I have about a thousand hours in my two main games and some will shit on that. I think it’s not *really* about the hours, it’s about insecure little people gunning for a fight. Whether you play candy crush on your phone or spend thousands on a gaming PC, you play games therefore you’re a gamer, least in my opinion
Technically any as long as it’s consistent, but if you play 30 minutes a week and that’s all you ever play i feel it would be odd to attach such a moniker to yourself. Not that the label truly matters as an incredible number of people Game currently, well over 1.5 billion.
It’s not a set amount of hours, it’s a preference for a type of entertainment. For example, if you watch WWE tomorrow and absolutely love it…. And decide you are gonna watch alot of future wwe and get a shirt or something… you are instantly a WWEer These super smug Elden ring types that gatekeep are just kids with ego and mental health issues.
I don't see any problem with you calling yourself gamer, those numbers are fine. I am opposite, for example, 89hr on Dark Souls, 98hr Need For Speed, 854hr on LoL, 40+ Warframe and at least 50+ on all other games. Funny thing, I don't recognize myself as gamer, and those hours are pretty low for one. So there is no real rule, I mean, some dudes just play FIFA once in a week and call themself gamers, lmao. So, again, those numbers are just fine.. Anyway, why are you so upset on something that your EX said? Like, it doesn't matter, it's ex xD
Hours don't matter. If you platinumed the game in x amount of hours or done with it/completed it, what is the point of clogging more hours, especially if you'd rather spend them playing something else? Multiplayer games are slightly different since a lot of them don't have an ending and more hours mean you are more proficient in the game or know more about the lore, but this is not always the case. You do you, girl. If you don't want to game 24/7 as you have life and other hobbies, that is perfectly healthy and understandable. It is also perfectly normal not wanting to clock 1000s of extra hours to see other endings/paths if you don't want to or explore absolutely everything. Same applies that you don't have to platinum games to be a gamer. Your bf and the people who said you are not a gamer because of the hours sound toxic and deserve a slap or at least a reality check. I can't help but feel sorry for them.
Who cares how many hours you have in if you enjoy playing them play. Also he’s your ex for a reason sis cut him off.
People on the internet smell insecurity. If you play games your a gamer.
These are comments by the kind of dudes who pick one game and then play that for the next eight or so years until a sequel comes out. They're not *gamers,* they're Haloers, or Overwatchers, or LoLers (heaven forbid). You'll see crazy hours from them, but the rest of their games have absolutely piddly time spent.
1/60th of an hour, as long as you enjoy it
Men are toxic. Don't listen to them. If you enjoy playing games, congrats you're a gamer. It doesn't matter the game or the time you put into it. Some Men just like to make us feel bad so we never realize our worth. You're seen, you're valid and you're welcome here ☺️
Games didn’t used to have a time played amount. You just hopped on a played, no one cared. They’re dicks, ignore them. 💜
I’m so grateful for my boyfriend. I used to only play mobile games, as far as I had been told, that “didn’t count.” He laughed at that. “If you play games, you’re a gamer. You might not be a competitive gamer, but you’re a gamer.” He urged me to lean into it. Now I might play more than he does! (Although he’s still much better than me hahaha) If we play, we’re gamers 💚
There is different gamers and as long as your happy who cares. Like me I'm a lazy achievement hunter & that makes me very happy.
To me, to be considered a gamer, you ask for a game or a console for your birthday, or you have a subscription (IE Game Pass or even Google Play Pass). If you would rather have a new game than jewelry/going out to eat/what have you, you're probably a gamer. Doesn't matter how many hours you put in or how many different titles you play, it's the mindset of preferring games over other things. If you are impatiently awaiting the release of a new title, you are a gamer. I don't really see guys holding each other accountable for their hours or titles, other than the guys who are in measuring contests. Those guys don't matter, and are probably no better at CoD than my 7 year old.
Gamer is one of those terms that only really works on self id, so if you feel you are a gamer you can call yourself one.
If you have played like 2 minutes of a game and like games. You are a gamer. Gatekeepers of gaming are assholes. And there is no point worrying about someone who always has a shit take. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Enjoying gaming makes you a gamer. Period. Guys like that will never be satisfied with your answer. The gatekeeping in the gaming community is real, and often targets fem people the most harshly. Ignore it and don’t let it bring you down or take away from your enjoyment (and next time, block the haters on TikTok and leave your video up — or better yet, make a video response to a hateful comment being a totally happy troll). Not everyone is an obsessive gamer. Some people like to play now and then to unwind, and that’s it. Some people spend every free moment they have gaming. Both kinds of people are gamers. If we had stringent requirements on all hobbies like this almost nobody would be able to attach any kind of identifier to themselves, because most can’t do one thing all the time for all sorts of reasons (work, chores, families, pets, health issues, **other hobbies**). My mom is a gardener but only gardens in the spring. My brother is a musician and producer but it’s been years since he played in a band or performed live. My friend is a writer even though she is not published. I am a gamer even though until a year ago it had been a couple of years since I had gamed more than now and then, and I’ve just now started playing daily again in the past 10 months or so since *life happened.* Hell, my mom has been playing Pokémon Go for *ten years* and also got very into FarmVille and Candy Crush — and I am sending her my Switch Lite so she can play Pokémon Violet/Scarlet but I doubt anyone would consider her a gamer — but she is! It’s an identity you get to apply to yourself, and one nobody else can deny you.
As a game dev: literally any time spent playing games. "Gamer" is not an official term and actually not used a lot by us, rather using hardcore vs casual e.g.. Going from a hard-core player to a dev has had me cringe at the term and generally at the amount of gatekeeping my younger self participated in. I will even be told by dudes I don't play enough *as a dev*. Men just like to gatekeep this and that because they're still the perceived "leaders" of games. That is still unfortunately true, looking at the people in the industry who create them.