Young modern Gamers

[MrPopo]

Bro-gamers isn't about people that play with their bros. It's more about those that play nothing but CoD and think they're the coolest people ever because of it. Think of bro as the "Cool story bro" bro. Bro...

Who doesn't like playing games with their bros?

I believe the term "brogamer" is a gaming version of "dudebro."

Yes that explains it perfectly.

[Forlorn Drifter]

^I'm bigger than ~70% of those guys at my school, so the whole stereotype is that much funnier. Odd when the "gamer nerd guy" benches 250 and is 3 inches taller than most of the guys. (Can't bench 250 now, but 3 years back or so...)

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Yep. I actually fit the skinny white gamer nerd perfectly, but people are usually surprised when they hear I like old games. Maybe it was that jeet kune do incident

My favorite guys to game with are all big dudes, though. One of them is so large that he can fit a DSi XL in his pocket. Games for everyone, I say!

[Key-Glyph]

I'm always amazed and disappointed at myself for getting really annoyed watching teenagers ignore their families in public because they're buried in a smartphone, and yet feeling none of those negative emotions toward young kids ignoring their families in public because they're buried in a DS. It makes me feel like a total hypocrite, only excusing the stuff that I did myself while growing up. It's a knee-jerk reaction I'm trying to fix.

I've noticed that most preteens in my library who bring handhelds tend to have Gameboy SPs. My theory is that they're kids of gamers who, as parents, want to give their children less expensive, more durable portable systems. These kids do not seem bothered that they don't have the newest of the new. By the time they're teens they're not bringing handhelds to the library excluding phones, so I don't know what they have, if anything at all.

I suppose I was a "young modern" gamer, actually -- I bought most of my systems in their hayday, excluding the SNES, PS2, and 32X -- but I also think the attitude towards consoles was different back then than it is today. I think consoles came out and people just loved them, period. They weren't already looking ahead to the next system their chosen company would be putting out, at least not until plans for a successor were published. You settled down for the long haul and didn't concern yourself with planned obsolescence. Am I remembering this right? It just feels like older consoles milked and milked their shelf time and consumers were less interested in upgrading from them, but I have a sneaking suspicion my perception is totally warped.

[Zing]

I have to agree with that. When I was busy playing my Coleco Vision, NES, Super NES, and PlayStation, not once did I concern myself with what was coming next, or felt that what I had was inferior in some way. Sure, I was excited to see what the Super NES could do after reading about it in Nintendo Power, but I never once thought that I would retire the NES or felt obligated to "upgrade".

[scarper]

I'm 17. You'll probably see me with my face buried in a DS as well, except playing Little Red Riding Hoods Zombie BBQ as opposed to Mario Party. I do a lot of sega gaming at home.

I have a handful hardcore (retroish) gamer friends my age. Most of which almost exclusively play Nintendo consoles, but they totally know the good games from the mediocre.

Whenever I talk to people in my school about video games, they always mention that they "quit" video games a while back, and only play CoD online. I've literally heard about 10 people say this in the past month.

I try to get my younger siblings into classic games. They've liked Crazy Taxi and MvC 2 quite a lot.

[ElkinFencer10]

It really depresses me how retro gamers my age (I'm 20) seem to be rarer than albino elephants (yeah, I know, it's a random analogy, but I'm sleep deprived right now). I'm 20, and although I can get some of my friends to play some NES or Genesis with me, most of them would much rather be playing Rock Band 12 or Modern Warfare 73 or whatever the hell they're up to these days. I'll tell my friend Grant (he's the one most willing to play old games with me but at the same time the biggest graphics whore noob...makes no sense, I know) about beating an Alex Kidd game or finally getting to a high enough level to finish a dungeon on Final Fantasy, and his response is always something like "Cool. Dude, you'll never believe the kill streak I got on Modern Warfare 3 yesterday."

Don't get me wrong, I love modern games. I bought a 3DS the day it came out, and I've got Modern Warfare for my Wii, but it's like watching "Edward Scissorhands" without ever reading "Frankenstein." Yeah, sure, it's a great experience on its own if you're into that kind of thing, but you miss out on so much and you don't have that in-depth feel for it without experiencing the origin.

I always have said and firmly believe that you can't call yourself a true gamer without an appreciation for retro games. If you just like noobing it up on Xbox Live and screaming at 8 year old on Call of Duty every weekend, that's fine, but don't call yourself a gamer if all you play is Battlefield or Call of Duty and have never even heard of Battletoads, much less played it.



There's my little soapbox speech. I feel very strongly about this if you can't tell, lol.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

How is somebody that plays and is interested in different kinds of games not a gamer? Sure they may not have has well rounded tastes or as much of an appreciation for the medium. It certainly doesn't make them not gamers though.

[ElkinFencer10]

It's not the kinds of games they play that is the problem; it's their refusal to try or show the deserved respect for the classic games that makes them unfit to be called gamers. Just like going to church doesn't make you a Christian or standing in a garage doesn't make you a guitar, playing a game doesn't make you a gamer.

[YoshiEgg25]

or standing in a garage doesn't make you a guitar

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this analogy but I'm imagining it's probably hilarious.