I'm Not a Real Gamer.

[logansrogue]

I'm not a real gamer.

I played on a Commodore 64 and programmed simple little programmes for it to run in BASIC. I played on pirated games my brother exchanged for musical gear, old names that even my most hardcore gamer friends don't know. Scarabus. Dan Dare. Impossible Mission. Elite (the first version). Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Little Computer People. The Young Ones. Berk. Pirates (Sid Meyer's first version). The Newsroom. GEOS, one of the forerunners to today's Windows. I used paint programmes before they could really do much but make big pixelated smudges on the screen. I giggled at terrible strip poker games that featured porn stars of the 80s. But, I'm not a real gamer.

I moved onto the Amiga 500, and played Captain Blood, every game I could find by the Bitmap Brothers (Gods, Speedball and Speedball 2, Magic Pockets), Lemmings, I dabbled in Deluxe Paint and every version of that I could get my hands on, racing games and adventure games, remakes of the beloved titles I'd played on the Commodore 64.

In high school I remember playing on my friend's brand new Gameboy, with a green and black LCD calculator-like screen. It was big and chunky and I fucking loved it. I'd have given anything to have one.

I then graduated to the Mac LC630, where I spent most of my time writing, learning how to tell stories. But I figured out the very first version of Warcraft before my brother and nephew took over and played it to excess. I spent hours scouring the free DVDs Mum got with her Macworld magazines and playing with the demos on there (cause I didn't have the money to buy games then, nor the internet connection to pirate, nor the brother with contacts). There were demos I'd play over and over and over again, just because I loved them. There was a wonderful demo of an educational programme about Egypt. It was a game of Senet with Ramesses II, who would taunt you if you lost. I loved that, I still haven't been able to fill the hole in my heart for that game!

And when my Mum bought a PC, I played games on there too. Simulation games, mostly, but I spent hours making content for the first Sims game, stuffing around with the first versions of Catz/Petz, enjoying casual gaming and social gaming on various websites. I got wholly obsessed with The Sims 2, becoming a part of the community and creating celebrated content.

I'm now spending hours and hours playing The Sims 3, mainly because it helps me ignore the pain from my endometriosis. I play the Wii when I can, enjoying the mostly genderless games on the console. I have a Nintendo DSi XL, and I'd get the Nintendo 3DS, but I don't have cash to throw around on something I probably won't use that often (I use the DSi mostly for the paint programmes on it). I really do want one. BADLY.

But I'm not a real gamer. Not a *real* one, because I'm a girl, and I play *girl* games. Even though I tried to play the "real" games, but got frustrated by the controls due to my troublesome dyscalculia (I can't remember complicated rules easily, nor keep a track of my left and my right, and that includes which controls are which between which hands. I felt liberated by the Wii, because I didn't have those navigation problems. Just lean and throw my arms about - wonderful!)

Even though I've been playing computer games of some sort since the mid-80s, which means I've been fooling around with computers longer than some of today's gamers have been alive.

Even though I'd happily spend good money on a game I enjoyed.

I'm not a real gamer because the games I enjoy don't involve killing, gore, war, first-person-shooting, competitive play, levelling up, subscriptions, or those things that mean it's a real game. Not that I have anything against fighting in games. I used to love playing Double Dragon as a kid. Oh, and I loved playing Marathon on the Mac, that was a FPS, but it was on a space ship and there were puzzles involved. That made it fun.

Mainly, I'm not a real gamer because I'm a girl and I love playing Simulation Games. Which is funny, really, because my whole life has done a pretty good impersonation of that of a hardcore nerd very much in love with her computer games.

Comments

[zzzzsleep.livejournal.com]

"Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay FOREVER!"

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

Kill him my Robots!

I LIVE! Run, cowards!

[im-an-aaangel.livejournal.com]

Pft, you're just as much of a gamer as people who play so-called "real" games. A lot of obnoxious snots have standards of what they think a gamer is.. honestly, if you love playing games and you do it often, you're a gamer.

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, have you played The Kingdom of Loathing?

Free, online, web-based Text Adventure. With stick figures.

It's really quite good.

If you have a go and like it, message me with your username and I'll whitelist you into my Clan.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Oh stop being in denial you gamer.

[drbunsen.livejournal.com]

HitchHiker? I still can't even turn get out of the house!
Elite? Much C=64 respect (I mean GEOS, come on) but I think you'll find that the original version was on the BBC Micro. Which, God and the demons of eBay willing, I will finally have my hands on again in a few days, after a mere 28 years.

I miss my Beeb. I miss BBC BASIC. I wrote some kickass stuff on that platform - a D&D character auto generator, a random placename generator for big worldmaps, a graphical WYSIWYG font editor, and a planetary orbit simulator, even the beginnings of some games. Then Dad gave the whole box & dice away >:(

LC630 - great old game machine - SimCity 2000 yo!

And not to make light of your affliction (ok, well, maybe a little) but Diyscalculia totes sounds like an evil princess.

Do you still have any of your old machines?

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Geek points up!

^_^

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

You are definitely a gamer, and anyone that argues otherwise is either deluded or a n00b.

Ain't nothing wrong with being a gamer-girl, nor a non-fps player.

Psst: some gamer/comic/nerd rock you might like: Kirby Krackle. [/nerd]

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGHH!!!

They made a Impossible Mission game for the Wii, and you could make your agent a woman. I WAS SO EXCITED. It made my friggin' day to play it as a chick! WOOHOO!

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO! As I said up-thread, I totally bought Impossible Mission for the Wii. :D

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much. There was a lot I didn't mention in the post. Like the fact that I played the first versions of Adobe Photoshop on our old Mac. And that my brother had over 100 games on floppy disk for both machines that I played for hours on end. My memory is shit so I don't remember them all. Star Paws! That was one! Lots of space and robot games that I enjoyed as well! :)

WIZBALL!

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

I have heard of it. I'll give it another look-see. That's a lovely offer. I'll see if I like it. :)

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

I'm a gamer like I'm a bisexual that likes monogamy. People don't believe it, but it's what I am. ;)

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

I love geek rock. :D

[hotclaws.livejournal.com]

Yeah,discalculia,dyslexia and can't tell my left from my right.My BF tried to reach me Tetris .I was so bad at it,he laughed until his glasses fell off.
I play a game called Howrse,which is a horsie game and I'm damn good at it but it needs no reaction time,so I'm good.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Elite was a game where you flew throughout the galaxy and fought ships and bought and sold resources and commoditites to become the rich big-dude of the galaxy.

Oh, I knew that, I don't know why I wrote otherwise. I was reading websites about the H2G2 game some years back. I managed to get out of the house, but I always got my arse caned by the fucking bulldozer.

My brother and sister played SimCity 2000 *all* the friggin' time. And they played a wicked game called "Emergency Room". They went into resedit and turned all the staff into zombies, it was awesome! We also played Titanic on there, and the old West game that that particular games company made. Those were awesome games! They also used to play Myth and that sort of thing. I did most of my gaming on the PC at that point, though.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's my problem. And I have nervous issues as well, I scream and jump and get stressed out quickly. I tend to enjoy zen-like games and games where you build up something over time. Unlocking content is fun for me as well, I like doing that.

I think that's why I've taken to Sim games, and why I used to play more mainstream games when I was a kid. When you had a limited amount of movements in a 2D space controlled by an 8-directional joystick, I was fine. I could do that. I played every sort of game imaginable - racing, sports, battle, puzzle, sci-fi, etc. The second things got 3D and multi-stick, that was it, I was screwed. More than one fire button? Forget it.

There's an in-joke in our family where, when I try a new game, I say, "Where's the fire button?!" Which is both snarky and honest. There are SO many controls in modern games, I just want to know where the fucking fire button is first so I can defend myself before I do other things. Thing is, I'm not stupid. I can mentally figure out the puzzles required to get to the next levels.

For example, there are puzzles in the exploration of tombs in The Sims 3: World Adventures which I *love*, because it's pure puzzle, it doesn't matter how you move, it's basically point-and-click in a 3D space. It's more like a board game than an action game, but with as-you-play response, which is wicked fun. And I can play that just fine. I can do those missions. I'm all good. But if I have to kill things to get forward and use complicated controls, I'm screwed. Plus I get tired of killing things over and over again.

[hotclaws.livejournal.com]

Yeah,with my game ,no killing,just training and breeding lovely,cute foals.The challenge is winning comps and improving the breed.So peaceful.

[drbunsen.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's totally the Elite I meant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_%28video_game%29
First developed on the BBC Micro.

I must have logged huuundreds of hours on that, waging galactic piracy, trying to dock with those friggin space stations! ARGH!!

I've only discovered H2G2 recently through the online flash version.

Sim City 2000 on the other hand is responsible for my longest single session on a video game evar - 53 hours, pausing only for biological needs, not including sleep. Atari 1040 yo!

When you say Titanic - do you mean Starship Titanic?

[shantari.livejournal.com]

My brother who's studying to be a game programmer would quite likely disagree with this entry. :) He's expressed a frustration with the narrowminded industry plenty of times, and how gaming has been turned into this "immature-boys-only"-club. When I was a kid, I mostly watched my brother play, but there were plenty of games I played myself. Preferably puzzle ones, and adventure games. (Which is why I became such a Zelda fan. XD) Really love those lucasarts games where you verbed nouns, like Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max: Hit the Road.

(If I'm not remembering wrong, my brother once was part of doing a market investigation of girl gamers for a school project. I'll ask him about it, I think they got some interesting results. Like, that generally girls/women didn't think that there should be a difference in strength/dexterity depending on gender of the game character. And also that there was strong preference for puzzle solving games. I think so, need to check.)

[zzzzsleep.livejournal.com]

Wootleburger!

I'm not sure if I've shown you this link before or not... but here's a little web game/toy thingamabob...

http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

Yes with the girl and gamer and not liking the most popular games. I love my Sim games, and for some reason I also really enjoy the Asian style arcade fighting games like Tekken and Soul Calibre etc :) I adore my DS beyond all reason and am delighted to finally have an English Wii even if I don't have time to play much at the moment...

Go us! We rock!