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Adding onto this, imagine how you would feel if someone said "There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide" But then you learned that only 500 million were

Adding onto this, imagine how you would feel if someone said "There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide" But then you learned that only 500 million were really fluent, and the rest ranged from broken Spanish that was enough to get by in a Spanish speaking country to people who were forced to take a Spanish class in highschool and never used it again. I think this concept of "fluency" in games is probably a more useful metric. The question is, if I dump you in front of a game that you've never played before, but it conforms to the language of video game design, how quickly can you beat it? I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example.[1] You could extend the metaphor further, for example Spanish is spoken in many different ways around the globe, and therefore some people who speak one dialect of Spanish can't understand another dialect of Spanish. The same could be true for games, and we would need to classify and understand these dialects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw Interesting video talking about what games are like for a non-gamer, shows an example of not understanding how to move the camera and the player at the same time.

rsynnott 6y ago
> I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example Now would someone who only played NES games, or Civilization VI, or Papers Please. Are we defining 'games' as meaning '3D walk-y about-y games', here?
- setr 6y ago
  Given the notion of "fluency" proposed by the GP, the idea would be that a "fluent" gamer would not be described with "played only X games". You would be fluent if you could "communicate" in multiple genres -- having a sufficiently thorough vocabulary.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    But this is just weird gatekeeping. You could for example be extremely fluent in a single genre but uninterested in others. For example I've been playing games for over 30 years and don't really know the genre conventions of match-3 games beyond the obvious. Similarly I know very little about MOBAs or gacha style games or visual novels. And I'm a game designer! IMO one of the worst aspects of modern "gamer" culture is this insistence on purity tests particularly when they're aimed at games that are extremely popular with women. Even in terms of market segmentation I don't think the distinction of "overall gaming fluency" is very measurable or meaningful.
    - setr 6y ago
      No its a question of categorization. You can't have the same conversation between someone who plays only candy crush, and someone who plays a wide variety of games. Its like saying that 8 billion people read books -- but 7.9 billion of that only read harry potter. Suddenly that 8 billion readers is far less notable. There's a scale to your level of hobbyism -- a lot of people only play games as long as their friends do, because its simply a social tool (replacing the mall). The current flavor just happens to fall under video games, but theres no stickiness -- if the next popular thing is laser tag, they'll shift out and never think about games again. The notion of trying to define this scale as a problem is also largely unique to gaming -- it exists elsewhere without issue. Painting, movies, programming, literature, music, engineering etc there's no issue saying that someone is dipping their toes into the subject, or has purely commercial interest in it (eg I only watch best selling movies, or only marvel) or has an actual interest in it (a -phile, a hacker, etc) I think the key difference is the prevailing belief that there is no depth to this subject, so the only difference between a casual entrant and a hobbyist and a professional is an arbitrary checklist. Obviously I disagree -- there is depth, and therefore, there is a difference between "gamers", as they fall between the ranks in understanding that depth. Ofc theres no great metric, and you can't define it in detail, but the difference between a candy-crush-only "gamer" and a genre-agnostic "gamer" and a genre-loving "gamer" and a read-the-literature (what little exists) "gamer" in recognizing and communicating about that depth is readily apparent
      - 6y ago
  - graham_paul 6y ago
    I disagree. I used to know plenty of people who only played FPS. Also people who only played 1 or 2 different FPS. Are these people not gamers? Saying that you need to play X games or games in X number of genres is not something I agree with it
    - setr 6y ago
      They would be less "fluent" than otherwise. It's a scale, not a binary switch. It would be the difference of trying to communicate about movies between someone who has only ever seen marvel films, and someone who watched say the entirety of the criterion collection. Or the difference between technical sales and engineers. It'd be fairly meaningless to give them the same label -- one is clearly capable of a more advanced communication on the subject than the other, if only because they've experience a larger subset of the subject. Of course, you could also play the living hell out of a single game and be extremely fluent about only that one game -- which is clearly different than someone being fluent about games in general. We wouldn't expect someone who only ever played SC2, even if he had put 2000 hours into it, to have anything notable to say about FPS games and RPGs. As you've opined, the marker of when you'd be considered a "gamer" vs otherwise is an arbitrary meaningless distinction, a random line drawn in the sand, but that's why "fluency" is trying to be introduced as an alternative.

rsynnott 6y ago

> I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example Now would someone who only played NES games, or Civilization VI, or Papers Please. Are we defining 'games' as meaning '3D walk-y about-y games', here?

setr 6y ago
Given the notion of "fluency" proposed by the GP, the idea would be that a "fluent" gamer would not be described with "played only X games". You would be fluent if you could "communicate" in multiple genres -- having a sufficiently thorough vocabulary.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  But this is just weird gatekeeping. You could for example be extremely fluent in a single genre but uninterested in others. For example I've been playing games for over 30 years and don't really know the genre conventions of match-3 games beyond the obvious. Similarly I know very little about MOBAs or gacha style games or visual novels. And I'm a game designer! IMO one of the worst aspects of modern "gamer" culture is this insistence on purity tests particularly when they're aimed at games that are extremely popular with women. Even in terms of market segmentation I don't think the distinction of "overall gaming fluency" is very measurable or meaningful.
  - setr 6y ago
    No its a question of categorization. You can't have the same conversation between someone who plays only candy crush, and someone who plays a wide variety of games. Its like saying that 8 billion people read books -- but 7.9 billion of that only read harry potter. Suddenly that 8 billion readers is far less notable. There's a scale to your level of hobbyism -- a lot of people only play games as long as their friends do, because its simply a social tool (replacing the mall). The current flavor just happens to fall under video games, but theres no stickiness -- if the next popular thing is laser tag, they'll shift out and never think about games again. The notion of trying to define this scale as a problem is also largely unique to gaming -- it exists elsewhere without issue. Painting, movies, programming, literature, music, engineering etc there's no issue saying that someone is dipping their toes into the subject, or has purely commercial interest in it (eg I only watch best selling movies, or only marvel) or has an actual interest in it (a -phile, a hacker, etc) I think the key difference is the prevailing belief that there is no depth to this subject, so the only difference between a casual entrant and a hobbyist and a professional is an arbitrary checklist. Obviously I disagree -- there is depth, and therefore, there is a difference between "gamers", as they fall between the ranks in understanding that depth. Ofc theres no great metric, and you can't define it in detail, but the difference between a candy-crush-only "gamer" and a genre-agnostic "gamer" and a genre-loving "gamer" and a read-the-literature (what little exists) "gamer" in recognizing and communicating about that depth is readily apparent
    - 6y ago
- graham_paul 6y ago
  I disagree. I used to know plenty of people who only played FPS. Also people who only played 1 or 2 different FPS. Are these people not gamers? Saying that you need to play X games or games in X number of genres is not something I agree with it
  - setr 6y ago
    They would be less "fluent" than otherwise. It's a scale, not a binary switch. It would be the difference of trying to communicate about movies between someone who has only ever seen marvel films, and someone who watched say the entirety of the criterion collection. Or the difference between technical sales and engineers. It'd be fairly meaningless to give them the same label -- one is clearly capable of a more advanced communication on the subject than the other, if only because they've experience a larger subset of the subject. Of course, you could also play the living hell out of a single game and be extremely fluent about only that one game -- which is clearly different than someone being fluent about games in general. We wouldn't expect someone who only ever played SC2, even if he had put 2000 hours into it, to have anything notable to say about FPS games and RPGs. As you've opined, the marker of when you'd be considered a "gamer" vs otherwise is an arbitrary meaningless distinction, a random line drawn in the sand, but that's why "fluency" is trying to be introduced as an alternative.