I'd like to defend this sentiment. I get the negative reactions to this, I really do. All communities - fan clubs, beer aficionados, gamers, book enthusiasts -

I'd like to defend this sentiment. I get the negative reactions to this, I really do. All communities - fan clubs, beer aficionados, gamers, book enthusiasts - have groups of gatekeepers that try to separate the dirty filthy unworthy casual people from the real X. But don't assume that is always the case. Sentiments like this often comes from a different place: wanting meaningful discussion. There are two parts to this. "X game" vs "Y game" categorization, and "plays games" vs "played a game". The first one is usually contentious so I'll elaborate: I play Candy Crush and games like it regularly, and enjoy them. However, I call them "casual games" rather than "video games" in the same way people like to separate "board game" from "party game", "jogging" from "running", "visual novel" from "comic book", and "web design" from "programming" (or "sanwdich" from "hotdog"). The borders frequently get blurry, and people love discussing pedantic philosophy about what is a sandwich, but the grouping still exists and is meaningful. While people who don't have a lot of interest in the field find the distinction weird and pointless, the people who are close to the field find the difference to be night and day. I play and enjoy Terraforming Mars which I classify a board game, Dying Light which I classify a video game, and Super Hexagon which I classify a casual game. Conflating the category of any two of them feels equally wrong. They are different activities, played for different reasons, at different times, with different levels of investment. Any study and discussion that manages to recognize at least these broad distinctions, will be immensely more interesting and fruitful than one who tries to count hotdogs as sandwiches.