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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 11:25 AM
Default Simmers are Gamers??
Quote: Originally posted by Pizzatron-9000 in "What did you discover today while playing the sims?" thread (Post #15209)
. . . Simmers are gamers . . .
That quote by our Munchiebot friend Pizzatron-9000 got me thinking, and I think the topic possibly deserves a thread of its own. Like @Essa in that thread, I think of myself as only a Simmer and not a gamer because I've never had any real interest in any other computer game. In fact I was quite snooty about video games before I bought my Sims. Maybe it's because I have a stereotypical picture of a "gamer" as a boy aged between 13 and 24 addicted to violent shoot-em-ups. I have played other games, but never for very long, and never with much commitment. They were always free (like the free ones that come with Windows) or very cheap. I hate violent games with realistic graphics, and nothing would induce me to play -- far less buy -- Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, Assassin's Creed or even Grand Theft Auto. I cannot kill anything that looks like a real human, or even a real animal. (I was ok with the crude graphics in early stuff like Space Invaders, because they didn't look at all like something that was really alive.) Also in The Sims, I'm not into goal oriented play; it's all about my Sims and their life stories. I'll help them to achieve their goals, but only because I love them and want them to succeed. I like looking at happy Sims.

I suppose I could get into Sim City 4, but I don't want to get addicted to two Maxis games (!), so it stays uninstalled in its case under my bed. I really only bought it so I could make new terrains for The Sims 2,

How do you feel about the Gamer or Simmer question? Are you a gamer, or a Simmer, or both, or don't care?

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 11:37 AM
Simmer above all
And then there is a bonus! The Sims 2 never ends.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#4 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 12:07 PM
Since I started gaming when the first sit down Space Invaders arrived in Brisbane 35 years ago I think I can class myself as an old gammer. Now I mostly play Sims 2 and a really old space Civ game but I also play Skyrim and Dragon Age. A lot of games give me terrible motion sickness, that's the main thing that stops me. There are about 20 old games on my computer table shelf, games I never play but don't want to part from. I would say now I am simmer and then gammer.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#5 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 12:09 PM
The word 'gamer' induces visions of teenage boys sitting down and zapping every opponent in their game. If that's the idea, then I'm not a gamer-I play Sims 2, which isn't a violent or goal seeking game that ends in ultimate point scores.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Lab Assistant
#6 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 12:13 PM
-sighs- I dunno but according to the sims file sharing place you're only a "simmer" if you recolor or mesh and have a website full of your creations.


otherwise you're not a "simmer" and not welcome to use their services. Which sucks because being gone for over a year and not having the same computer as when I left I need a LOT of CC back and some of the sites mine came from are kapoot. like BPS for an example and a few others. I know there's the graveyard but it's down. I hope it's mod/creator/admin is alright.....
Inventor
#7 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 12:51 PM
Both, though what bothers me is the whole snotty 'casual gamer' versus 'hardcore gamer' attitude some have. I just don't have the wallet or the reflexes to be 'hardcore' XD Though, funnily enough, I was the one who brought gaming into my family when I was but a wee one. As a result, my game library is fairly small and I tend towards indie or non-reflex-heavy stuff. I was going to say I'm not a fan of blood, gore, and violence... and then remembered Silent Hill games are some of my favorite to watch Let's Plays of. Whoops. Even if it's the story that draws me in, it can't be said that they aren't bloody, gory, and violent!

It's too bad that 'gamer' still invokes the image of a teen boy holed up in a room shooting things on their screen. Gamers cover a whole range of personalities and ages and tastes, and games can be equally as broad. It might take some looking, but there's more than shoot-em-ups still out there. Even if you don't have money, you can find fun web-based games at places like Kongregate.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 12:54 PM
I play Skyrim once in a while - and I enjoy it too - it is not Sims, though

Emma2015 - this is off topic and a topic that has been exhausted because it seems that you do not understand that Sims File Sharing (which is owned by Delphy - who also happens to be the owner of MTS) has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with your lost BPS downloads. Yes, some BPS creators might have uploaded their stuff there, but you will still need a link to download it, whether you are registered at SimsFileShare or not.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#9 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 1:05 PM Last edited by maxon : 14th Feb 2016 at 12:05 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by AndrewGloria
Maybe it's because I have a stereotypical picture of a "gamer" as a boy aged between 13 and 24 addicted to violent shoot-em-ups.

I would guess this is your problem - video games are, and have always been, a widely varied thing. I would say basically, video games can only only be realistically described, as I did describe this on another thread here recently, as digital in form and involving at least one player. Anything else you'd care to add to that can be challenged in one way or another.

The notion of video games being for boys comes from a response to a severe crash in the video game market in the late 1980s. Nintendo, in order to survive as a company, started marketing games to a niche market - boys. That's where it comes from. Early video games were not gendered in any particular way and even during the 1990s when action games targetted at boys were at their most prominent and Nintendo were riding high there were plenty of other sorts of games being made. That is, after all, the period in which Sim City and The Sims were first developed. Also Tetris - remember that? - still the most popular video game ever made - appeared in the late 1980s and was marketed by ... yes, that's right, Nintendo (amongst others but it was a major distributer of the game).

So I'm a simmer - but I'd also describe myself as a gamer (though I do play other games too).

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Mad Poster
#10 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 1:54 PM Last edited by gazania : 8th Feb 2016 at 9:58 PM.
I posted a disagree or two because I agree with maxon.

I live in a household where all of us play video games. I would consider my daughter the gamer of all of us, though. When I think of video games, yes, there are the shooters of which my husband is fond (certain ones, though. They must include intelligent, strategic gameplay, not just "see it ... shoot it"). My son plays a racing- and vehicle-design game that has been around for decades. No shoot-em-ups. My daughter plays Zelda, Mario Brothers, Harvest Moon, Persona 4, Kingdom Hearts, and other like games. I've dabbled in many video games, including Zelda, Mario, some of the really earliest ones, and Cities Skylines, but play Sims most of the time, and would consider myself a Simmer first and a (very) casual gamer next.

So when I think of video games, I tend to think more in terms of categories or platforms. Shooter-game fans seem to be mostly male, admittedly. But while I was waiting at my daughter's college for her to finish class on Friday, I was watching both male and female students intensely playing Mario Brothers games in the library gaming room. And Mario is not exactly a minor-league video game!

Quickie source that isn't Wikipedia: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/3...of-all-time.htm

Personally, I think the media and certain Web sources like to perpetuate the "gamerz are boyz" stereotype. That might be just me, though.

Thanks to ALL free-site creators, admins and mods.

RIP Sunni ... truly a ray of light.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 2:13 PM
I find the idea that a gamer is a boy of 13-14 rather offensive. I know that was nobody's intention, but I still find it offensive. Gender stereotypical and quite frankly, a little sad.

To me a gamer is someone who plays games. That could be counter-strike, Sims, or good old monopoly. It doesn't have to be computer-based, it does not have to be violent. If it's a game, you could be a gamer. If you don't want to be called a gamer that's your business. I don't understand it personally since to me, all it says is that you enjoy playing one or more games, but clearly we have different definitions of the word.

Creations can be found on my on tumblr.
Mad Poster
#12 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 2:23 PM
If you do the verb, you are the noun.

I am a gamer. I play tabletop RPGs and board games with my friends every Sunday and Sims at home on weekdays. I talk about games online and in real life. I do not think of my little sister as a gamer, as she doesn't make a lot of room for it in her life and it is not her chief amusement - but if you ever sit down to play a game with her, look out! The woman's a shark. My husband and I taught her and her family to play Settlers of Cataan over New Year's and on her very first game she came within an ace of winning, and not by beginner's luck, either - she grasped the strategy immediately and went all out with an intelligent plan that would've won if one fewer 7s had been rolled. If she ever calls herself a gamer, I defy anybody to find good grounds on which to define her out of the category.

The tendency to define an occupation or hobby by a certain stereotype and define anyone who participates in the occupation or hobby but doesn't fit that stereotype as being less "real" in some way than someone who does is elitist, divisive, destructive, and stupid. In the case of people policing who is or is not a "real" gamer it is also usually explicitly misogynistic, as immature male gamers try to defend their hobby as some kind of "no gurlz allowed" club; and slightly less explicitly racist - as when a bunch of whiny white boys complain that they are somehow being discriminated against if non-white avatars are available choices in "their" games, because people of color can't be "real" gamers either.

Spare me all that crap, and edition wars, too!

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Lab Assistant
#13 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 2:41 PM
A game is a game, and someone who plays a game is a gamer to me. Games come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and different 'genres'. Just because you don't fit into the stereotypical image, doesn't mean you don't qualify for the definition, because we all know stereotypes are just that - stereotypes. You don't tell someone who prefers to read chicklits that she isn't a reader because she doesn't read 'real literature'. You read a book, you're a reader, and the same goes for games in my opinion.
Mad Poster
#14 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:07 PM
In a sense, of course I'm a gamer because I play a game, but I feel like the meaning of the word has changed. When I'm in a video game shop and I'm wandering around, I usually feel quite awkward picking up say a Sims 4 EP to see what they've introduced to the game because I feel like people look at me as if to say "You're not a real gamer, I bet you don't even know anything about these other games". I feel like 'gamer' has started to mean someone who plays a lot of games competitively. I think that's how a lot of people see it too, because once during a seminar class the room had to be split into "gamers vs. non-gamers", and it was more or less 'girls vs. boys' until someone said "Does Sims 3 count as a game?" and the lecturer told her that it did, and then all of a sudden it was the majority of the class on one side of the room and only about 3 non-gamers.

I play other games too, but I feel like I'm pulling further and further away from what people would call a gamer, but at the same time I think that's also because games are tailoring too much to a specific 'gamer' type person. I hate first-person shooters, DLC and online multiplayer - so I can't even name one game that came out in the past 5 or so years that I actually really liked. I tend to just stick with the Sims series (including Urbz) or older games such as on the Ps2 and N64 (and even then I don't play often). The only other games I really play are Japanese fighting games like JJBA All-Star Battle & J-Stars Victory Vs. and that's only because it's a way of entertaining people who come to my house, they mostly sit on the shelf while I play Sims.

To be honest, I tend to compare most games with the sandbox mixed with goal driven gameplay Sims 2 has. I got Fallout 4 a few months ago at its midnight release, it's an okay game, but after realizing there were some things I wanted to do but couldn't, I was like "meh". Also I spent waaaay too much time thinking "I want this object in sims" "I want that hairstyle, it would look great on [Sim]!".

~Your friendly neighborhood ginge
Lab Assistant
#15 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:18 PM
I don't consider myself a gamer when I play Sims. It is surely a game but rather special. If I play Assassins Creed yeah then I could say I'm a gamer. But to be honest I'm rather a noob than anything else.
Field Researcher
#16 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:27 PM
Sims 2 qualifies as a game, yes, so do poker, spades and blackjack. But why would someone who plays explicitly need to be limited under just "simmer" when someone who plays explicitly cards online wouldn't be called a "carder"? Yes, I like the individuality of our little term, but in the grand scheme, I am a gamer when it comes down to it, as I feel everyone here is. At the end, simmi g is gaming in every sense of the word. You're playing a virtual reality, focusing on goals that in the long run have no real effect on anything. We might not be intense or hardcore, but yes. We are gamers.

Take the Hard Hat Challenge. A relatively quick challenge designed to be added into almost any established hood.

Hollow Tune - Brick 'N' Mortar.

{San-Yip-See-Ah}
Scholar
#17 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:41 PM
I'd be classified as a gamer, but only just. Almost every game I play is namely about something other than killing, just like The Sims. Animal Crossing is a favourite, and Sonic Adventure 2 simply because of the Chao World (if you love Sim toddlers, you'll love Chao World).


"It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." - Mark Twain
Truth will not fear scrutiny.
Lab Assistant
#18 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:43 PM
Too bad that "gamer" has such a bad connotation.
I love Sims, but for different reasons than the emotional impact, beautiful graphics, and complex RPG fun of games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.
Mad Poster
#19 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:46 PM
Bigsimsfan, what you're getting in that game store is an example of the toxicity of the elitism of defining certain games out of the subculture. You're buying into that and letting it put you down and make you feel less entitled to be open about your interests than other people and screw that.

My mom goes to as many Spurs games (the local basketball team) as she can. She doesn't read box scores for baseball or get all het up about the Superbowl and she might not go to the local high school football games if she doesn't know anyone on the team or in the cheer squad - so is she a sports fan, or not? She's a Spurs fan, which is a subset of sports fan and anybody who tries to shame her for not reading box scores can go stick his head in a pig.

I don't read most mainstream comics anymore, but have a small number that I read and enjoy. Does not reading Marvel or DC because they wearied me long ago with the constraints corporate reality places on their storylines and characterization make me somehow not a comic book fan? Of course not!

Same here. Simmers constitute a specific subset of gamers who are interested in sims games. And anybody who thinks we're not hardcore or intense about it needs to read these forums more carefully!

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#20 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:52 PM
I never have liked the implication that just because Sims is a different kind of game, it isn't a game and those that play it are not "gamers". I suppose that may go back to the sterotype about "real" games, i.e. first person shooters are "real" games, Sims is not.

If a person who plays Sims branches out to a different kind of game, are they now a "gamer"? I recently started playing Fable the Lost Chapters which is classified as a Action RPG. Am I now a "gamer" even though I've been playing Sims 2 since 2010 and Sims 3 since 2012? Or is it back to age-gender stereotypes that since I'm a woman in her early 30's I'll never be a "gamer." I never have liked stereotypes that just because teen age males do something its "real", but if older woman or just females in general do it its not "real".
Theorist
#21 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 3:55 PM Last edited by PenelopeT : 8th Feb 2016 at 9:55 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by AndrewGloria
How do you feel about the Gamer or Simmer question? Are you a gamer, or a Simmer, or both, or don't care?


I really don't think about it to tell you the truth.

Guess I'm one of those people who just considers playing games (of any type including board games) as more of a hobby that doesn't need some sort of identifying label attached. And I don't just play the Sims - I have a PS4 and an Xbox and enjoy playing games of various genres on them. So, I guess the answer to the question is all relative.


“Seize the time... Live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.” ― Jean-Luc Picard
Mad Poster
#22 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 4:11 PM
The Sims is still a video game. If you play it, then yes you are a gamer. As a gamer simply means you enjoy interactive electronic entertainment (video games). This negative association with teenage males is nothing more than a stereotype.
Field Researcher
#23 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 4:12 PM
A gamer is someone who plays games - then it's up to yourself if you want to call yourself that or not.

Regarding the stereotypical gamer, it's completly wrong.
Recent surveys and studies have shown that over 50% of all gamers are actually women (Source , Source 2)
Mad Poster
#24 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 4:21 PM
Very interesting, the information from Maxon.

Penny makes a valid point. Games are not limited to computers at all!

I do think Sims give us plenty or opportunity to be very creative without any pressure. We can work on a house for a year

I think that gaming - no matter which game you play - should be balanced with the rest of a person's life. In my social circle, as well as in my family, I am the only Sims 2 player. (One of my friends creates celebrity Sims for Sims 3 here on MTS ). It has never bothered me and I do not think it has bothered anyone else.

In the end, life is about more than a computer game
Scholar
#25 Old 8th Feb 2016 at 4:25 PM
The Sims is a video game, therefore simmers are gamers, too . As other people here mentioned, people typically associate that term with young males (and occasionally females) who are into your typical shooting games, or other popular games and so the idea of simmers going by that term doesn't occur to many people.
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