Is the label "gamer" even necessary anymore?

Having completed the course, and had some time to reflect on it, my mind keeps going back to the simple question – “What is a Gamer?” I’m sure we all remember the image Kevin showed us in one of the first lectures, of a crazy looking “large” guy wielding toy guns, and I’m sure for many, many people in the world today, this is exactly where their definition of a gamer begins and ends. For obvious reasons however this is completely unfair, and I feel that as technology continues to go along, hopefully this stereotype will fade and shrink away. I’m not holding my breath though.

I think that today's “gamer” is a much more broad term than it ever has been and I think it’s going to just get broader and broader. I’m sure many of us have seen people on the bus or train staring down at their phones, playing whatever the current fad mobile game is. Would these people be called gamers? I think most would say no, but if we actually talked to these people and found out their personal habits of gaming, it wouldn’t be all that far from what could be called an average PC/Console “gamer”.

I believe that the term gamer is nearing irrelevance, at least in the modern first world. Most everyone plays games at some point, many much more regularly then we or even they realize. Doesn’t that just make them a gamer? I think the definition should really just apply to anyone who takes some joy playing a game, and shouldn’t need to be an elitist term bandied around on internet discussion boards by so called “true gamers.”  So let’s do away with the idea of the “gamer” and instead just understand that it’s now so ubiquitous to our culture that it probably doesn’t even need a label anymore.