Gamer people are an interesting breed. The amount of gamers grows by the year. Almost everyone is doing it. You’ve got your console gamers, PC gamers, and people who play games on their cellphones. And, of course, people who do all three (perhaps at once, those pesky multitaskers). Some types of gamers play competitively and set themselves apart from the pack. Others care much less about such endeavors and just want to have fun. Those gamers are much less likely to snap their keyboard (or controller) in two. Other gamers pick one game and play that one to exhaustion, and others want to play it all. And some just like to troll.
The competitive gamer is in it to win it. Of the different types of gamers, they’re probably the most mechanically proficient. They like to top scoreboards, and more often than not, they’re good at it. Sometimes that comes from natural talent, and other times it comes from pure devotion. Competitive gamers stick close to a game – or a genre of games – and master the heck out of it. MOBAs and shooters are highly attractive to competitive gamers. But you can tend to find someone playing just about every game competitively, even single player ones, especially those with a leaderboard.
Then of course, you have the type of people who only play games for fun, or to unwind. Maybe life’s too busy for them to bother devoting too much time to gaming. Or maybe they just don’t want to. Maybe they come home after a long day of work and relax with an hour or two of shooting people dead in Battlefield 1. These people might still be quite good at whatever games they play, but the less you play games the less skilled you are at them, and most of these people have come to accept that. As such, they’re just in it for the fun.
Other gamers have that one game that they play, and they don’t really bother to concern themselves with much else. They might not follow the gaming industry or new releases at all, but they have played 1000 hours of Skyrim and tend to keep an eye on what Bethesda might be up to. They don’t play many games, but the games that really click with them, they play to exhaustion and beyond. They’ll play through the game twenty times, twenty different ways, and keep coming back for more. They don’t really care too much that they might be missing out on similar experiences in other, less familiar games. They found what they enjoy and they stick with it until it finally runs its course and they move on.
Then you have the inverse of that, the person that plays just about anything and keeps a keen eye on the industry. These gamers are highly aware of every announcement and every new release. These gamer types obsess over gaming while the above type obsess over just one game; they’re bred of a similar cloth. Variety gamers will play just about anything they can get their hands on, and some of it they’ll even play to completion. More often, though, they’ll play just enough of a game so that they’re satisfied they got what they needed out of it, and then they’ll move on, like a swarm of locusts trying to devour just about anything they can get their hands on.
Then you have those that lean toward solo or multiplayer games. These kinds of gamers are about as self-explanatory as they come. The former group likes story-driven, single player experiences and would rather not have to bother with interacting with anyone else while they play. The latter prefers multiplayer games. They’re usually the more competitive of the two, and they just can’t get the competitive fix that they get from multiplayer games from single player games. That doesn’t mean the two types can’t intermingle, though. Plenty of gamers prefer both types of games, but most everyone has their preference.
An offshoot of the types of video game players that prefer multiplayer games are the ones that click really well with the social aspects of MMOs and other online games. They don’t even have to be a top-tier raider or anything like that. They just have to like playing the game with other people, maybe not even competitively. Maybe they have an affinity for co-op games as a mean of bonding and having fun with close friends. They’ll dive into the social aspects of games, and go all in. It might even turn into a… second life for them.
Then you have your trolls and griefers. These types of gamers can vary greatly in disposition. Some trolls just live to get under other people’s skin. They just rip it right off and climb right in, kind of like Edgar in Men in Black. Okay, nothing like that, really. But you get the gist. Some trolls are a lot more timid and are really just trying to make people laugh. That’s usually at the expense of others, which has its own set of concerns. But we’re just here to identify them, not stage an intervention.
Gamers are a varied bunch. We come in many shapes and sizes, and for the most part, nobody fits cleanly into any of of these categories. Everyone who plays games might identify primarily with one of these categories, but they probably have little bits of each of it inside them, like a wonderful gaming kaleidoscope. Which of these categories do you feel the most connection to? Or are you an outlying type that we didn’t cover here?
