Invisible String
Everyone has different music tastes, TV preferences, and personal style; it’s a part of our individual identity. Similarly, there are a lot of different kinds of gamers out there. Traditionally speaking, non-gamers might imagine that all adult gamers are the Cheeto-eating, basement-dwelling types who exclusively play noisy war games and yell at their screens in fury, but there are many other gamer varieties. With their diverse motivations, skillsets, and backgrounds, gamers are never exactly alike, taking on the characteristics of their gaming environment and morphing into individualized personas.
Gaming stereotypes can be broken down by tracing their motivations for gaming. Ranging from escapism to challenge-seeking, Midia Research recently conducted a survey that focuses on major influencers of gamer behaviors. Rhy Elliot, Midia’s entertainment journalist, says that adventurers, reward-seekers, and socialites may have different motivations for choosing their favorite games, but ultimately 53% of gamers say they play games to relax.
Of course, relaxation is entirely subjective.
Via u/dondurgan
Relaxation doesn’t always come in the form of peace and serenity. Oftentimes, subconsciously, people feel relieved or relaxed after accomplishing something. “Games almost always produce perceptible results,” according to psychologist and cognitive neuroscience specialist, Dr. Steph Acaster. “The context of a video game often provides a much more consistent system of reward, progression, and success, than people experience in their daily lives.” Acaster also says that specific games can reveal a lot about what motivates the people who like to play them. Even the simplest games are often complex in terms of their motivating attributes. Reward-based achievements boost serotonin levels and thus, make gamers feel uplifted.
Players who love Animal Crossing dream about tending to their little neighborhood garden, enjoying mini games, building their universe, and taking on puzzle challenges to progress. Others enjoy games like Dark Souls, getting punished by relentlessly powerful bosses and scaling character attributes in an attempt to feel mighty. There are, of course, the Call of Duty-style gamers, who quick-scope and trick-shot their way through online fast-paced war games. Role-play gamers, conversely, take their sweet time, progressing their character stats through choice-based narratives, playing through an entire story and customizing every cutscene along the way. Don’t even get me started on those battle royale Fortnite gamers…
All of these archetypes are valid in their search for personalized entertainment in the gameosphere, racing to Gamestop to buy games that will cater to their individual quest for mental rejuvenation. The invisible thread that unites all gamers, however, is the quest to feel good after playing a game, and there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to make the inner-child of every gamer light up, regardless of the context: Humor.
“Games can be funny and stupid sometimes,” says Armin Ibrisagic, one of the game developers for the infamously hilarious, Goat Simulator game. After accidentally creating a wildly successful video game in 2014 where players flop and fly around their screens as a goat, Ibrisagic and his team were totally shocked. Recouping their development expenses within ten minutes of the game’s release on Steam, Goat Simulator went straight to the top of the charts, outperforming the gaming studio’s other, more complicated and serious games, within minutes. Fans could not wait to be chased by animal control as if it were the police, they wanted to unlock more advanced goat characters, and they were frothing to control a tank with their tiny goat hooves.
Via u/JustLiketheGypsyWomanSaid
It was silly, it was funny, and it was one of the first major games to touch every single gamer niche market because it targeted the silliness and visual humor receptors of all players. As it turns out, gamers all just want to have a good time, and that’s truly the glue that holds together the entire industry.
Nuanced Games are Fun Games
Quintessential gamer auras and gaming nuances have diversified and elevated gameplay for decades. As developers take note of gamer preferences, and as genres collide, creativity flourishes, spicing up new releases with in-game features guaranteed to satisfy the gaming cravings of the entire community. These days, cross-genre infusion is what makes gaming so fun and interesting, especially when a gamer’s needs (like the need for relaxation or humor) get heard and implemented.
Clearly, gamers want to spend an hour making their customizable character look like a goofy, deformed monster; it’s useless and technically achieves nothing in the game’s progression but it makes us giggle.
Via u/cormacbeats
The clash and collision of video game genres has only made gaming stronger, because silly elements like unrealistic customization, funny-looking armor combinations, and in-game emotes have been cross-poliated across all gaming disciplines. Yet, as gaming styles combine forces and capitalize on new variations within the industry, game developers will always sprinkle in a little something-something for everyone. Funnily enough, the secret sauce to please every gamer is some element of goofiness, because at its core, gaming is a playful, enjoyment-focused media.
Gamers Just Wanna Have Fun
Gaming disciplines vary greatly across the gamesphere. Role play games, first person shooter games, hack-n-slash games, mobile games, story-driven games, all-ages games, multiplayer pro games, and simulation-style games all represent the major corners of the industry and thus, draw very different styles of gameplay. Many gamers want to feel powerful, others seek prestige, and some just want to unwind their mind with peaceful ambiance, but there’s one thing that all gamers have in common that crosses the boundaries of every style of gameplay: Silliness.
No matter how serious a gamer may seem, they’ll always create the dumbest-looking customizable characters, laugh at broken NPCs, taunt their buddies in the lobby, and goof around with in-game mechanics. Because at the end of the day, we’re all just here to play.
Via u/GRANDOS