Categorizing yourself
As we all know, gaming has revolutionized to become a hobby that almost everyone of any age can participate and enjoy. There are so many games to choose from and one of them will bound to be more than suitable for your liking. However, the level of involvement in gaming is important to understand as it may decide whether gaming will benefit you or not. Majority of the gamers are aged between 14 years old to 30 years old and if you were to play games for as long as 15 years in your life, that is a lot of time used, for either to be flown off or for the better of your entertainment. Some people may even consider to make gaming part of their competitive lives, which no doubt would be interesting to find out how they live a life like that. Now it all boils down to this, we can categorize gaming into 2 categories which are casual gaming and competitive gaming, but which one do you belong to?
We all know we cannot always play games because of various reasons, be it homework, nagging of your girlfriend(s) or mother (actually they are the same), suffering from Palmar Hidradentities (pun intended) or maybe you're too lazy to even play games sometimes. Perhaps you don't encounter the previously mentioned problems, but it seems you always cannot win your friends in a simple game of Tetris, therefore you think gaming is not mainstream for you. Fret not because if gaming does not like you, you can still love gaming. Even if you're a freshman at gaming, you can always enjoy what the game offers you, like the lush scenery, or the flexible game mechanics or just plain mindless fun of hacking zombies out of whack, the single player experience will never be a lackluster! Well, at least for most of the games. If you think this is what gaming means to you, without a doubt you are in the casual gaming category.
This is the modern day Tetris
If not, then read on!
Have you ever thought before, you can do better at a game just because your friends simply beat you in a match of Counter Strike by 479 kills? From that thought you have created a sense of competition, but that does not mean you have the skills to be good at gaming yet. Competitive gaming will require you to try to best yourself in a game in order to allow you to get the better edge in your gaming sessions. First you will think of beating your previous records, then you'll think of beating the Artificial Intelligence provided in the game, then you will want to beat your friends up (not literally), then you will want to trash people from all over the world, lastly you will want to trash yourself! Now that's competitive gaming!! If you're an MMORPG player, you would take all chances to level-up your characters, if it means sacrificing bed-time, bath-time, work-time and even chow-time, in order to strive better than your friends/rivals. If you're an FPS player, you would want to aim for headshots for every kill to get an edge and tick everyone off their seats. If you're an RTS player, you would most definitely want to "pwn" your opponent's base in a short time of, let's just say, 4 minutes (Oh, I've been there)? Now, would you think that you fall right into the competitive gaming category?
Competitive gaming: Always in front of the pack
You have to remember though, as a casual gamer, you need to know that gaming is only a sole purpose of entertainment; for competitive gamers however, they can further expand their options to become professional gamers and make a living out of it in the future, even if they don't make it, they still have fun by thriving for competition. Of course, both gaming styles are time consuming, but the length of time used is much longer for the latter.
If you are not any of the above, you are probably not a gamer.
In conclusion, knowing what gamer you are will tell you how much time you need to involve yourself in gaming. All in all, casual gamers need not spend too much time to master a game, they can just move on to the other when it starts get repetitive. For Competitive gamers, they have more choices, but of course they should also limit themselves to balance their lives before actually going professional.
So, are you a casual gamer or a competitive gamer?
Yours sincerely,
Elyk
Your Gaming Informant.
