I’ve wondered about this for some time. I’m also am wondering if we’re seeing a semantic shift in action, so I thought I’d ask: what does the word “gaming” mean to you?
Does it mean:
– Playing computer and/or video games, such as on a PC and/or console (Wii, PS3, etc.); or,
– Gambling, such as games regulated by your state’s or province’s “Gaming Commission”?
To me, “gaming” means “gambling,” but that may come from the fact that I’m a lifelong horseplayer and former casino worker. I don’t have any game console, and while I do play the occasional fast game of something on my computer, “gaming” to me still means playing horses, craps, blackjack, or slot machines in a casino or other licensed gambling facility.
I have only heard “gaming” to mean gambling in the context of gaming laws. Gaming is PC/console games; if you mean craps, baccarat, poker, etc., it’s “gambling.”
To me, it mostly means “playing games” such as Dungeons&Dragons, various computer and video games, and the like. I don’t include most traditional board games (chess, checkers, chutes and ladders) in this definition. I am aware that many people use gaming to mean gambling…but that’s only because I lived in Las Vegas for about a decade. Gambling does not appeal to me, for some reason.
I also thought that “fantasy role playing” only meant games like D&D…until I stumbled into a FRP chat room on AOL.
Heh. When we were on our honeymoon in New Orleans (pre-Katrina), we walked past a bar that advertised “Gaming inside” and I was all excited - I figured they had a LAN set up or something, since it didn’t seem to be the sort of place that would have D&D games on a regular basis. But NOOOOOO, it was video poker!
That’s what I think of first when I hear the word gaming. Either computer or tabletop roleplaying games of various sorts. ETA: Now, if I hear it in the context of “gaming tables” I know that means gambling.
I think of role-playing games–D&D, Rifts, etc. and specifically I think of the old pencil-and-paper gamers. WoW and so on counts too, but I don’t think of my husband as a “gamer” because he only plays certain video games.
I know the term applies to gambling too, but since I never go to casinos or anything it’s not the first thing I think of.
I think of pencil-and-paper roleplaying games first and video games second, with gambling a distant third.
Lately I’ve been hearing ads for the SF Giants filled with phrases like, “Are you a gamer?” and “You know a gamer when…” They bug the crap out of me; a gamer isn’t someone who watches other people play, dammit!
From a non-english speaking viewpoint, that is a word that at least has crept into my circle of scandinavian friends. Whenever we do something related to playing games on a pc or xbox or somesuch, we call it gaming or gamelaming. An english word borrowed and directly applied to such activities.
“Gaming” meaning blackjack, roulette, etc. is certainly the older meaning of the word, but for most people under the age of 40 (at least, those who are not casino, race track or video poker parlor junkies, which is most of them) it would be more associated with computer/console games.
Even that use is relatively recent. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, if you called yourself as a “gamer” it typically described playing strategy or role playing games, be it AD&D, Diplomacy, or Steve Jackson games like Car Wars, Illuminati!, O.G.R.E., etc. (Yes, I was a “gamer”.) Stores like The Compleat Strategist billed themselves as “the headquarters for gamers” or something like that (their current motto being " The True Gamer’s Strategic Choice").
I had a C=64 and played plenty of joystick-based games on it, and was well familiar with playing Atari and Colecovision games as well at friends’ houses, but those were video games.
I don’t know when the “video” dropped out. I remember noticing it some time in the early 1990s and being a little bit bothered by it (“why is ‘video gaming’ the default kind of gaming now?”), but in retrospect it was simply a harbinger of times to come, because it seems they are the default kind of gaming for most people playing games.