Here is the Google Ngram viewer showing the frequency of the word gamer<\/em> from 1900 to the present day<\/a>.<\/p>\n I suppose the graph at first looks like what you would expect, but note how “gamer” only really becomes popular from 1990 and on – it was rarely used in relation to arcade games or early home computer games.<\/p>\n On a personal note this also explains why I never wondered that hard about whether I was or wasn’t a gamer: the word only became popular after my formative game-playing years in the 1980’s…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS. Why is the curve flattening around 2005? Could it be that the rise of casual games is making the question moot?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People often ask me about the origin of the idea of the “gamer”, as something that you may or may not identify as. I discussed this kind of “I am\/am not a (casual) gamer” posturing briefly in A Casual Revolution, but what about the word itself? Here is the Google Ngram viewer showing the frequency … Continue reading “The Rise of the Word “Gamer””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-casual-revolution","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/gamer2-450x165.png\" "\\"gamer2\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n