I don't mind the word, but I don't really use it much either. I find it a bit, I don't know, silly I guess? Like calling someone who watches movies a "Movier" or something like that. I don't feel very strongly about it either though.
This is pretty much how I see it, but apparently a movie buff or a book reader is more socially acceptable to the average person. I'm mostly indifferent to making a hobby my entire personality.
The word gamer has a somewhat negative view to it, unlike other hobbies, sorta similar to dungeons and dragons or warhammer, probably because there's a skill element to it unlike literally almost anything else that doesn't require athletic skill or complex math.
For me, the word gamer means something negative nowadays. For two specific reasons:
1 - It's been so mainstream that people call it to you when they don't know anything about its culture
2 - It's been so mainstream that people uses it for selling things (like computers) in order to raise their price "because yes".
I use that word when I want to make fun of something / somebody. If I want to mean "a person who knows and plays videogames" when I talk with friends, I say "a person with videogame culture", but translated into my own language, or if I want to make it fast, I say "viciado", which could be translated into something like "a hooked person", but there is no literal translation into english, because if I say it to a person who knows about videogames and has some culture, that person will smile :)
By the way, I've seen here that some people play cards. I sometimes play Uno with friends and family, and it's a lot of fun. I also love playing table games, specially the more "roleplaying" ones. My favourite game is Space Crusade (this time I have favourite lol), a friend introduced to me when I was 12 and I got in love with it:
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Well, let's enjoy "gamers"! :D
This is pretty much is what I was going to get at, the average person does not have the attention span needed for those table top games or most video games, and believe it or not, it causes insecurity as it makes people with poor attention spans to excess details and rules or poor hand eye co-ordination to feel stupid, and view it negatively, this is why it's all considered nerd culture. Before that just meant someone good at maths and computing or some sort of science, now it encompasses a wider range of hobbies
I actually never called myself a gamer as it sounds cringe to me outside of being largely indifferent to it, though it's been my main hobby since I was 4 years old, besides reading manga/watching anime, and things related to computing and or modding in some way.
I work out too for example, but literally only for health, people that make fitness their entire personality confuse me.
I have a scant few shirts I wear that honestly, I don't mind wearing in public, save for one. I have a Shenron shirt, an Atari shirt, a few comic shirts, hell I even have a Morphicon shirt in my closet. Honestly if you think about it, it's honestly hard to gauge gamer without being called a nerd or a geek because we just tend to do that whether we're on PC or console, if we know more lore than others who don't. It's a double-edge sword really because you're either labeled as just some level of slacker, some type of sacred title across whatever e-sports actually are these days or anything else related to social media but it hardly just needs a day to just say 'I'm a gamer, and?' There are times I go out on cold days and first thing I reach for is my Nintendo beanie along with my wind breaker and just deal. If one person notices, cool. If not, still cool.
I think a lot of us are just nerds, attention to detail, obsession with lore (fucking love sci fi lore, especially the lore overarching the macross series).
We're outliers anyway and share a nerdy hobby, the effort to tribalize within it though is funny, as you said whether it's a console or PC, the nerdier of us aren't too different, and in all honesty I'm stuck on my computer all day doing assignments in university and I was stuck on a computer again all day when I was working at a tech company.
I wanna go home and turn on a console in the comfort of my couch, not sit at a computer again when I get home, it's just not good for posture, the eyes or sanity in my opinion, but that's likely why i'd never play games on my laptop if I can help it.
As for clothing, I wear some anime t shirts and sweaters, I actually don't really wear t shirts related to games now that I think of it for the most part, I have a final fantasy 7 one, otherwise mostly expensive Japanese anime clothing, uniqlo wood block prints and Air Jordan 1s.
I own, like, 14 pairs of jordan 1 highs. My wife tells me I am a sneakerhead, I vehemently deny this.
