I got asked by a twitter follower this evening, @oedo30, what #GamersUnite means. When I think of this, I start thinking of many different ways of how I view and define the uniting of gamers. I look at it as an umbrella for awesomely amazing people to hangout and to share something that they love and are passionate about. This concept is important because it is something that has kept gaming and gamers moving forward throughout the decades.
This concept has become new to me though within the past 5 or 6 years. Growing up, the idea that I could form a bond or friendship with others who played video games was farfetched. It was difficult because my playing video games was freakish and weird. One because I was a girl so I was shunned by other girls or treated like I didn’t know anything about games by boys, and two because the gaming generation was on the rise. I was part of the minority of ‘girl gamers’ so I wasn’t interested in a lot of things other kids my age were. This isn’t meant as an attack on either gender, just a fact that it was a part of my childhood. So for a very long, long time, I played my games and had to accept the fact that other kids thought I was odd for being more into games than Barbie’s and what not. As I got older, talking games with others got difficult because I tried to fit in and felt ashamed of the fact that gaming was my major interest.
Towards the end of high school, this changed quite drastically. It was good to feel accepted and, I will admit, cool for having this hobby. My knowledge on games wasn’t pushed aside or treated as strange. A few years later, I decided to give Twitter a try to see what was up, and lo and behold, I started connecting with ‘my people’. A community that I settled in comfortably without being poked at for being a girl or weird or immature (of which I am all those things) was right there at my finger tips. I am still connecting with gamers from all over the world and feel pride in sharing my experience with gaming and talking to others who are just as passionate.
#GamersUnite connects all of us. I feel that it defines us as a community. It allows for us to share what we love with others and to develop friendships that don’t care about gender boundaries, genre interests, or console ‘wars’. It accepts people for who they are, a person who games and cares for others. I fully accept my identity as a gamer and as a caring and nerdy individual. My challenge for everyone else is to answer the question “what does #GamersUnite mean to you?”
-Opinion Article by Meghan Rodriguez (Twitter @collins_m81)
