

What Does "Gamer" Mean? - comradehac
http://heartonomy.com/2013/04/what-does-gamer-mean/

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Millennium
I wouldn't say that many games actually "empower creation" at all. There are a
few, of course: the SimCity family, the Dwarf Fortress family (including
Minecraft), maybe even Garry's Mod. But most games aren't like that. Even the
Civilization family and the open-world sandboxes still follow a more or less
set narrative, and while it's possible to digress to some degree, the game
still imparts a strong sense of what you "should" be doing.

That's not to say that (most) games are just "passive media to be consumed."
Most gaming, while not a creative experience, is nonetheless active in that it
engages the brain in a kind of interaction. But I'm forced to argue that to
say that playing a video game is, in and of itself, an act of creation is just
too much of a stretch. In truth, it rarely is.

