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The next two are both short answers, so I’m going to double up:
REVERB GAMERS 2012, #4: Are you a “closet gamer?” Have you ever hidden the fact that you’re a gamer from your co-workers, friends, family, or significant other? Why or why not? How did they react if they found out? (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit them at www.atlas-games.com)
I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m a gamer (kind of hard to do, considering I work for a game company), but I also don’t go out of my way to volunteer it to non-gamers, either. If something gaming-related comes up in conversation, I’ll mention it, but I don’t advertise that I’m a gamer any more than I would my other hobbies. Now that everyone’s on Facebook or some other social networking site, my non-gaming friends usually find out I’m a gamer sooner than they would have in the past since there are a lot of gamers on my friend lists and I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to try to sell them stuff.
REVERB GAMERS 2012, #5: Have you ever introduced a child to gaming, or played a game with a young person? How is gaming with kids different than gaming with adults? (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit us at www.atlas-games.com)
I don’t have kids and most of my friends’ kids are still too young for gaming, so my experience with gaming with children is pretty much limited to conventions, where most younger players are either already familiar with the hobby or have just been drug along to the game by parents or older siblings. The ones that already know about gaming can sometimes be annoying and munchkiny, but then so can players two or three times their age. The ones who are new to gaming are usually more imaginative than older players, in part because their ideas about what is possible in a game hasn’t been stunted by reading the rules, which always limit the possibilities to the design team’s expectations to some extent.
