3DS ads assure us that 3DS gamers aren’t "gamers"

In promoting the 3DS, celebrities descibe themselves as anything but gamers. Wired’s Ryan Rigney explains why:

Being a “gamer” isn’t cool. It never has been, and the surging popularity of mobile games will never change that. Most people, even those who play lots of videogames, are just unwilling to self-identify as a “gamer.”

“I am not a gamer,” Olympic gold medalist Gabrielle Douglas declares with a smile in one commercial promoting New Super Mario Bros. 2. “I’m a coin-collecting champion.”

New Super Mario Bros. 2

In another, Glee actress Dianna Agron plays Art Academy and proclaims, “I’m not a gamer. With my 3DS, I’m an artist.”

Glee

Art Academy

Rex Wolff, a contributor to the blog Twinfinite, believes Nintendo likely intends to communicate that you don’t have to be an enthusiast to enjoy its products, but worries that the message comes out as, “Nintendo games and the 3DS are for normal people like you and me, not those troglodytic basement-dwellers.”

“The only people that the word ‘gamer’ speaks to is us,” wrote Kotaku contributor Patricia Hernandez. “That many have taken to these ads so poorly speaks to what sensitivities we have.”

Maybe the word “gamer” is condemned to always have enthusiast connotations.