Amateur vs Professional

Greetings,

When it comes to the term ‘gamer’, there is a question that comes to my mind ‘Gamer’ professional or Amateur?

Take a game like StarCraft for example; there are professionals that get paid a lot, a lot of money and plenty of sponsorships to play in all sorts of StarCraft tournaments. Since competition is intense these professionals would live and breathe StarCraft. On the other side of the spectrum there are those who play StarCraft every night for a couple of hours (Amateurs). These amateurs wouldn’t just live and breathe StarCraft but would also branch themselves to play other videogames. Take the characters from The Big Bang Theory: all the characters immerse themselves into all sorts of videogame categories; one night is Halo night the next night is Wii bowling night.

Are theses different types of players both gamers? Or would you say an amateur would be the gamer since they branch themselves with all sorts of videogames and a real ‘gamer’ would put themselves out there and are open to all types videogames. The last option would be the professional, are they a gamer because they are serious about the game and create goals and challenges for themselves. And they would also show dedication and passion to that one videogame.

While writing this post I asked a friend what they thought a gamer is and they said, “a gamer is someone who plays video games for entertainment and recreation on a regular basis.” Under their definition of who a gamer is, it seems as if the amateur player is the one who fits their definition. Thoughts?