Christmas Shopping For A Gamer

An anonymous reader writes "This step-by-step guide shows you have to find the perfect gift for your gamer, even if you don't know anything about gaming yourself." From the article: "Trying to figure out which games are sure-fire hits and safe bets for the gamer in your life is never an easy task. Tastes range from the light and fluffy to the dark and deadly, and there are games for almost every type, style, and preference. There's no better way to come across as being on top of the game than to give just the right title, just as there's no faster way to cast yourself as clueless by dispensing copies of the GameCube's Charlie's Angles."

Comments

Charlies Angels??

[kermitthefrog917]

Why is charlies angels always the example???

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/153422 3&tid=233&tid=188&tid=97

What the fuck?

[schild]

Just buy them a gift card or give them money.

There, article replaced in one sentence. Jesus. Who pays people to write shit like this? Mom, Dad, Girlfriend, Boyfriend, Cousin, Uncle - we don't want you buying us games unless we specifically say "Buy us x."

Re:What the fuck?

[flipsoft]

Also if you purchase a "gaming" gift card from Best Buy it comes with a $5 off coupon for any game or gaming accessory.

flipsoft

Re:What the fuck?

[Capt'n Hector]

What an insightful comment. But not in the manner one would typically expect. Here folks, is a typical narcissist: "schild," instead of joining in the spirit of giving thoughtful and meaningful gifts, the facilitation of which the article assists perfectly well, rather thinks only of receiving what is most useful to him: money. Guess what buddy: if Christmas was just about what you wanted, everyone would just give each other checks. Marry Christmas, here's $20 from Dad.

Re:What the fuck?

[Flyboy Connor]

Just buy them a gift card or give them money.

Or a blowjob, if you're a hot chick. I mean, the objective is to make the gamer happy, right?

While the article in question is just meant as being "funny" (although it does not really succeed at that), finding a gift for ANYONE who is mightly interested in objects of a certain category X, is not to buy anything in category X. Either what you will buy is crap, or what you will buy is good but already owned by the person in question.

Exceptions are: chocolates, wines, and blowjobs, as long as you are certain that they are of high quality.

For some gamers that is..

[Ka D'Argo]

Christmas is looking more depressing as each year goes on. Games cost more and more. I'm more of an MMO fan and there's several I'd like to play and others that run like ass on my system. A new system is out of the question, and the rest I just cannot afford to play. Not into console games and most non-MMO games require more than my little system can handle, again those that don't are often in the higher price range.

Occasionally I'll find good deals. If I do get a game for christmas it might be something off the $10 shelf at Walmart.

nah, that's easy!

[Janek Kozicki]

adom of course. There's no better game, even though I've recently bought 6600 GT (because I need dualhead DVI for development). And even though nexuiz works pretty well on my debian system under 1600x1200, with 70 FPS.

next question, this one was easy.

Obvious?

[JViz]

It looks like the writer fails to mention the most important part of buying games for someone else: finding out what game system they have. Anyone ever get a Genesis game for Christmas when you had a SNES, or vice versa?

"If your gamer has none of the titles on the lists, anywhere, then it's possible they simply have no sense of taste, and you're probably safe picking up almost any title at all; they might not be able to tell the difference."

I see a serious lack of PC games on his list. I guess PC Gamers have no taste and should buy ourselves one of the latest uber consoles because we're out of touch.

"ESRB Ratings: The ESRB ratings are like the PG-13 and R rating on movies..."

Wow... Just wow... I guess he needs more pages to fill his quota this month. If you can't understand the ESRB rating system by looking at the box, I seriously doubt the contents are going to matter much to you.

Re:Obvious?

[Scuff]

notice the URL? http://nintendo.about.com/od/editorials/a/howtobuy .htm

now look at the lists again, many of the titles are exclusive to gamecube. This should be mentioned more clearly in the article, or at least by the /. submitter.

...Buy me something...

[AZskyPilot]

I found the easiest thing to do is point them to my Amazon wishlist. The secret is to have lots of items at various price-points. It makes their shopping easier and you get what you want. That way I'll be playing Medal of Honor 2 for my PC instead of Backyard Hockey for the GBA.

Marketers just trying to attract more suckers...

[Chaffar]

There's no way to ask, "If I buy you a game, what game would you want?" without your gamer being able to make an educated guess about what you're planning on doing with the information. There's no faster way to ruin a surprise.

And why would that be a problem? People who aren't gamers cannot understand that our game preferences aren't only based on the quality of the game itself. A game might get rave reviews, and fit in my favorite genre, but I might not buy it. I just am not interested.

The best example I have is Shogun:Total War/Crusader:TW. I loved the first one, played it to death, but I didn't even consider for one second buying Crusader. I wasn't interested. Even though the genre/quality/publisher is the same, I liked the first one because I'm an anime junkie and love anything with sociopaths running around with on horses with Katanas, "Crusader" just didn't work out for me.

Just ask me what I want... screw the surprise, at least you won't end up having paid for a game that I don't want/need.

Social Engineering.

[xMonkey]

How about just asking them what they want?

Or, start a conversation with them about games, ya know actually talk to them, and they'll eventually volunteer the information.

No need for a covert operation.

Re:Or you could give them something useful...

[DrEldarion]

What kind of sick joke is it to give a gamer a Linux CD?

Charlie's Angles

[mysticwhiskey]

Charlies Angles? - I know they're (a)cute, but the reference is a little obtuse. ;)

DN4eva!

[metricmusic]

I give my friends a gift voucher each for Duke Nukem Forever when it comes out, expiring 24th Dec the next year. I've been giving them the same voucher for close to 10 years now.