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Brandon Sheffield, Senior Contributing Editor at Gamasutra and Editor Emeritus of Game Developer magazine, has announced in a recent op-ed that it’s time to retire the word “gamer.” This meme comes up once in a while – don’t call them games, don’t use the word gamer, etc. – always with the same basis. It’s derisive. It minimizes the medium and the hobby. Yadda. These articles, including Sheffield’s, usually leave something out, though: what “gamers” should be called, if they can’t be called “gamers.”

Well, this is a difficult one for me to write, if only because if I don’t choose my words carefully I could wind up on the receiving end of a very nasty email from a person who theoretically has the authority to destroy a significant portion of my career. At the same time, though, it bears reporting, and this is one of those rare instances where writing with pure journalistic impartiality would actually come off …

One of the more interesting tidbits to come out of Gamasutra’s recent analysis of the state of GameStop was the huge profit GameStop makes selling used games. It’s not rocket science how they do it. They buy back nearly mint games from gamers for pennies on the dollar, slap a big price tag on the units and stick them up on the used game shelf. GameStop makes 48 cents on the dollar on used games, …