What I am saying is that anyone can be considered a "gamer" if they have a smart phone. If mobile games count as "games" then they can claim 2.5 billion gamers because all of those people have smart phones and can download and play angry birds once. That does not make them gamers IMO.
So you're assuming their methodology is flawed. While I would love to see how they arrived at that number, I argued above for why it's not unreasonable from known data - if the rest of the world has half as many people frequently playing games as the US, then you have
more than 2.5B gamers.
And yes, mobile games are obviously games. Casual games are games. And the people playing them have just as much of a right to call themselves players or gamers as anyone else.
Elitist? Saying mobile gaming is the cesspool of said hobby is pretty accurate IMHO. In the same way, some music is the cesspool of anything audio. It simply is that way, because tastes vary. Nothing elitist about it. Its differences between people, to each their own goes both ways and yes its perfectly fine to have criticism on what you don't like and why. And yes, it is definitely also a value judgment in that sense. Let's consider 'drillrap music' that has been replacing hip-hop; - now add your perspective on its value. Today we have young kids no older than 12 stabbing each other down because of influences portrayed in that scene. Its been researched and is a growing trend. Other factors matter, but still. Writing's on the wall.
You're conflating a bunch of things here though. The cesspool you speak of consists of shovelware, predatory f2p games, and a bunch of other stuff. Does that invalidate the value of high quality f2p games, or high quality ad-financed or paid mobile games? Obviously not. And while a too-large proportion of players do get lured into these crap games (thanks in large parts to recommendation algorithms and the like), that doesn't mean the most play time or the most money go into these games (though again, predatory apps and games do sadly pass far to easily through all kinds of checks). None of that invalidates mobile gaming as gaming. Whether your game of choice is PUBG mobile, some idle game, whatever the most recent Candy Crush is, or whatever else, as long as you enjoy it and spend significant time on it, that's enough to meet any reasonable standard.
In the same way, for gaming, especially mobile, what quickly got erased on the PC and other paid platforms because the bar is much higher in terms of gaming (there you have it: direct commercial competition is ALSO a value argument, elitist too?) still survives on smartphones because the bar of entry is super low and it caters to the bottom of the bottom of casual gamers, who in many cases have no notion they're running after a gambling machine or a carrot they'll never catch. There is no fun here, its a psychological effect being abused to make companies money.
Sorry, but have you browsed Steam any time lately? It's
chock full of shovelware and utter crap rip-off games. This is by no means exclusive to mobile. And these games on PCs can be just as predatory as on mobile (though thankfully the platform doesn't facilitate this quite as easily).
Today people have this annoying thought 'everyone is right' - no they're not. Some notions are just utter stupidity and this is what separates people in many ways. For good reasons more often than not.
That's a nice straw man you've got there. Did you make it yourself? I never said "everyone is right". I said that PC (and console) gaming isn't the only type of gaming out there. And if you draw some arbitrary line there, then yes, that is elitist and gatekeeping; actively defining out others doing a variant of the same activity you are doing as "not worthy" because of their choice of platform, their economic resources, their preferences, or whatever else. All that's reasonably demanded for fitting within a "gamer" or "player" label is to want to, enjoy, spend time on, and value the playing of some form of digital game (though there's an argument to be made for board/card games also belonging within that classification). Delimiting those terms any more than that? That's gatekeeping. Delimiting those terms on the basis of the games others like or perfer not being "good enough", or their choice of platform (or lack of resources to choose otherwise)? That's elitist
and gatekeeping.
There are
tons of crap games out there. There are also tons of good ones - across all platforms. And tons of players who spend significant time, effort and money, and put a lot of themselves into gameplay on all platforms. And all of them qualify equally for categories such as these. The only non-arbitrary line that can be drawn is by defining out people who
don't spend significant time playing games, don't see themselves as game players, don't think of games as an important, interesting, rewarding or relaxing activity, etc.
