Gift Ideas for Gamers

August 29, 2013

Stuck to a monitor, glued to a PSP or fused with their gamepads, the gamers of your life deserve great gifts that suit their hobby - and this list will give you some great ideas.

Real life gaming

- Paintball, laser tag, live action role-playing game, geocaching

As usual, our favorite types of gifts are experiences rather than objects as they make for wonderful memories.

Paintball and laser tag are excellent games, perfect for first-person shooter fans, and they can be played with a group of friends or even with family, be it in the outdoors shooting paint balls at each other, or highly equipped in a dark building shooting lasers. Great fun and very satisfying to hear people say ?OW *curses* YOU SHOT ME IN THE BUTT!?

Live action role-playing games (LARP) are fantastic games for RPG fans of Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, The Elder Scrolls and so many others. LARP is basically a type of game where a group of people recreate a fantasy world, they wear costumes and they use foam sticks as swords, foam balls as magic and other props to create their games world. There are tons of groups around the world that you can join and involve your gamer friend in or you could gather friends in a forest and make your own game, there are plenty of guides to organizing a LARP game - check out wikihow as it has the basics covered.

Yes, milady, I will pierce my foe and your suitor through the heart with this foam sword.

Now we're getting to geocaching that isn't quite a game, but it's a fun activity that resembles treasure hunting - as wiki says, geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which the participants use any device with GPS and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. 

In the caches there are small items like books, toys, ornaments, CDs, anything at all - free to take and replace with items of your own for other geocachers to take and replace themselves.

You can find locations on Geocaching.com , take your giftee by the arm and go hunting for treasures!

Quality gaming gear

- Gaming mouse, gamepads

Nothing is more frustrating with gaming than having low end tools that don?t respond to your movements as accurately as you'd like. Your recipient will surely appreciate good gaming gear that will enhance their game (or so they'll say, even if they suck) and that very much depends on what device he uses to play on:

• PC:

- Mouse: a good mouse saves a ton of headache. There are many great mice out there with decent prices, but we highly recommend the Logitech G500 Programmable Gaming Mouse for ~$50 (2016 update: $130 now, what an increase) - comfortable for long gaming sessions, accurate and very programmable.

- Keyboard: keyboards are more expensive and it all hangs on how much you?re willing to spend because there are tons of quality keyboards, but they tend to be pricey ? a good and decently priced keyboard is the CM Storm QuickFire Rapid Keyboard for ~$70, small, practical and customizable, or you can get an even better one like the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical PC Gaming Keyboard for ~$115.

- Gamepads: they improve the gaming experience when playing some PC games and if you get more gamepads, you?ve got a party! The Sabrent Gamepad is only $10 and is considered one of the best for PC gaming, including playing on emulators. Mario64, here we come!

• Consoles:

With consoles it's much easier, just check the consoles your giftee owns and see if he or she needs more gamepads or special gamepads ? the Wii is famous for having a lot of additions, like the Nunchuck Controller, the Balance Board for the Wii Fit, the Steering wheel, everything to make your head spin while trying to choose.

Handheld gaming devices

- PSP, Nintendo DS

Handheld devices have the advantage of being usable in the outdoors so your favorite gamer could actually get some fresh air! There are great choices out there and you can't go wrong with the well known Nintendo DSi or the PSP - small and light, not very pricey, with great graphics and tons of games available. Your recipient might sprout roots to these devices though...

Gaming-inspired merch

- Shirts, posters, lamps, personalized gifts

We're here, on the cute part of the article! Gaming inspired merch are some of the funniest and simplest gifts you can give a gamer (and usually the cheapest and less fussy).

Retro games from the '90s and '80s make for fun gifts - how about our very own Tetris Lamp? Or the Zelda bumper sticker? Or the Space Invaders keychain game, good to joyfully waste many hours of your life.

Other more modern games like Portal boast cool looking book ends, there?s also a Skyrim-inspired "I took an arrow to the knee" poster (which we heard actually means getting married, huh) or you can find the Assassin's Creed III George Washington's Notebook. Or your can just make a personalized t-shirt or a mug.

Aaand, for a plus of joy, you can add bundles of games for whatever gaming device your favorite gamers uses.

Pfew. Gamers seem easy to get something cool for their birthdays or Christmas, so many options, so many things to choose from! If you got something amazing for somebody and you'd like to rave about it, leave a comment!

Yours and fiddling with a tetris lamp,

Corina