When I tell people that I write about gaming and technology, they’re usually pretty shocked. Is there some unwritten rule that gamers need to be as stereotypically nerdy as possible? There is certainly a slightly geeky element to being a dedicated gamer, especially if, like The Game Fanatics team, you write about them on a daily basis. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we all live life as outcasts from society, rarely venturing out into the “real world,” and only having online friends. Even though some of the friends gamers make online can be their best and most compatible.
I suppose that at a first glance, I go against the typical “gaming geek” image, as coined by many media formats. I won’t go into ridiculous detail, but I played rugby, go to the gym everyday, and have what I would consider a fair few mates. That isn’t to say I don’t have qualities that are stereotypical of what people expect gamers to be. I do get overly excited when there’s a new gameplay video of Battlefield 3 or whatever, and I do occasionally play games well into the early hours. However, unlike many more “mature” adults would like the wider population to believe, I do not care, and neither do the millions of other gamers who spend their time gaming.
Lots of gaming forums on the web have a resident troll who urges the gamers to “go outside and make some real friends,” but with Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and even Steam offering a community for gamers, when they are infront of a screen, a controller or mouse in hand is when a lot of gamers are at their most social.
It’s obvious that there are people who have a serious problem with their gaming. Last month a male in the UK died from Deep Vein Thrombosis when playing on his Xbox for up to 12 hours at a time. It’s clearly a problem if gamers are playing for 12 hours straight, but it doesn’t mean that this unfortunate guy didn’t have any friends. They were probably playing alongside him, albeit through another console, maybe in a completely different country. Following this, Microsoft said, “We recommend that gamers take periodic breaks to exercise as well as make time for other pursuits.” Fair enough. If playing video games takes over everything else in a persons life, they need help, but as with anything of this nature, there’s only a very small minority who play this amount.
With gamers across the globe winning a silly amount of money in various gaming competitions, it’s only a matter of time before gamers either rule the world or are considered to be the “cool kids” at high school, and in all other walks of life. Lots of these events require the gamers to have a team. With today’s economical climate, it’s rare to find people who do what they love, with their friends, and can also make a bucket-load of money doing it.
For the time being, I, and no doubt most other gamers, am perfectly content with surprising people by telling them how much I love video games and going against the stereotype of being a recluse adolescent who lives for nothing more than their games. Being a gamer is no where near as geeky as it used to be, but there are still people out there being bullied, or generally ridiculed for their love of games. Especially with 63% of the US population being a gamer in some way.
