These days, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t had some contact with video games. Gaming has become more and more pervasive over the years, and with “casual gaming” becoming more and more popular, video games are no longer reserved for greasy nerds who enjoy Pokemon and read books and stuff.<\/p>\n
Now, even people whose monthly reading consists of Sports Illustrated and cereal boxes are likely to spend a portion of their free time with one of the Halo or Call of Duty iterations. These are also people, however, who would never stand for being labeled as a “gamer”.<\/p>\n
I have always been, and always will be, somewhat of a computer nerd myself. I’ve always loved computers, and thus gaming, and have never had a problem sharing these interests with others. I spent a lot of my time at school playing computer games with friends, and other “nerdy” hobbies such as Magic: The Gathering, but I also played sport most afternoons and skateboarded for four years. And still people would scoff and shake their heads as I played a friend in a game of Magic during lunch break, “How could anyone pay money for ink and paper?” They failed to see the irony, of course, that money itself is ink and paper. It was, however, something I never understood, to me I was merely paying money for entertainment, and what form that came in seemed irrelevant. Nevertheless, I never much cared what people thought, and have never made any efforts to hide my interests.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, even today gamers are still seen as unproductive lowlifes who while away their days raiding dungeons and surfing internet porn. While for me personally only half of that is true (I’m not much into World of Warcraft), many gamers have extremely healthy and balanced lifestyles. Contrary to popular opinion, we’re not a race of agoraphobic nocturnal basement-dwellers.<\/p>\n
This stigma has resulted in many of us feeling the need to downplay or understate that aspect of our lives, especially in front of those who have no interest in it at all. I have witnessed this many times, and I have to say it makes me a little sad every time I see it. Why should I be able to tell you I play half-court basketball on the weekends, but I can’t tell you I also LAN with my friends?
Parents, of course, are not immune to the stereotypes. Many parents despair at their children’s game-playing habits, considering it a pointless and dangerous hobby. What both parents and peers fail to recognize, is that gaming is often more than a source of entertainment, it’s a culture. It forms our friendships, shapes our interests, our attitudes, our perspectives and even our vernacular. All my friends play the same games I do, and they can often form the centre of our conversations, arguments and even humour. For many, the subject of our conversation would evoke a negative response, but had we been talking about fishing or a new movie, their reaction would be very different. This is, of course, as absurd as it is true.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, there is no fast cure for ignorance, and stereotypes are enduring. I’m going to end this with a quote that I’m not ashamed to say gives me goosebumps everytime I hear it. This is from Sean “Day[9]” Plott, an ex-pro gamer turned mentor, and a stalwart in the Starcraft gaming community, who says it better than I ever could: “I think people just don’t quite appreciate how into games that they are. I have grown up playing Starcraft, the things that I have learned by playing Starcraft have helped shape me so much, and I just wanna do a big dedication to the community to just say man, just be proud you are a Starcraft gamer, there is nothing more cool than being proud of the things that you love.”<\/p>\n