The Stereotypical Gamer

I would like to spend a little time addressing gaming stereotypes in WoW and in other genres in games. It's partly a response to some comments about how it's not possible to be "hip" in an "uncool" world.

I'll get this out of the way now: most World of Wacraft "geeks" are not really geeks at all. We are not mostly pimply, extremely thin or morbidly obese stereotypes living in our mom's basement. We are not rejects from Revenge of the Nerds. I addressed this in a previous blog but I'm writing this for emphasis and I feel that it needs to be said again. People who say this entry is "off topic" can **** off. I don't really care about PvE drama or this past weekend's regional results. Azael or Serennia can cover that much better than I can so I'm going to leave that to them. This is my field and I personally think that people like to read something a little different.

In my 4th entry I called on people to add me to their Digg, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The requests came and I accepted all of them. Do you know the average profile of the people who added me were? They were cool people. People with girlfriends and sex lives. People who love MMA and practice jujitsu. They were people who have a common hobby with me who share the same passion for life as they share for gaming. None of the people I have had the pleasure of talking to via my Facebook were stereotypes.

Sure, this was a couple of hundred people out of the many, many people who lurk on the site and never comment or make their presence known outside of a statistic in Google Analytics. But it doesn't matter. (I use that sentence a lot.) The people I've talked to in game and out of game have families, lives, classes to slack off in (both middle, high school and college).

We all have dreams, hopes, aspirations to what we want to do outside of the game we play. Sure, yes. We love to gossip over who's dick that one chick who plays a druid is sucking. We love hearing about beef between pro players in LAN tournaments. Hell, we even love to rag on people who are much more accomplished than we will ever be just to make ourselves feel better. We're human. It comes with the territory.

Yes. There are bad examples of what "gamers" are. People look at things such as this and jump into conclusions that this outdated, idiotic stereotype about people who play video games are. It's dumb. You know it, and I know it.

I remember one time I was chilling out in San Francisco with some of my girlfriend's friends and I was talking to this guy, 15, an FPS XBox 360 champ. He looked at me with shock and awe that I played World of Warcraft. His reasoning? "You seem too cool to play an MMO."

This needs to stop. The gaming community in general is looked upon derision and scorn because of the puerile behavior associated with introverted, socially-retarded, sexually frustrated come from a few and people jump into conclusions based on the most vocal ********. Every time someone comments that a female who happens to be a member of our community should "show tits or GTFO" it only reinforces the stereotype that all of those e-famous gamers are fighting against to make gaming legit in the mainstream.

Sure, okay. It's all in good fun. Sometimes, it's funny and it's awesome. Other times, not so much and people get hurt by it. Here's what I think people need to realize: the scorn and derision for gamers is not limited by the genre we happen to play. It's not limited by age, or education level or class. It's not limited by race or gender.

The evidence?

It's seen when you tell someone that you play something for a healthy chunk or your free time, and you're met with exchanged glances and funny looks. It's seen when you have that girlfriend who just doesn't understand your hobby and gives you an ultimatum between her and your gaming. It's seen when your parents would much rather see you run the streets and set things on fire than to be playing an MMO because of what they saw on the news about some dumbass in China who died because he played the game for 5 days straight without eating.

No, we're not like that. 12 million people playing a game means that the stereotype is dead. No, we're pretty cool actually. And, to address something else, I'd like to make something else clear: I am NOT the coolest mother****** playing this game, or any game.

I'm just a normal guy, just like all of you reading this. You want to know people cooler than me? Try Chris Nyugen, Manuel Nagele, Travis Easton, Caleb "Sagat" O'Leary, Nick Quirk, Patrick Moran, Rob Jones, Yin Liu, Christian Forr, Sam Cen, David Barton and Seth Lynch.  They're all good guys who you'd sit and have a beer with like anyone else and they'd all make a good wing man in the club, bookstore, library, mall, daycare center (if that's your thing) or wherever.

We all love playing, winning and being good at what we do. We have lives and we live them just like anyone else. It's not about what's "hip" or "not" it's about the love of what we do and to have fun.

And ****, if someone wants to hate on that. Well, all I can say about that is: ****. you. We'll keep doing our thing regardless. We'll keep it chill, we'll play our arena games, our PvE dungeons or even playing a ****ty game such as Aion.

P.S. If anyone's going to be at Anime Expo, hit me up. We'll sit back, chill out and **** peeps up in the gaming room.