Antisocial Gamers are a Myth!
August 14, 2007, by Erlog We’ve all heard the jokes about video games. They’re for antisocial geeks who put tin foil over the tiny windows in their parents’ basement. Right? Nobody who actually does anything important in life would ever stoop to children’s entertainment. Right? Anyone who plays video games is an immature, out of touch, geek. Right?
Wrong. Here’s something that may be surprising to you, but video games are now mainstream. They’ve had 20 or 30 years to work themselves into the public consciousness, and nearly a generation of folks has already been raised on them. In another 20 years, the majority of the adult population will have some video game experience. The grandparents will be talking about their arcade experiences, the parents will be waxing poetic about their Super Nintendos, and the children will be discussing how exciting they felt the successor to the Xbox 360 was.
As it is, gaming is inescapable in the media. There are primetime television commercials for video games, and news stories about their purported effects on children. Nobody can ever really feel special anymore for playing video games. Everyone has played Grand Theft Auto, or even more pervasive - Tetris. There are video games for everyone. It’s not niche or even geeky or nerdy. It just is, and I think it is a good thing.
We hear criticisms condemning video games for secluding people, making them sedentary, or making them violent, but in reality video games are very simple. They are an extension of the board games our parents played. Except, they are experienced with a controller through a television, and they’re a good bit more fun. That’s all video games are, and they carry with them the same risks as other media. They’re not some kind of special evil.
Video games can be as social or antisocial as one chooses to make them. A person can play Oblivion alone in their darkened dingy room for as long as they like, or they can be playing World of Warcraft and actually having a pretty decent bit of social interaction that previously could only be had by entering a chatroom or going out to a bar. They could be soaking up valuable leadership and organizational skills by heading up a raid for their guild of hundreds. This example are only the tip of the iceberg.
Talk about a massive LAN party...
Gaming has always been this way. The first games were 2-player only, and the only way to play them was to go to hang out at the arcade; a public place. There’s no way not to socialize with those around you in a place like that. This is especially the case if you share an interest in the same types of games. When the arcades closed people played solo for a while. But, on the computer, and eventually the Xbox, gamers were still being very social. People used to play Doom and Quake online over dialup, trade maps, tips, trash talk, etc. There were entire gaming communities spawned by the internet, and console gamers had their own local offline social networks.
I think that the antisocial gamer is a myth. I don’t know a gamer that doesn’t have friends that he games with or talks about games with. Gaming is almost inherently social, and probably more so than things like books. Only one person can read a book at a time, but you can play Counter-Strike with 31 other people. Who’s the shut-in now? I don’t know why people have such a bug up their ass about games? Do you?
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