Why It's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer

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There is a bit of NSFW language in this article but you guys really have to go read this. Heh, he said we "think of women as giggling titty support systems." :D Thanks to Railhaus for the link.

When you're in your mid-teens, hormones thundering through your system, popping wheelies and doing donuts in your brain, you tend to think of women as giggling titty support systems who exist only to give you something to masturbate to. Then we actually get to know some real women and grow out of it. Gaming has never grown out of it.
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Methinks he plays too many console games.

There are plenty of games without teenagers who use "gay" every other word, that rely on rich story telling and actually using your brain.

You just don't find these on consoles.

Consoles are garbage. Not just because their games suck (which they do) and because the console hardware sucks (which it does) but also because their user base sucks, consisting mostly of teenagers and dumb simpletons who don't have the attention span to figure out a computer and how much more rewarding it can be than some stupid console.

And quite frankly, if the game studios lower the quality of their games to the level of what one would expect to find on a console such that the more mature PC crowd no longer enjoys them, they should expect complaints.

I only buy either PC exclusive titles or "PC first" titles later ported to consoles, and thus far this philosophy has never led me astray.
 
I admit to women that I'm a musician and it is an insanely good pussy magnet, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not, because I live in the chlamydia capital of Scandinavia.

If you were to go say you're a gamer to a lady around here you'd be seen as one of the many guys who spend the few social outings you go to talking about gearscore and raids in a corner with other sad nerds. I was one of those for a year until I realized what the hell I was doing.

Now I've got pussy falling out of my pockets, walking down the street "hey man you dropped this!", no time to practice playing cheesy 80's like synthesizer music
 
I haven't encountered much nudity or overt chauvinistic tones in most games I've played. The Duke Nukem series is the exception, but that's to be expected there. In most games the female character is usually a stronger character or at least an alternate to the male character. In Unreal, before they patched it, your character was female by default. There's even a reference to a "Star Princess" written on a wall (translator message) that they forgot to make gender neutral in a hidden area about halfway through the game. There was absolutely no chauvinism going on there.

Some of the emphasis on the complaints over visuals is overdone as well. We've seen what happens when visuals go bad. Rage had some serious issues. Seeing an issue in one area means you're probably going to see issues in other areas, so quality control comes to mind. Bad visual artifacts in a game distract you from immersion, which is the whole point of playing a game in the first place. It's like seeing the mic boom in a movie. It's glaringly out of place and you know it, and wonder why they didn't fix that before showing it to the world.

Yeah, there are a lot of whiny gamers that have entitlement issues, but there's also a lot of us creatures that just like to play video games that don't complain about too much except when stuff is broken. We don't get heard from much because of the squeaky wheel principle. Still... I see nothing wrong with game play that involves mowing down hordes of zombies, mutants, cyborgs, demons from hell, aliens... whatever. If there's a story along with it, great. If not, I'm content on the action. The last thing I want is a game that plays like some dubbed French drama that requires overcoming three levels of culture shock to even understand the premise. If I want a puzzle game I'll play a puzzle game. If I want a shooter I'll play a shooter. Either way I'm playing a game for sport and fun. I don't mind it being mindless. The world already gives me too much to think about as it is, and I just like to unplug and save the (virtual) world with heavy weapons once in a while.
 
That stupid sex cutscene from God of War.... wow. They are totally marketing that crap for 15 year old boys.

Anyway, how is guys gaming different than women tooling around on Facebook 24x7?
 
Wow, I posted a slightly longer version of my comment here to the article.

It was deleted.

I guess the author doesn't deal well with criticism. :rolleyes:
 
Zarathustra[H];1038766052 said:
Wow, I posted a slightly longer version of my comment here to the article.

It was deleted.

I guess the author doesn't deal well with criticism. :rolleyes:
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We should all copy and paste it from here and post it there. :cool:
 
The quirks of human existence. When you're young, you have to be part of the crowd to be cool. As you grow older, you being part of the crowd is conformist and being different (within certain parameters) is considered cool.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038766052 said:
Wow, I posted a slightly longer version of my comment here to the article.

It was deleted.

I guess the author doesn't deal well with criticism. :rolleyes:
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That's not criticism that you posted, not here, anyways. You posted self-congratulatory "My farts don't stink because I play PC games." wank over here. Did you write something more substantial over there or something?
 
heatlesssun said:
The quirks of human existence. When you're young, you have to be part of the crowd to be cool. As you grow older, you being part of the crowd is conformist and being different (within certain parameters) is considered cool.
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I dunno, I think those feelings and desires exist simultaenously throughout our existance. I think the best summation is "I want to be a special snowflake, just like everyone else."

People want both, the acceptance of being part of the larger crowd, and the ego of being unique.
 
ballistic90 said:
People want both, the acceptance of being part of the larger crowd, and the ego of being unique.
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I agree. However I think when were young I think being part of the crowd and being accepted is a more necessary for self-esteem and confidence. As we grow older we tend to become more confident in ourselves without the need of approval for others. Just look at a place like this where people almost pride themselves on not caring about what others think.

Of course that's easy to do with a bunch of anonymous strangers and throughout our lives we all want acceptance and love, it's just not as important when were older and become more self-confident through life's challenges to be a part of the crowd.
 
Then we actually get to know some real women and grow out of it.
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Sounds like something a gamer would say. Most everyone else still looks at women the same way lol. Probably why gamers have such a hard time with women.
 
Hm, maybe find people you have things in common with? I've met plenty of hot chicks who game, and plenty of good folks to be friends with.
 
The most uncool thing you can do being a 'gamer' is doing what the author of this article did:

Care too much.

Worried about being a virgin? Spend less time worrying about your playing of video games as a cause and trying to change your way of life. Instead spend more time having sex. Problem solved.
 
Unfortunately, society believes that anyone who plays games is worse off than those who do drugs. In fact, drug use is considered the norm. I once had someone ask me if I do drugs, medication, or smoke. I drink socially, but other then that I've never done any of the others. The person thought I was a very boring guy.

Going around and announcing that you're a gamer will not land you any dates. Not unless the girl herself is a gamer, which are far and few between. A lot of guys I know live a double life. One is gamer and the other is the cool guy joe six pack.
 
Don't be a "gamer". Be someone who happens to play games for enjoyment.
 
This article is dumb, but it is right about gaming not being cool.

It's not cool because of you people. Well not you guys specifically in this thread, but go read some of the Diablo 3 threads or the threads where people are going nuts about microstutter and all kinds of semi-complex technical crap on here. 90% of people that play games aren't raging out about every little technical imperfection, but people see that 10% and want nothing to do with them. So when you self-identify as a gamer you are suddenly that 10%. You are the all frothing, all raging shit of the world, and no one wants to talk to you.

They're also afraid that if you find out that they play any kind of game you will corner the shit out of them in a mixed social setting and want to grill them about their WoW keyboard set up and what kind of raiding they do. They don't want to talk about that with other people around... or they don't want to talk about it at all.
 
Ashbringer said:
Unfortunately, society believes that anyone who plays games is worse off than those who do drugs. In fact, drug use is considered the norm. I once had someone ask me if I do drugs, medication, or smoke. I drink socially, but other then that I've never done any of the others. The person thought I was a very boring guy.

Going around and announcing that you're a gamer will not land you any dates. Not unless the girl herself is a gamer, which are far and few between. A lot of guys I know live a double life. One is gamer and the other is the cool guy joe six pack.
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People think I'm boring too, but that's because I told them I'm from Canada.

Personally, I wouldn't want to be involved with a girl that didn't like games to begin with. I met my wife online, and we played her favorite game over a direct TCP connection: Baldur's Gate 2.

Then, one time when she said, unprovoked, that Halo seemed really, really boring, I knew I found the woman I wanted to spend my life with. And I gotta say, being married to someone that is always up for some ME3 multiplayer or another game is pretty awesome.
 
It's still not cool to admit you are a gamer to pretentious, shallow douchebags who you would be better off not being friends with in the first place -- should be the title.
 
Hmmm, I'm 46 years old and I still think of women as giggling titty support systems. ;) Guess I'm a gamer.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038765840 said:
that rely on rich story telling and actually using your brain.
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Booooriiiiiiinnnng!!! :p

Games should be fun, or at least an experience. Most games have a story. It's just most have really really bad stories. Though lots of the "good" story games rely more on your involvement to the series and giving a crap about the characters.

Then again I don't think i've ever played a game which i'd call the story wonderful. But i've played quite a few wonderful games.
 
This is where this "article" lost me :

Those same PC gamers--who spend 75 percent of their waking hours explaining how PC's are the ultimate gaming platform--seem baffled as to why PC gaming is dying.
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My next favorite quote :

Gosh, I wonder why these publishers are putting all of their resources into the harder-to-pirate consoles instead?
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Really? Dying? :rolleyes: How many times a day do I have to read some idiot "journalist" on some sight telling me my gaming platform of choice is dieing , meanwhile many other sources are telling me its bloom and that one platform "Steam" gets about the same kind of sales from selling its games as all three major console companies combined?

"Hard to pirate consoles"? Right. Not that every major release gets put up as a torrent from a CONSOLE clone or anything. Not like CONSOLE games are often leaked well in advance of any PC copies.. the lack of research this "journalist" has done is saddening.

This article had a lot of good points but really blew them straight to hell with those dumb shit comments.
 
Yeah, gaming is pretty uncool. I more so won't admit I play video games because I don't want to be judged based on that.

I proudly drive around in my 30 year old bomb of a car, wearing my one and only pair of worn out 3 and a half year old shoes and my old out of fashion faded clothes that I don't bother replacing until they literally start falling apart. So I certainly don't feel the need to be cool and have no problem with people seeing me in those things, but still, when someone asks me about my hobbies I tend to not mention video gaming unless specifically asked, for the most part I don't give a shit if people accept me or not, it's just I don't want to be judged as "gamer".
 
I'll admit that playing video games isn't at the top of my list when describing myself to people. Even relatively "cool" people (sports stars, actors, etc) who play video games don't generally announce it unless they're doing a gaming related interview. But, even then, that isn't going to be what defines them because their massive amounts of money and fame have already cemented their cool factor. A bit of gaming can't dent that. Average people don't have that buffer so when you announce you're a gamer you might as well be announcing you don't want to talk to anyone else in the room except maybe the couple other gamers.
 
Godmachine said:
This is where this "article" lost me :



My next favorite quote :



Really? Dying? :rolleyes: How many times a day do I have to read some idiot "journalist" on some sight telling me my gaming platform of choice is dieing , meanwhile many other sources are telling me its bloom and that one platform "Steam" gets about the same kind of sales from selling its games as all three major console companies combined?

"Hard to pirate consoles"? Right. Not that every major release gets put up as a torrent from a CONSOLE clone or anything. Not like CONSOLE games are often leaked well in advance of any PC copies.. the lack of research this "journalist" has done is saddening.

This article had a lot of good points but really blew them straight to hell with those dumb shit comments.
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Wait wait wait, where do you get your information about Steam's sales? Valve doesn't share that information. Estimates for the income of the service is at 50% of the entire digital PC game download market, which is at $4 billion per year. The Xbox 360 sales for January (of course, NOT indicative for the entire year) was $310 million for hardware, software and accessories. January isn't the hotest month for games, normally, but if you were to expect roughly 12 times that figure, that would be nearly $4 billion right there.

Where are you getting these sales numbers for Steam? All I could find were guesses.
 
ballistic90 said:
Wait wait wait, where do you get your information about Steam's sales? Valve doesn't share that information. Estimates for the income of the service is at 50% of the entire digital PC game download market, which is at $4 billion per year. The Xbox 360 sales for January (of course, NOT indicative for the entire year) was $310 million for hardware, software and accessories. January isn't the hotest month for games, normally, but if you were to expect roughly 12 times that figure, that would be nearly $4 billion right there.

Where are you getting these sales numbers for Steam? All I could find were guesses.
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I thought I had read somewhere that Steam was doing extremely well , better than consoles on average but I can't find the article I read on that , I did however find that Valve is currently valued at around $3 Billion according to Forbes which considering its only taking into account digital sales from distribution service is quite a positive out look for PC gaming.

50 percent of the entire digital PC game market? Can you link where that is estimated? Even if that is so that means that the other 50 percent would account for $8 Billion based on your estimates as a whole , that would still be quite a big number for one platform.

My main point was that article was great and actually was well pointed until the dumb ass bits about PC gaming "dieing" and that piracy is solely a PC gaming problem and that console gaming is hardened against piracy which is utter bullshit even though the article was written in May of 2010. I find that a growing industry which generated around what? $8 Billion in digital downloads ALONE and "dieing" are not two words that would go together.
 
That's not including MMO profits as well across the PC platform as well (WoW generates $1.8 Billion a year in subs from its 10.4 million active player base).

I just really can't stand the notion that the very progressive and continually highly successful platform like the PC is constantly being used for sensationalism in various blogs and articles from supposed "Journalists" on the net.
 
Not to say the two are mutually exclusive, but sometimes women aren't interested in the hormone-raging alpha male sports nerd (yeah, you heard me - sports nerds; guys who sit around talking about so-and-so's batting average or rushing yards and know every professional athlete's height and weight which is no different than doing the same thing with computer technology) and do a little (or a lot) of gaming as well.

Besides that, being about someone else feeling that you're "cool" or "uncool" can become a purely stupid dysfunctional obsession. Yes, the opinions of others might matter if the circumstances dictate that person is significant in your well-being, but there's a point where someone can worry too much over that kind of thing and let everyone's thoughts dictate aspects of their lives they should not have sway over. An article like this one underscores how much we allow that kind of thing to happen to ourselves even though most of us know better.
 
It's been 2 years since that article was written and pretty much everything still holds true, glad to know we're holding the status quo here. ;)
 
I guess he never played games like Syberia , The Longest journey, Gabriel Knight, Tomb Ra..oh wait....

How about we just admit that games portray women as both? The same as music, movies, etc do?

You have plenty of movies with women portrayed in an eye candy way (like Megan Fox's entire career) then others where women are portrayed strong (look at the Aliens movies).
 
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