According to a dozen or so articles published every year for the last decade, gaming is becoming "ever-more popular with an increasingly diverse audience of, y'know, like, real people: hipsters as well as nerds, women as well as men, adults as well as children..."
With its growing popularity, so the story goes, gaming has at last managed to shake of some of its former stigmata: no longer the exclusive province of over- (or under) weight teenagers constnatly trying to find an olbique way to deal with the pangs of prolonged virginity, gaming is, at the beginning of a new decade, a perfectly acceptable activity, if still less cool than a night spent at a rave or making passionate love, it's still...perfectly normal such that, presumably, even the Pope spends a few hours a week playing Starcraft 2 with the Cardinals...
My question is: has gaming lost its stigma for you to have 'come out' as a gamer? Do you proclaim your hobby to -everyone- you know, or are there still some people, to whom you would never admit the number of hours you'd spent playing 'Dragon Age: Origins"?
IF you are one of the bold few, new generation, self-respecting 'out and proud' gamers...were you even aware that there were any gamers who had -not- 'come out'? What advice would you give them?
Gloss:
For myself, despite being 32 (and thus at once young enough and old enough to have 'grown up with games') I have only one friend who would ever have spent more than 4 hours on a game: almost everyone else I'm close to would take the idea that an adult, educated person, playing games was pathetic: kind of like an admission of spending days collecting bottle caps in the name of some obscurely masturbatory purpose: it's at best a cry for help,at worse...well let's not go there...
So, anyway, are you 'out'...how long's it been, does it feel good? Or are you 'in', do you dream of a day, when you can say 'my name's ....Bob, or Emily..and I've completed all the side quests in Oblivion, even the really stupid one's that ruined the whole 'aren't I supposed to be saving the world thing..."
Best,
MAl
With its growing popularity, so the story goes, gaming has at last managed to shake of some of its former stigmata: no longer the exclusive province of over- (or under) weight teenagers constnatly trying to find an olbique way to deal with the pangs of prolonged virginity, gaming is, at the beginning of a new decade, a perfectly acceptable activity, if still less cool than a night spent at a rave or making passionate love, it's still...perfectly normal such that, presumably, even the Pope spends a few hours a week playing Starcraft 2 with the Cardinals...
My question is: has gaming lost its stigma for you to have 'come out' as a gamer? Do you proclaim your hobby to -everyone- you know, or are there still some people, to whom you would never admit the number of hours you'd spent playing 'Dragon Age: Origins"?
IF you are one of the bold few, new generation, self-respecting 'out and proud' gamers...were you even aware that there were any gamers who had -not- 'come out'? What advice would you give them?
Gloss:
For myself, despite being 32 (and thus at once young enough and old enough to have 'grown up with games') I have only one friend who would ever have spent more than 4 hours on a game: almost everyone else I'm close to would take the idea that an adult, educated person, playing games was pathetic: kind of like an admission of spending days collecting bottle caps in the name of some obscurely masturbatory purpose: it's at best a cry for help,at worse...well let's not go there...
So, anyway, are you 'out'...how long's it been, does it feel good? Or are you 'in', do you dream of a day, when you can say 'my name's ....Bob, or Emily..and I've completed all the side quests in Oblivion, even the really stupid one's that ruined the whole 'aren't I supposed to be saving the world thing..."
Best,
MAl
