The Gaming Stigma

When I first decided that I wanted to steer my life somewhere onto the technological highway it was met with a certain air of disbelief. It began in college when I was all set to start studying law. Somewhere along the road I had a crystallizing moment where I decided I wasn’t doing it to be happy, just to make money and slowly lose my soul. I told my parents that games and media were my true passion and they looked at me as if I had just announced that I was attempting to ride up Everest on a unicycle.

Long story short, I took the course and then continued in the same vein in University by studying my games design and creative writing course. This isn’t an excerpt from my much anticipated auto-biography but a look into the stigma that is associated with people involved in the industry versus the rest of the world. The biography is available on request.

When people I’ve met imagine someone who works in games it is a varied visual spectrum. On one side people think those who work in games are all overweight, greasy-haired, dot eyed masses that hunch over a monitor for most of their life. Don’t get me wrong, some are like that, I’ve met them, I’ve felt the hair, seen the hunch, but a lot are not. I for one sometimes get mistaken for Christian Bale, albeit the lifeless specter of death he was in ‘The Machinist’. On the other hand, one child thought that because I worked in games I should be wearing a bow tie and suit.

With a number of friends and family games discussion is usually a no-go area of conversation. If I was having a meal with a portion of my non-gamer friends and tried to steer the conversation into that area it would be met with contempt. About as much contempt as if I had risen from my seat, walked onto the table and defecated all over the spaghetti they were about to serve. It was also served on their grandmother’s china. Not only have I humiliated myself, I have also barred myself from future conversation and gatherings. Who cares, I’m not a fan of pasta.

I remember once I was at a function where after I described what I do someone immediately assumed that I knew when ‘Alan Wake’ was released. Obviously I didn’t know because I didn’t care but rather than lose face I casually replied ‘October the 20th’ and made an excuse to leave. He must have thought I was a god, flitting round the room doling out nuggets of technological news like a cranked up version of Navi from Zelda. What annoyed me was that he thought that I knew, that I keep IGN compacted in my head to use for those seconds of pointless small talk. Well I don’t, that portion has been used to remember the move list for every single Tekken character.

It’s not just in a social environment where the games profession has been met with a certain air of condescension. This was specifically evident in university, due to the fact that my course not only entailed game design, but also creative writing and the like. Every time we had a writing class and the tutor found out that we originated from a games course they would look at us in disbelief of the fact we could string a sentence together. Like a chimp that has learned to count bananas and hadn’t resigned itself to the corner of its cage heatedly pleasuring itself into oblivion.

Games still get blanketed under the notion that everyone who plays, or is involved in them is a ‘geek’ without exception. To this day if there are people of the female gender in the vicinity, the gaming degree can act as a woman repellent more than a serial killer on the run. At least the psychopath has an element of danger, I can’t compete with that. Danger in a gamer’s life comes from cranking up the difficulty or taking your PSP in the bath with you, charger and all.

I think people fail to realize that gaming is not just an industry, but a multi-billion dollar one at that. They’re big business and everyone wants a piece. I don’t have to tell you of all the merchandising, films etc because it’s out there, staring you in the face like a haunted mannequin.

In a vain attempt I have tried to introduce people to the joys of gaming. Like a man in a white robe and shaved head wearing a billboard while screaming in the street about my great new cult, I have failed to convert anyone. When endeavoring to teach them how to play something I lose my patience very quickly. They’ll be running round in a circle, not killing enemies, AND teetering very close to an edge of a cliff which in turn makes me tense so hard my back seizes up and I crumple to the floor. They sit there blissfully unaware for five-minutes before declaring it ‘boring’ or ‘childish’. It takes every ounce of self-restraint I have to not launch the pad at the back of their head. In reflection I probably wouldn’t be able to do it anyway, what with all the back spasms and burst blood vessels.

It is however considered slightly more ‘cooler’ these days. You may even get away with mentioning a console like the Wii to your grandmamma and they’ll know what it is. If we’re to believe Nintendo then even an octogenarian can pick up Dr Kawashima and bring their brain back from the brink of mushiness.

They are perhaps now the most widely accepted gaming platform judging by the way their adverts come across. I’m vastly ignorant in regards to the rest of Nintendo’s campaign outside England but over here they contract celebrities to flog products. They show them on the brink of self-gratification while playing Mario Kart with their celebrity friends. To appeal to the non-celebrity out there (99% of us) they enlist a weirdly diverse bunch of friends all having a great time pretending to be chefs, rock stars and axe wielding maniacs.

If Nintendo gets its way then sometime in the future we’ll all be dressed in white jumpsuits with a Wii-mote in one hand and the other shackled to the person next to us. We can stand in a field en mass pretending to paint or perform open-heart surgery while Satoru Iwata sits aloft in his Ivory Tower pointing and laughing like some weird Matrix scenario. The only positive thing to take from this dystopia is that games will certainly be socially acceptable and we can discuss them as they hook up a giant Hoover to our brains and suck out all the dreams. With any luck we’re already playing it.