Nickolaidas
Member
From the day of their inception, video games have been praised and ridiculed at the same time for as long as I can remember. In other forms of entertainment, as well as in most societies, video gaming has often being associated with being a loser and a failure in life in general. In its infancy, video games (due to their simple and primitive graphics) were easy to dismiss as something childish or intended for simple people. As they evolved, video games were able to imbue breathtaking visuals, immersive storytelling and content intended for mature audiences.
However, the stigma of video gaming being associated with being a loser is still prevalent in pop culture and society in general.
In Avengers Endgame, when some Avengers go to check up on Thor and tell him to come back to the team, they find him drinking in a dark basement, doing nothing but playing video games. His drinking, isolation and playing video games are all presented as negative things, ergo video gaming is presented as something pathetic and life wasting.
There are numerous tv series and movies where a character is often shown playing video games on a couch when the director wants to show him or her hitting rock bottom. On an episode of House M.D., House makes a bet with one of his subordinates, a very handsome Dr. Chase. House bets that Chase being very handsome is the top reason that other women would like to date him, and no matter how much of an indifferent ass or loser he portrays himself to be, women will still want to date him for the simple fact that he’s handsome. The first woman who sits with him in the bar asks him what he likes to do in life, and Chase answers (quite bored) “I play video games”, as if playing video games is the #1 chick repellent.
This happens in real life as well. Unless a gamer meets a gamer, it is difficult to talk about video games without the other one looking at you as if you’re sub-human or a manboy or something like that. But if talk about soccer, football (or a country’s favorite sport), or the movies, eyes light up and conversations begin.
So why is it? Why is playing a video game like Horizon or experiencing PT or making tactical decisions in X-COM or breaking bones in MK11 is considered something that only a loser would do, yet when you talk about soccer (which is basically twenty guys chasing a ball all over a court) it is considered something a lot more mature and interesting?
I live in Greece, where our favorite pastimes are soccer, going at cafeterias or (if you are relatively young) go to dance clubs. Video gaming once you leave High School is almost always considered a nerd/loser/freak alert, unless you’re a gamer too, and you can sympathize. A girlfriend will find it boring if you talk about soccer, but will find it just pathetic to hear you talk about Halo or Doom.
I’ve spoken to various men and women in Greece about this and I collected interesting ‘data’. I was talking with the wife of a co-worker who used to be a gamer (the co-worker, not her) and asked her if she would be OK with me giving away my PS3 to her husband. She said no, she didn’t want him to go back to his gaming ways. I asked her what was so bad about it. She told me that the very image of watching someone playing a video game screams manchild and she found it ridiculous. She also found ridiculous all the ads which showed handsome and attractive people in their mid-20s playing video games - “As if a person like that would actually play video games”, she would say.
Another woman I’ve met in work (very beautiful and attractive), admitted to me that she used to be a nerd, watching Thundercats and Transformers and play video games when she was younger. I asked her why she ‘abandoned’ the hobby. She told me this: “I once bought Sonic the Hedgehog I for the Megadrive. I remember becoming obsessed with beating the game and getting all the emeralds. I got so angry and frustrated when I couldn’t beat the last stages. I realized that playing those games got me more frustrated than made me having fun, so I stopped.” She lets her kids play, though. She just doesn’t game herself.
A male co-worker of mine used to game on his Amiga, but life simply left him no time to game anymore. Sometimes he goes to YouTube and watches Lets Plays, but doesn’t game himself anymore. I once got him Skyrim as a birthday present in order to see it as an incentive to game again, but he didn’t even pass the opening scene (he was a medieval fantasy fan, so I said what the heck).
Another female co-worker of mine told me that she found video games interesting, but was afraid of becoming addicted to them and stopped her other hobbies. She occasionally plays mobile games when she has no work in the office, but that’s as far as she’ll go.
A male co-worker of mine was impressed when I showed him the Witcher 3 on YouTube (he only played pinball machines back in the 70s), but never gamed himself, never liked fantasy or gaming in general.
So there are a lot of people who thought about gaming or gamed themselves, but eventually they drop it as if it was something bad or ‘just a phase’.
Are gamers considered losers because gaming is something you can start doing from childhood, thus is labeled as a ‘childish activity’? But the same could be said of basketball. A child can start playing basketball from a very young age, so why aren’t people who play basketball labeled as losers?
Are gamers considered losers because gaming is all they do? But children and teens and people in their 20s could be spending all their evenings playing basketball, so why isn’t someone who plays a lot of basketball labeled as a nerd? Why is someone who goes clubbing and goes to parties every single night isn’t considered a loser? Is the repetition the issue? Is it the age? What is it? Is it bad to neglect your life in order to play video games and labels you as a loser? But isn’t this the same if all you do is go partying?
And I think that the answer is in society itself.
I think the real reason that video gaming is frowned upon is the simple fact that it is not a social activity. It is an activity which isolates you from the world around you. For us it is escapism, but for the world, it is considered inability to connect with others. Basketball (and sports in general), clubbing and going to the movies is a social activity. You connect with others (in various ways) and since humans are mostly a social animal, social activities are much more appreciated than those which thrive in isolation.
Before gaming, there was reading - the so-called ‘bookworms’. Doing nothing but reading books in your room all day was a loser sign, because you weren’t being social. You weren’t connecting. You weren’t making new friends.
So I think that this is the real reason video games are associated with being a loser. Because they’re not social (at least, not in the ‘real’ society), they don’t make you meet new people in-life and they don’t help you create ‘real’ stories to tell. Gaming is sort of a parallel reality, a world within a world where we can talk about it in gaming message boards in the same way other people talk in the cafeteria, exchanging our experiences (“Man, I got screwed last time on DOTA 2!”, or “I just finished Resident Evil 7 and ...”). The more time we spend on the gaming world, the more things we have to talk about with gamers, but the less we have to talk about in the real world. In some ways, those two worlds are competing for your attention span.
So yeah, I think this is the reason video gaming in the real world is considered a ‘loser activity’. What do you guys think?
However, the stigma of video gaming being associated with being a loser is still prevalent in pop culture and society in general.
In Avengers Endgame, when some Avengers go to check up on Thor and tell him to come back to the team, they find him drinking in a dark basement, doing nothing but playing video games. His drinking, isolation and playing video games are all presented as negative things, ergo video gaming is presented as something pathetic and life wasting.
There are numerous tv series and movies where a character is often shown playing video games on a couch when the director wants to show him or her hitting rock bottom. On an episode of House M.D., House makes a bet with one of his subordinates, a very handsome Dr. Chase. House bets that Chase being very handsome is the top reason that other women would like to date him, and no matter how much of an indifferent ass or loser he portrays himself to be, women will still want to date him for the simple fact that he’s handsome. The first woman who sits with him in the bar asks him what he likes to do in life, and Chase answers (quite bored) “I play video games”, as if playing video games is the #1 chick repellent.
This happens in real life as well. Unless a gamer meets a gamer, it is difficult to talk about video games without the other one looking at you as if you’re sub-human or a manboy or something like that. But if talk about soccer, football (or a country’s favorite sport), or the movies, eyes light up and conversations begin.
So why is it? Why is playing a video game like Horizon or experiencing PT or making tactical decisions in X-COM or breaking bones in MK11 is considered something that only a loser would do, yet when you talk about soccer (which is basically twenty guys chasing a ball all over a court) it is considered something a lot more mature and interesting?
I live in Greece, where our favorite pastimes are soccer, going at cafeterias or (if you are relatively young) go to dance clubs. Video gaming once you leave High School is almost always considered a nerd/loser/freak alert, unless you’re a gamer too, and you can sympathize. A girlfriend will find it boring if you talk about soccer, but will find it just pathetic to hear you talk about Halo or Doom.
I’ve spoken to various men and women in Greece about this and I collected interesting ‘data’. I was talking with the wife of a co-worker who used to be a gamer (the co-worker, not her) and asked her if she would be OK with me giving away my PS3 to her husband. She said no, she didn’t want him to go back to his gaming ways. I asked her what was so bad about it. She told me that the very image of watching someone playing a video game screams manchild and she found it ridiculous. She also found ridiculous all the ads which showed handsome and attractive people in their mid-20s playing video games - “As if a person like that would actually play video games”, she would say.
Another woman I’ve met in work (very beautiful and attractive), admitted to me that she used to be a nerd, watching Thundercats and Transformers and play video games when she was younger. I asked her why she ‘abandoned’ the hobby. She told me this: “I once bought Sonic the Hedgehog I for the Megadrive. I remember becoming obsessed with beating the game and getting all the emeralds. I got so angry and frustrated when I couldn’t beat the last stages. I realized that playing those games got me more frustrated than made me having fun, so I stopped.” She lets her kids play, though. She just doesn’t game herself.
A male co-worker of mine used to game on his Amiga, but life simply left him no time to game anymore. Sometimes he goes to YouTube and watches Lets Plays, but doesn’t game himself anymore. I once got him Skyrim as a birthday present in order to see it as an incentive to game again, but he didn’t even pass the opening scene (he was a medieval fantasy fan, so I said what the heck).
Another female co-worker of mine told me that she found video games interesting, but was afraid of becoming addicted to them and stopped her other hobbies. She occasionally plays mobile games when she has no work in the office, but that’s as far as she’ll go.
A male co-worker of mine was impressed when I showed him the Witcher 3 on YouTube (he only played pinball machines back in the 70s), but never gamed himself, never liked fantasy or gaming in general.
So there are a lot of people who thought about gaming or gamed themselves, but eventually they drop it as if it was something bad or ‘just a phase’.
Are gamers considered losers because gaming is something you can start doing from childhood, thus is labeled as a ‘childish activity’? But the same could be said of basketball. A child can start playing basketball from a very young age, so why aren’t people who play basketball labeled as losers?
Are gamers considered losers because gaming is all they do? But children and teens and people in their 20s could be spending all their evenings playing basketball, so why isn’t someone who plays a lot of basketball labeled as a nerd? Why is someone who goes clubbing and goes to parties every single night isn’t considered a loser? Is the repetition the issue? Is it the age? What is it? Is it bad to neglect your life in order to play video games and labels you as a loser? But isn’t this the same if all you do is go partying?
And I think that the answer is in society itself.
I think the real reason that video gaming is frowned upon is the simple fact that it is not a social activity. It is an activity which isolates you from the world around you. For us it is escapism, but for the world, it is considered inability to connect with others. Basketball (and sports in general), clubbing and going to the movies is a social activity. You connect with others (in various ways) and since humans are mostly a social animal, social activities are much more appreciated than those which thrive in isolation.
Before gaming, there was reading - the so-called ‘bookworms’. Doing nothing but reading books in your room all day was a loser sign, because you weren’t being social. You weren’t connecting. You weren’t making new friends.
So I think that this is the real reason video games are associated with being a loser. Because they’re not social (at least, not in the ‘real’ society), they don’t make you meet new people in-life and they don’t help you create ‘real’ stories to tell. Gaming is sort of a parallel reality, a world within a world where we can talk about it in gaming message boards in the same way other people talk in the cafeteria, exchanging our experiences (“Man, I got screwed last time on DOTA 2!”, or “I just finished Resident Evil 7 and ...”). The more time we spend on the gaming world, the more things we have to talk about with gamers, but the less we have to talk about in the real world. In some ways, those two worlds are competing for your attention span.
So yeah, I think this is the reason video gaming in the real world is considered a ‘loser activity’. What do you guys think?
