Poor and Lonely Boys: Checking in on the Stereotypical Gamer

Meet Paul. Paul is 23 now and lives in his mother Kitty’s attic. He works part-time at a movie theater as a result of Kitty’s nagging insistence that he do something with his life, but recently Paul has been asking his supervisor to cut back his hours. On Paul’s 21st birthday, he told me that he wanted nothing more than to play Final Fantasy XI all day and snack on cold cereal.

“My Blue Mage needs leveling,” he griped to me over coffee once. Although he seemed halfway touched that I’d dragged him out into daylight, Paul was severed from a more pressing reality. His frail, pallid frame might have been sitting before me, but the essence of his energy, his navy-booted, Chocobo-mounted doppelganger, was palpably absent and waiting.

“How many hours a day is it now?” I asked.

“Twelve. Thirteen. I dunno. Whatever there’s time for.” He almost made eye contact with me for a moment, but suddenly settled his gaze on the ground where it would be more comfortable.

That was the final time I saw Paul, but last I heard he’s now leveling a Beastmaster and, to make time for the new endeavor, is (to Kitty’s chagrin) down to one shift a week. I don’t bring him up to tear him down; rather, I use Paul as an example of someone who sets the standard. Like Jason Lee’s character Brodie in the perennial teen favorite, Mallrats, Paul proves that video games can be an addicting respite from the physical world. And for every Pale Paul MMO or Burnout Brodie Arena Sports, I’ve met and seen manifestations of other tragic gaming stereotypes: Star Quarterback Josh Halo, Otaku Evan Rhythm Scroller.

Then again, for each one of those sentient anti-gaming PSAs, there’s plenty of us—gamers ranging from casual to hardcore, gregarious to misanthropic, hygienic to . . . somewhat less hygienic. Still, if you can venture far enough from the gaming community, you’ll see that the popular opinion of gamers as a whole may not view our individuality so generously.

“I guess I imagine that community to be a lot of lonely guys with a lot of extra time on their hands. It just sort of baffles me to see the time they waste,” says a friend of mine about her impressions of gamers.

Around the launch of the PS3 in 2006(PS3-0001 for anyone counting in Sony years), the original king of diplomacy, Bill O’Reilly, took the time to rebuke gamers everywhere saying, “American society is changing for the worse because of the machines . . . In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol . . . now you don't have to do that, now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine . . ..”

Fanboys, cowards, addicts. As a whole, are gamers really the desperate, pathetic, bottom-feeders that make mothers cry and pundits rage?

According to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2008 industry survey, we’ve been had. Here are a few of the stereotypes it takes on:

Stereotype: Games appeal to juvenile sensibilities and are largely for kids.

In other words: “Gaming is something that teenage boys do. I don't want to be married to or date a teenage boy, because they won't be responsible enough to get a job and pay the bills. I'd be much more tolerant if a man had an edifying, grown up activity, such as hiking or playing musical instruments. Sitting home playing video games is an activity for those who have no interest in getting out and seeing the world.” –lonelydragon, answerbag.com

Where did you get that idea?:

Survey Says: The average gamer is actually 35, with an overwhelming 49% falling in the adult bracket of ages 18-49 and 26% over the age of 50.

Stereotype: Games are for boys.

In other words: “Why do more men than women like to play (violent) video games? Professor Allan Reiss of Stanford University found out that it’s all about their urge to conquer and vanquish . . . In the study, published recently in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, scientists wired up a series of men and women to an MRI scanner while they played a video game, which involved competing to win on-screen territory by clicking on a series of balls . . . Male brains, however, showed much greater activation, and the amount increased as they gained more territory. This was not the case with women.” (Clicking on balls? Yup, sounds pretty on par with today’s most popular games . . . if this were 1972.)

Where did you get that idea?

Survey Says: 60/40 split overall with women representing the latter. 44% of online gamers are reportedly female. This doesn’t evidence the staggering chasm between genders that we expect, especially when considering that women 18 and older represent a significantly larger portion of the gaming population than boys 17 or younger. Of course, you can argue the details about time-spent playing, genre, etc, but even the biggest developers admit increasing interest in courting this female demographic.

Stereotype: People use games to escape the real world and avoid real-world relationships.

In other words: “A new study connects young adults' use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family . . .‘It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time.’” The BYU study is explained further at eurekalert.com.

Where did you get that idea?

Survey says: 59% of gamers play games with others in person. Social gaming is increasingly popular, especially with the sale of party-oriented games on the rise.

In my junior year of college, The Women’s Center started handing out buttons that read, “This is what a feminist looks like.” The idea was for all kinds of people to sport the slogan proving to the world that not all feminists are a Rush Limbaugh fetish. While the severity of our cause is perhaps different, maybe at this point buttons aren’t a bad idea.

Short of that, why not just leave a comment telling us whether you make or break the gamer mold?