Are gamers really that pathetic?

[Sir Elton]

Roleplaying is all about escaping your mundane day-to-day existence for something "greater". That's why it applies to the socially-inept, clueless-around-females mindset. Here's a place where they can be king for a day without fear, doubt or rejection. What's not to like?

you didn't understand what I meant, did you? This is what I mean. Reality is an escape from Roleplaying. Take the case of the stereotypical house wife reading a Gothic Novel. Most people think she's escaping the humdrum of her life. Not so.

The same with Roleplaying. When we play a roleplaying game, we take on the persona of someone who gets into very dangerous situations: fighting orcs, climbing on the trellis, facing down demons, and even get involved in the occasional bar brawl.

Once you identify with your character, you are putting yourself through terrible tension: an ordeal of fear, uncertainty, and possible mistrust, pain, and betrayal. A happy ending, where the heroes vanquish the Evil Bad Dude, comes as a relief of all that tension.

Reality is an escape from all that, since in real life we don't put ourselves through obvious dangerous situations. People who call Roleplaying escapist, and play, hasn't really identified with their character. Roleplaying, done properly, is an intense activity.

After it is all said and done, Reality is a welcome escape from all that. Many times, when I read a novel, I felt myself identifying with some of the characters. When I read The Lost World, I found myself in Malcolm's shoes. Experiencing everything that Malcolm, the Chaos Mathematician, experienced in the Lost World. After reading the book, I breathed a sigh of relief and I felt better that in Reality, demonic dinosaurs don't exist and they aren't rampaging around eating people (okay, that's from the Movie, not the book).

Reality is an escape from Roleplaying, if everyone playing the game has properly done their job in entertaining each other. Being an unwashed human being is a matter of personal choice; unable to get a girl to say "yes, I'll go out with you," is a matter so complex that Chaos Theory is used to explain it.

Being unable to move out of your parents' home is also a complex situation more dealing with inflation, our use of fossil fuels, and the national economy. Believe me, I know.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I dunno about all that, but I do sincerely wish I was making the next Megaman game because "Catpissman" will be in there right along Fireman, Iceman, and Swordman.

 

[Lichtenhart]

Sir Elton, what about roleplaying as an escape from boredom?

Oh and here in Italy the great majority of people, male and female, move out of their parent's home only when they get married, and some don't even after that. It's considered perectly normal here.

Maybe North-American parents smell.

 

[Sir Elton]

Sir Elton, what about roleplaying as an escape from boredom?

I don't have a problem with that. Anything is an escape from boredom.

 

[Desdichado]

Nisarg, nobody has to apply for a license in order to be a roleplayer. Therefore neither you nor I, nor anybody else is in the position of denying anybody access to the hobby, outside of the normal selection process of whether or not you wish to game with a given individual. We are also not putting in bouncers at the front of hotels where Cons are being held in order to only admit the cool people, as one might see outside a New York nightclub.

But damn; wouldn't that make the hobby desireable?

 

[Wonger]

The original topic of this thread was "are gamers that pathetic". Specifically, as pathetic as presented in that article.

If you have ever been to Gen Con, I think you have to state a resounding YES. Yeah, there's plenty, perhaps a majority (maybe barely) of people that are perfectly "adjusted" or "normal" there. I'd like to think I am one of them, and I've seen plenty of gamers that are. But, unlike at a baseball game, or a day at the beach, or walking down the streets of the city - at the Con (and in our hobby) you can usually tell who isn't just by looking, after talking to them you'll know for sure, and when you glance around you can see that their numbers in the gaming community are staggeringly higher than almost any other "geek" culture (such as performance car geeks, sports geeks, gambling geeks, etc).

I honestly don't understand how anyone can think otherwise. If 10 people are standing around, 5 look like any other schmo on the street, 1 is grossly overwieght, 1 is wearing a Klingon costume, 1 looks kind of unwashed and is wearing a gawdy comic book t-shirt, 1 is wearing chain mail, and 1 is super quiet standing off to the side timidly looking at something, I'll give you one guess as to where you are: some sort of gamer/sci-fi event. We as grown men go in a basement, speak in funny voices and play with plastic miniatures. Things like that article are dead on! Can you imagine if Triumph the insult dog went to Gen Con? He wouldn't even have to try.

Having said that (and I'm glad you all accept it now!), having some sort of social agenda to exclude someone from a gaming group because they are a huge dork, and therefore improve the hobby is ridiculous. If someone wants to be a dork and are happy totally geeking out, more power too them. Most likely, at the gaming table, they are an asset with their uber geek knowledge of the rules and their passion for the game. Also, just as the article suggested, most nerds are really, really nice honest people. Last year at the Con, me and my "normal" friends walked into the main hall with our uber-geek gaming buddy. Very quickly he outpaced us and blended in - a fish in water. He had a better time than any of us and more power to him - it was one place where he could get along famously with everyone and perhaps us "normal" gamers were the outsiders...made me want to go by a bunch of dork books just to keep up! Of course, I was at the Con, so maybe none of us are as "normal" as we'd like to think!

Cheers!

 

[francisca]

Just read this whole thread, here are some random thoughts I rolled up concerning my experience with these matters.

Cat-Piss Men:
Let's see. This GenCon, I had one experience with some smelly dudes. They smelled bad. Real bad. Could smell them 10 feet away. That was it. Out of the thousands of people I passed by, I encountered 2 smelly guys. Were there more? Probably, but the majority at least were fairly clean.


Really Disturbing:
However, the most disgusting thing I saw was a "normal" looking guy, walking around with a blonde all weekend. I have suspicions she was an "escort", as she was made up to look "hot": nice body, bleached blonde hair, lotsa red lipstick, revealing clothes, no bra, thong showing, etc.., but maybe she was just comfortable with her sexuality in a Brittany Spears kinda way, I dunno. Anyway, she looked like a 35-40 year old woman trying to pull off the current MTV hotty look.

Now, what was disturbing about this? Everytime I saw them, 9 or 10 times, he was either groping her, shoving his tounge down her throat, or at a minimum, pulling her so close to him as they walked that she had trouble staying upright. The whole time, she had a shell-shocked, "I can't wait until this over", glazed over expression on her face. Really disturbing.


Nervousness:
I'm not too socially inept, and not very shy. Hell I used to teach IT classes which had 100-120 18-20 year olds in them. However, I still get nervous meeting people. In almost all cases, I always wonder why afterwards. Here is when I was nervous this past GenCon:
1) Meeting Jolly Blackburn (creator of KoDT). Very nice guy. Very much a gamer. Walked away thinking, wow, he's so normal[/]. Duh! Of course he is. (Oddly enough, I was not nervous when I read at the Love Reading)
2) Meeting some ENWorlders. Dunno why. Maybe because I respect their opinions, and don't want to come off as an ass. (On the upside, one of them seemed at least as nervous as me.)

So, to you guys who get sick to your stomach from nervousness, guess what? It happens. To most people at least. It gets better the more you meet and greet people. Get past it. Yes you can. Really. Just relax.

When it comes to the opposite sex, be bold. You may surprise yourself. Don't ever consider someone out of your league based on looks. Anyone who is obsessed with appearence is not someone you want to be with anyway. That's not to say that hygiene and wearing some decent clothes aren't important, but don't worry about fashion.


Social Ineptitude:
I've seen some descriptions of truly social inept people in this thread. I would not game with them unless they changed their ways. I also would not hang out with them in general. I don't put up with people who continually ruin otherwise good times. In that regard, I agree with Nisarg. However, I don't advocate shunning them or pushing them off a cliff or anything else like that. Politely point out their foibles. If they get huffy and throw a fit, they're not ready to accept their shortcomings. Tell them to come back when they are.

For those of you who feel completely inept, how did you find your gaming group? You must have some social skills.

 

[Desdichado]

I am one of those 'undesirables' (BTW: That is what Hitlerites in Nazi Germany called certain ethnic and indeed also social groups they did not like, so you may want to watch what you say more carefully.).

Oh, please.

I am 22 and I have never had a girlfriend nor have I ever kissed or touched a girl. The question is, Nisarg (and others who advocate getting rid of us 'undesirables'), how the hell are you going to tell me apart from anyone else?

You've obviously completely missed the point. The undesirables are actually very obvious, because they stink, they're rude, they're sloppy, and they're, well, undesirable. Nobody wants to hang around with them. Sexual history is beside the point. Or should we exclude priests as well? And, no, that's not an invitation to make a cheap (and obvious) wisecrack.

 

[Desdichado]

Other than that, I'd just like to add that the intolerant should be flayed alive and boiled in a stew of their own bile.

And that's where the "tolerant" usually break down into hypocrisy.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I don't get exactly how the people you game with can influence your daughters.
For a person to be a reject it takes someone to reject him.
Yeah, I too hope it won't happen to your daughters, and that they will learn soon how to reject people unlike them.

Because environment is a huge part of childhood development, and when I'm not playing online, my children are present. And I don't particularly care to introduce into their environment on a regular basis those who are mentally unstable enough to think that they shapeshift into a wolf at the full moon, trap peoples' souls in crystals or for whom personal hygeine means bathing once a month and smelling like urine. If they get into their heads that this sort of behavior is "right" and acceptable, and begin emulating or sharing in it, then they WILL be rejected by society.

It's not about rejecting people that are unlike them. I'm very open-minded, and I encourage them to be too. I do/will encourage them to meet and interact with people of a wide range and with an open outlook, but those that are unstable enough to not work in polite society they should be, at the very least, wary of. There's odd/eccentric and then there's potentially dangerous.

Would you want your 2 or 8-year old's world-views influenced by someone who believes that drinking human blood is a perfectly viable form of socially acceptable behavior? I sure wouldn't.