Assimilation of a Subculture

It might not seem like it to a reader of my blog or to some of my acquaintances I have met through gaming, but I become tongue tied when it comes to the topic of gaming with people I do not already know also partake in a related aspect of the various gaming hobbies. Gaming was something I was raised to be ashamed of. It does not help when a very vocal minority actively seeks to prove every bad thing that has ever been said about games and the people that play them. Like any other group of people, it is those furthest removed from reality that grab the most attention from outsiders.

My first brush with Dungeons & Dragons was secretive. I knew beyond any doubt as a young lad that Dungeons & Dragons was not only wrong, but downright evil. Still, it had a certain appeal to it. I would sell off parts of my school lunch to other kids for pocket change. I saved the money for a few months and bought the Rules Cyclopedia from another kid. I read and reread that book over and over and over again and again and again over a period of years. I knew every rule inside and out by virtue of pure repetition.

I had to hide the book from my family. It became akin to a sacred tome I had to protect. This was not easy as I was searched semi-regularly and under different circumstances. I would return home from school some days to find I had to clean my room because it was torn apart in a search. That book was the one thing that could have possibly ever been found in these searches, and I was damned if I was going to allow that to happen.

When one spends more than a decade feeling like an outsider and keeping something a secret, it becomes difficult to share that secret with others not already in on the secret. It's a little embarrassing actually how things come flooding out when you feel you can talk about the secret. I can gush over various games for hours when I find a fellow gamer. My natural reaction around people I do not already know game is still to clam up and keep games to myself.

I grew up to play a few different types of games. I have played some console games although console gaming is one of the gaming hobbies I am less familiar with. I own a few hundred video games for the personal computer. I play a few different miniature games. Some of the earliest posts on this blog were for a Facebook game. I like Magic the Gathering, but do not have the income to keep up with the game and support my other hobbies. My current favourite card game is Sentinels of the Multiverse. Board games are awesome. There are more types of board games than I can keep up with let alone individual board games. I have written my own MUD once upon a time. Role playing is awesome and something I am almost always up for.

The social stigmas are much different about gaming of all sorts than they were when I was growing up. For one thing, there are more gamers than people that do not game. Whether it be card games, board games, role playing games, party games, video games, or what have you, people are downright hungry for both interactive media and the social interaction available through gaming. There is also a greater diversity in the ethnic background and the sex of people that game now compared to my youth. Increased diversity in the gaming audience leads to increased diversity in game developers as well. Increased diversity in game developers means increased diversity in gaming experiences available to the consumer which feeds into increasing the diversity of the audience again.

Recently there have been many articles such as "The End of Gamers" or "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over." I think such titles state the reverse of what is happening in an attempt to draw attention. Many of the articles I have read have either tried to embrace a minority by declaring no one outside of that minority a gamer, or tried to distance themselves from a minority by declaring that they are not part of gamer culture even though they partake in gaming and enjoy the history while sharing aspects extracted from games socially.

The label of gamer may come to lose all meaning, but it is only because we are approaching a point where it would be easier to have a term for people that do not play games of some sort than to have a tag for people that do. To quote Syndrome from the Invincibles, "And when everyone's super, (evil chuckle) no one will be." We live in a time when there are gamers raised by gamers that are raising gamers.

Gamers, like many people that were once considered outsiders, are now part of the mainstream. There are some gamers that are desperately attempting to hold on to their outlier status. They typical methods for accomplishing this include driving other people away, defining what is not a real game, or burying themselves in some niche within the various gaming hobbies. If somebody enjoys a different type of game or even game experience within the same games as them then they might declare that person to not be a real gamer. The further away the type of gaming moves from their niche, the easier it is for them to label somebody as anything but a gamer. The less like them a person is, the greater the chance that person is to be a 'Fake Gamer'.

Gamer culture will still continue. The history of games will still be there. We will continue to build on that culture as we move forward. There are more people included within the game culture bubble now. Hopefully, as more people pick up games we will continue to see a wider array of games for us to experience. Gaming as a whole is no longer a niche subculture. Yes, there are many types of games that still are, but they bleed into Western culture even if many people are not aware of the nooks and crannies where those games live.

I view gaming and those that partake in gaming in a generally positive light. I have seen a lot of good come from gaming. This is not to say that people that play games are better people than those that do not. Gaming provides a platform of common interest that I have seen many people utilize to build communities and to help others. There are many charitable events held every year that are tied directly to gaming in one form or another. This is not to suggest that negativity is not present. It very much is. It is thankfully a minority of gamers, but it is a very vocal and brazen minority.

I would like to apologize to anyone I ever made uncomfortable or caused them to feel unwelcome when it comes to gaming of any sort. I personally am still adjusting to the current times when society at large considers it okay to enjoy gaming. I am so accustomed to living in the corner that I am hesitant to venture further into the room where the rest of the gamers are mingling and helping to introduce others to gaming. The corner might be cramped, but I know this corner. The corner is safe. The rest of the room, or people coming into my corner brings the unknown. Fear travels hand in hand with the unknown. This fear is a silly thing. I am working on conquering that fear, but I am not there yet.