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The New Comic Thread for Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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Watching professional sports on TV or XBOX of whatever does not consitute a physical activity.
I completely agree with Gabe and Tycho here. I don't want my games to venture into jock territory anymore than they are.
Which attitude do you mean? The us versus them mentality?
I'm not trying to be a jerk at all, by the way! I'm genuinely curious what you're talking about here.
What's jock territory, though? And for that matter, why does the addition of ESPN360 bring us closer to that territory? Unless you're defining 'jock territory' as 'interested in sports', in which case you're making a pretty broad statement that I could easily conflate with 'people who are interested in video games are smelly overweight nerds who lack social skills'. Just like an interest in video games doesn't mean you behave a certain way, an interest in sports is the same sort of thing.
Damn son.
Who wants a swirly.
To a degree, yes
Some people, now in their twenties/thirties, grew up with video games as a cultural refuge from a society that sucked for them
I don't think it's unreasonable to feel affronted by that culture getting co-opted by the people they were escaping from
Kids in their teens getting all smug about "us gamers" are kind of missing the history there
alright, this post has crossed a limit for me
some kind of threshold
where i can't tell if it's a real post or a gag post anymore
help
I definitely felt the burn from this shit when the XBox and Playstation started to reach out toward the people that gave me tons of shit growing up.
But I grew up and got the fuck over it.
I dunno. Maybe the final couple years of school made it easier to transition, because people didn't give me shit for being a nerd by then.
http://www.theonion.com/video/soccer-officially-announces-it-is-gay,17603/
i think it's unreasonable
listen, i'm sorry that some folks got picked on for being socially awkward back in the day
gabe, for example, has had to deal with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder for how long? that's rough, man, and will really fuck up your interaction with your peers as a youth in a way that is totally unfair
but
you're an adult now
and blaming sports because guys who liked sports picked on you is just as asinine as people picking on you because you liked video games
which, by the way
they mostly didn't
if you got picked on as a youth i am willing to bet dollar bills it had very little to do with your hobbies
The point being that the feeling was there, and for some it isn't that easy to just shrug off
Well, let's say your dad uses the computer to look up the scores on some games he missed. And then you go play Battlefield with the advertising thing. And your game is infested with ESPN and sports ads.
VIDEO GAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEZ
I don't think anybody is "blaming sports" for anything
I don't think that's even a thing
Understandable? Yes. Reasonable? Not really, at least not in my eyes.
Background - I'm 25, I used to be made fun of a ton and you bet I took refuge in gaming. I was a bit of a social outcast, and now I work in the games industry as a creative type. So obviously I want to see gaming become more popular. I still play a ton of niche titles, though - my obsessions are STALKER, X3, that sort of thing.
I think that gaming has reached a point where it's hard to point to it and say 'that's gaming', then pointing to an audience and saying 'that's the audience for gaming'. That's like pointing to everyone who watches movies and saying 'that's the audience for movies'. Gaming is reaching a point where there are so many genres, types and flavors of gaming that everyone's going to encounter it to some degree or another - yet their experience may be completely different from another person who encounters gaming.
In regards to this comic, complaining that the 360 has ESPN360 is missing the point. That's like complaining that you can get 16 and Pregnant on the same television box where you watch The Wire. The former doesn't devalue the latter. Or, a more apt analogy - complaining that you can watch the movie Twilight on the same television that you can watch the tv show Breaking Bad. It's a way to provide content. That's it. Having (what you perceive as) a less 'valid' form of content on the device doesn't devalue your content. It doesn't make your stuff less enjoyable, or at least it shouldn't.
I can certainly understand why some gamers feel like video games should be special and theirs alone. I just disagree that it's a positive or constructive attitude to have.
You know. The kind of stuff "mundane people" like. I'm also being in complete geek mode here.
I mean. I really don't mind having ESPN on the XBOX and whatnot. More power for those who like it, really. (and can now throw xbox keggers while they fistbump each other.
Well, shrug harder!
I don't say that condescendingly, I mean it. The moment I was able to get over myself for being a video game player longer than THOSE GUYS or whatever, I felt better.
And don't get me wrong, sometimes I still fall back into that feeling of "What the fuck are these people doing with my game?" It mostly shows up when some TV personality is trying to play a game and is overdoing the dumb talking smack thing. That isn't necessarily a video game quirk though.
my immersion
I probably shouldn't have brought it up, huh? <_<
THEY HAVE BEEN RUINED FOREVER
I have recently contemplated bringing in my framed and signed Ales Hemsky jersey and hanging it over my desk at work, so I'm basically Hitler.
I proudly endorse the "us nerds" concept.
That's how my friends and I have been describing ourselves for decades. And that's how we like it.
C'mon Koshian. You know it deep down inside.
one of us, one of us, one of us
who were really, really nerdy kids
like, socially awkward, had difficulty understanding popular culture, some of them had personal hygiene issues
a lot of those kids had shitty hands dealt to them that were not their fault. anxiety disorders. aspergers. an abusive home-life that annihilated their self-esteem. some kids just had the shit luck of being tubby or having really nasty asthma or just being plain ole ugly.
so they got picked on, because children (and to a greater extent, teenagers) are dicks. anyone significantly different from the mainstream, especially if perceived as weaker or unable to defend themselves, would get taunted and tormented mercilessly by kids who were more popular and socially adept than them.
shit was just plain unfair. i didn't have to deal with very much of it myself, aside from some making fun of me for being a queer, but i had friends who had to go through that shit.
what i noticed is that in many cases, they'd be unable to identify what it really is that was getting them picked on. they'd find solace in their nerdy hobbies, spend a lot of time doing them, and that would be something that the people who picked on them would use as a weakness to torment them
so when my friend phil has his magic cards taken from him and flushed down a toilet, it's not because those guys hate magic the gathering. they don't even know what the fuck it is. what's more important is they don't like you and because you like something, they're going to try to destroy what you like to make you feel bad.
because they're assholes. liking football or hockey or dating or booze doesn't make them into those assholes (although obviously there's some aspects of things like sports culture that encourage that sort of shit) no more so than liking magic the gathering turned you into a social outcast. it's ancillary, at best.
but i guess it's easier for phil to tell himself they hate him because of his nerdy hobbies instead of confronting the fact that he doesn't shower and he wears his pants real high and deeply mouthbreaths all the time and can't look girls in the eye when he talks to them.
Well geez, don't try so hard to stereotype yourselves as unsocialized recluses who don't go outside. I think that willful stereotyping of yourself is a bad thing. People, regardless of their interests in video games or sports, are more complicated than that. I don't think there is such a thing as a "usual gaming geek" and I don't think it's accurate to say whether or not they would like this ESPN service.
No, it isn't particularly positive or constructive.
I don't think it's very constructive to get all holier-than-thou about it either, as the "HURF DURF US GAMERS :smug:" crowd loves to do
We must be the most terrible nerds ever. How dare we stop our pen & paper RPG to watch a popular sports team from our home town in a championship game. That goes against all the nerd rules!
I do go outside a lot.
Having hobbies outside of the mainstream and enjoying them doesn't mean you aren't a social person.
And yes, there is such a thing as the usual gaming geek. I met tons of 'em at PAX. And the fact we all go there is a pretty social thing to do.
I agree with you there. It's something that, for a lot of people, is deeply ingrained into their consciousness and dismissing it as 'oh US GAMERS' is a bit silly.
Why can't we all just get along and learn to hate the philatelists?