Representing Gamers

I never have, and never will, play World of Warcraft. Previous attempts at getting into PC MMOs that my friends play, such as Diablo 2 and Starcraft, have ended with me ultimately realising that I am far too much of a noob to compete and have fun with other players online. Such is the strength of the ‘hierarchy’ of experienced players in these games that by the time I get around to starting to play them, I just give up after a short while because I end up getting sick of the snobbery or being beaten constantly, or both. Yes, I have to admit, when it comes to playing anything outside the confines of console games, I am a massive noob.

This brings me to the point on how gamers are represented, or at least perceived, in wider cultural discourse. Personally, when I attempted playing MMOs and turned out to be absolutely terrible at them, I started cursing my opponents every time I lost with things such as "I'm stopping this game now so I can continue living my life" or "Well I guess you must have your eye in now that you've been playing for 12 hours straight" - in actual fact I was just bitter about being so bad. But no matter how you or anyone else arrives at a conclusion about the people who play games such as World of Warcraft, the conclusion is always the same: this.

Yep, South Park pretty much nails what we all think about when we put "World of Warcraft" and "people" together. The whole notion of World of Warcraft evokes a sense of geekery when thinking about who plays it - and let's be honest, it's hard not to think this. In fact, the wider cultural understanding of World of Warcraft and its community is one of advanced geekery, or the domain of the "uber-geek", in comparison to other videogames. While it may be unfair for everyone to label World of Warcraft in this way, things such as the South Park clip above or Red Shirt Guy below make it easier to believe.

At least he had the balls to say it though right?

With all of its associated stigmata, it must be hard for a game like World of Warcraft to sell to anyone outside of this perceived group. Nevertheless, developers Blizzard tried - TV spots featuring various celebrities boasting about their WoW avatars, such as Verne Troyer, William Shatner, Steve Van Zandt, Ozzy Osbourne, Mr T and Jean Claude Van Damme (in French) were employed in an attempt, I guess, to draw in a wider audience (oh, and profits). Whether or not this was successful I don't know, because I only remember seeing the Mr T advert in NZ for a few weeks before it was pulled. This attempt raises a question though - why weren't any female celebrities used in the campaign?

While portrayals of gamers in other media (such as the film XXX and various advertising campaigns for games) may point to a change in the tide of perceptions from games being the sole domain of geeks and 'undesirables' to being for everyone, including outdoors-types and, yes, girls, I would argue that this is not so. As much as the advertising industry would like to think that they reflect (or rather shape) public opinion, the traditional viewpoint is so deeply ingrained in the minds of nearly everyone that I don't personally see it changing. Not until we move from the age of digital immigrants to digital natives, at least.

Although, having said this, it seems that today only certain groups or factions of gamers are persecuted as geeks, and more often than not it always winds up being people who play World of Warcraft that represent the geek group. Maybe it's due to the technological advancements and progression that the gaming industry have made in the past decade causing this - by introducing the Nintendo Wii, the Playstation Move and the Xbox360 Kinect, thereby opening up gaming to a wider market (at least that's what the ads imply) it creates an 'other' within the gaming community, with that 'other' being sit-down gamers. Similarly, 'sit-down' gamers are often critical of the new motion sensing technology in games, preferring the tried and tested method of using peripherals such as keyboards or controllers to play games, and their 'other' is the new group of gamers.

Whatever the cause of the "uber-geek" legend is, thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I'ma stop writing now.