I Am a Gamer

I am a gamer.

When I was young, and gaming was new, the title of "gamer" didn't exist.  Instead, we were known as "losers."  Few of us played video games.  Few of us played role-playing games.  Few of us liked science fiction and fantasy novels (and films).  Those pastimes were for the underclass of junior high and high school: the geeks, the nerds, the unpopular.

Popular kids detassled corn, played mumblety-peg with sharpened knives, rode unicycles...

Er...

Actually, I don't have a clue what the popular kids did.  I do know they had no interest in computers.  I like to imagine those popular kids are now shoveling garbage for a living.  I also like to imagine they think "Gee, if I'd only been nicer to those geeks, I would be able to cope with the modern world."

But I digress.

In between expeditions to the White Plume Mountains, we bemoaned our inability to talk to girls.  If only they played Atari cartridges instead of records.  If only they liked Star Wars instead of football players.  If only they tried Champions instead of... 

Er...  I'm back to unicycles again.  What did girls like in high school in the 80s?  Welding?  Trigonometry?

The point is, if only we geeks shared interests with girls, we could have talked to them.  Instead, we became bright red and silent in their presence.

Oh, how the world has changed.  Computers are everywhere.  Games are the dominant entertainment medium.  And we can talk to women without the need to discuss unicycles.*  This world is awesome!

And yet...

In this bright, shiny, new world do we get what we geeks always wanted: a diverse group of game lovers?  No.  Now those same idiots, exactly like those who ridiculed me in high school, are attacking women.  You read that right, women are being pushed out after it took so long for them to get in!

To those who are threatening women, ridiculing women, and attacking feminism in defense of games: Stop it.  Games will always be fun and groundbreaking and threatening to the status quo.  Games will always be played by women with opinions.

Who cares if she cheated on her boyfriend?  Who cares if she thinks women are treatedlike crap in games?  Who cares if shemade a game you didn't like?  Attackinga woman from the anonymity of the internet is the definition of cowardice, the definition of a self-defeating argument.

You are the problem, not them.  Get over it or, at the very least, learn to shut up.  This is our world now, not your world.

I am a gamer.  They are gamers.  We are gamers.

Fuck yeah!

*Except as foreplay.