Why are gamers so hyped?

While I was watching a German info-magazine on TV some days ago I had to realize that a certain appearance of our time becomes more and more hyped. I'm talking about our beloved species of gamers. Well, the hardcore-gamers, those people we usually call more exactly lamers.

And not only on TV do they receive a lot of attention, also in paper-magazines. Many, even serious magazines report about LAN-parties and gamer-conventions or whatever you might else figure out. (World-Championship most likely to come.) I really wonder why they get this attention. People are complaining about the very doubtful sense of ego-shooters and violent games, often they are diabolized as creators of violence like in Littleton/USA and last but not least the industry is lamenting about missing personnel on the IT-sector. So WTF do they care about gamers?

During the last months I understood that there was a change in the gamer-scene (in which I am very active, hehe.... erm, hey, what are going to do with that axe???...ah, it was a joke, hey!). O.K, serious. Some time ago, gaming started to become a SPORT (the reporter from TV was very busy to state that clearly). Yes, you should think about that, a sport. That's ridiculous. Gamers are described as sportsmen, fair and noble because they meet at LAN-parties to fight against each other in a face-to-face fight and afterwards they give each other a cold and silent handshake. Very sportslike. I guess reporters never heard of something like cheating and "I-must-win-in-any-case" attitudes. (I know there also has been votefaking on demoparties, but I don't think it's very common.)

Afterwards they interview the gamers and ask them about the playing as if they were asking a football star why he thought that his goal had been so important for his team. What mainly makes me angry about all that is the serious way in which the reporters act. No cynic comments, no ironic sidekicks, plain coverage on the thing just like - a sportsevent.

Amazing, in days of lack of IT-specialists time is spent on informing about young people who use their precious spare time to play violent games instead of learning for school or for their later jobs. In days in which education is praised as the key for the future we care about the youth who usually don't know what they are going to do later on (all gamers I know think that school suxxx and they have no idea what to do later. That may also be a prejudice, but 2 weeks ago there was a small LAN in our school and the people attending it were all of the mentioned type) and if they know, they say stupid things like "[games]programmer" or "Bill Gates II" or such crap. I think I know why 50% of computer science students in Germany break off their studies. It's because some "Zybaspaze-Kid" thought that it couldn't be that hard to develop "Windows 2005" when you know how to execute a game.

In paper-magazines reports are mainly the same. Usually they give you some hints how to start your own LAN-party or how to become member of a CLAAAAAN in da SCEEEENE.

Have we also had reports about demoparties or hacker-events in magazines, newspapers and on TV? Oh, yeah, we have. Sometimes. The last one to mention is the one of NANO about MS 2001, which was good so I won't critizize it. The others I saw or read were plain shit. Why? Because people who do such reports usually know that you can play games with computers, but nothing else. Those reports perfectly support the wide-spread opinion about freaky nerds sitting calm in front of their machines typing stupid things no one can understand. While LAN-parties are commented like Olympics, demoparties are often reported about as if it they were infected with a dangerous virus. Gamers are the hope of IBM and Microsoft, demosceners are not, because they are chaotic freaks who can't fit in a team, work always alone and only at night and they don't know that the sun is yellow, grass is green and topmost of all they don't know who the German Bundeskanzler is (this goes for Germans, if you're from Australia you perhaps don't have to know :)).

Reports on the real scene are full of sceptical comments. Why? Well, as we know our activity is not very accepted in society. Because nobody knows anything about it. And thus it's strange. I think it also has some other reason. Don't know really, but that's my thought: the demoscene and the demosceners don't fit perfectly in today's fun-generation or the fun-society. And that means: you can't sell it, freakin' uncommercial shit! People working for free and nothing and for the fun of it are really strange, but people working nothing and playing games are KEWL and the mirror of our time, yep. Not to mention that you can win a lot of money as a winner of a LAN-party. And our poor freaks? Release their work of months and win 100$, how stupid they are. Well, I know there are also parties where you can win 2500$, but I guess there are only 4 of those while there are quite many huge LAN-parties (ASM, TG, TP *grin* ;) with big price money.

What annoys me most of all, is the uncritical attitude towards gamers. No criticism against the violent games and no comment about the unmotivated gamers who are too cool to think about their quite primitive and monotonous activity. But while gaming 12 hours a day makes you cool, coding 12 hours a day is very dangerous and makes you a lonely nerd.

The last years have shown me that the computer as a modern form of toy has been more accepted than as a machine to work with, that it actually was built for. This acceptance has gone so far that most people react sceptically if you don't follow the stream. Someone should think that people are happy to hear that there are dudes using their machines to the limits. But usually they think you're just weird.

Looking at all this gamer-hype I would prefer TV and newspapers not to report about the demoscene at all. The results are too lame. We really don't need stupid comments that make you realize that the author would like to laugh right in your face due to your stupidness or that he's just annoyed by the boring things you do.

Let them report about their exciting gamers, some day they will see that they are not that great as it seems.

StyX/HeadcrasH
cologne is 350km away from my home

comments go to: andi.schilling@gmx.de
TV-reporters and magazine editors go to: www.lanparty.de