Globe and Mail on "Gamer Shame"

Scott Colbourne is a gamer who isn't afraid to write about in front of a large audience, but he revisits the issue at large:

Another way to deal with those shameful feelings is to meet them head on. Canadian writer Clive Thompson did just that this week with a bombastic, hilarious piece for Wired.com extolling the virtues of violent shoot-'em-ups. In The Glory of the Shooter, he offers this repudiation of gamer shame: "When your boss asks you what you did on the weekend, are you gonna tell him you spent 10 hours shooting at already-dead bodies during slow-mo mode in Half Life 2 just so you could play physics experiments with them? No, it's easier to stroke your chin and muse on the advent of 'narrative' games that will 'rival movies' and finally 'break games into the mainstream.' "

Slo-mo mode? There's a slow-motion feature in Half Life 2? I'm going to check that out -- just have to pull the drapes first, and get headphones so the neighbours don't hear.

-- Confessions from the grips of gamer shame

Most of my co-workers know by now what my hobbies are and I'm actually something of the point person when it comes down to those kinds of questions. Aside from the occasional discussion about how to get past certain parts of GTA and the infrequent title swap, it doesn't come up much. Course, the most common hobby around the office is either poker, golf or child rearing ... so I should count my blessings. I just wish some people around the office didn't annoy IT so much that they firewall even obscure gaming sites.

I have noticed that the couple friends of mine that are as rabid about gaming as I am .... we're complete chatterboxes when we get together. Seriously, it's like a knitting circle. Pent-up discussion, I guess.






tagged: game, gaming