Avast, Ye Mateys!

In response to “Forbidden Love” from The Escapist Forum: Hopefully these events will become less of an unusualness and become the norm. Hopefully once the juvenile and chauvinistic tendency of the gaming world that Lukasa pointed out has died down a little. I’d still argue that we shouldn’t completely wipe out those tendencies though since the world would be dull if we were all reading from the same page.

I look forward to the day when my girlfriend and myself both have our own computer so we can re-enact such activities, she has expressed interest already in playing Team Fortress 2. Though its likely she’ll want to stay within arms reach so any kills I make against her are met with her giving me a beating in real life. Fun times.

– grey_painter

This is a great read and reminds me of why I, a girl, love gaming so much. It allows you to connect with someone in a way that reading a book or watching a movie doesn’t permit. If my husband and I are both reading, we’re not doing something together, it’s individual. Gaming however, is something interactive–we quest together, kill together, and even sometimes give little gifts (I remember getting some vanity pets in WoW!). It’s especially great when my husband is traveling for work. He brings his gaming laptop with him, and it’s a way for us to connect while he’s away.

I love gaming, and I love my husband for his gaming tendencies. I wouldn’t have it any other way 😀

– Aalynia

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In response to “The Dating Game” from The Escapist Forum: All good analysis, but I think one assumption which needs to be questioned is the “date” archetype itself. In particular, when you refer to the fact that games are seldom played in arcades anymore and point out the problems with the venue being “your place or mine”, that implicitly rules out the way the majority of good relationships start in the real world: as friendships.

If you meet a potential partner at a friend’s house or perhaps at a party there’s a pretty good chance that gaming will be on offer (at least if you yourself are a gamer). Maybe the two of you ace a Rock Band duet or develop a friendly rivalry as the last two standing in most of the Powerstone 2 matches. Much as games set a barrier to entry it could be either your future partner’s skills or even their positive attitude to the learning process which first attracts you to them.

It’s time to leave behind the stereotype of needing to take partners to movies or out for meals because they’re too hopeless to cope with anything more demanding than a completely passive experience. If your potential date is rubbish at Guitar Hero that doesn’t matter. If he won’t pick up the Guitar for fear of looking silly then forget about him and pick someone more worthy of your attention.

Once you know someone well, inviting them round to your place isn’t a big deal. How about we try taking on the 2P co-op mode together? Next Wednesday? See you then.

– Dom Camus

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In response to “Romance on the High Seas” from The Escapist Forum: The real trick to any online gathering place is to get the women interested – once the women are there, the guys will soon follow, as long as there’s something remotely interesting for them to get involved with. Most casual, puzzle-based sites have populations skewed in favor of females, just as less casual or combat-intensive games have more men playing.

It sounds as if there might be more single women playing PP, based on your anecdotal evidence, as compared to, say, most MMOs. I’ve run across quite a few women during my years of playing WoW, but almost all of them were playing with their husbands. I’ve yet to meet a married woman online that didn’t have a husband that shared at least some of their online playtime, whereas I’ve met quite a few married men whose wives have no interest in the games they play.

– mattaui

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In response to “Crazy in Love” from The Escapist Forum: It’s articles like this that keep me reading the escapist. You touch on an important point – the struggle for gamers – the well-adjusted amongst us who do not lurk in parents’ basements – to reconcile our love for gaming with the anathema that is the gamer stereotype.

I have a friend who has convinced himself that he is no longer a “gamer”, but merely a person who amongst other things, plays games. It’s absurd, of course, because this same fellow also collects game posters, game toys, reads game websites, listens to game podcasts, and maintains his own gaming website. But what his example demonstrates is how the obsessed few have co-opted the gamer image. Maybe the image was theirs from the beginning, but now I’d like to think that the demographics have changed considerably.

Was it just a matter of maturing? I don’t think so, because I think maturity and interest in gaming are mutually exclusive. That they’re associated with one another is just another part of the stigma against games and gaming – invariably by people who have never played games, or people like my friend who have become disillusioned with “gaming culture”.

Articles here on the escapist, and blogs like your TokenMinorities, show how adults can interface with gaming in the same way as any other art form – thoroughly, critically, analytically – and not necessarily with any obsessive bent. In the end, your thesis is dead-on. While the first generation of serious gamers has “grown up” – it is time for the industry to do the same, all the while still leaving the door open for the next generation.

– Godheval

Interesting…although just to balance out that ending note of “Give us something more mature” people have been doing bats*** stuff with media for decades. Celebrities must endure stalkers all the time, such as Jodie Foster receiving bomb threats and letters from Michael Smegal. Dimebag Darrel Abbott (R.I.P. you crazy diamond) was shot by a man who had been claiming that he wrote all of Pantera’s music.

The only difference is that with the video game character there is no reality check. There is no one to say “I’m Sonic and I’m not actually married to you.” Which is self-evident to all of us, but to someone with a loose grip on reality it’s just another reason to pursue the fantasy.

– L.B. Jefferies

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In response to “Real Gamers, Real Relationships” from The Escapist Forum: I’m married to a non-gamer. He’s a great guy, and he does like to do things, but playing games is not one of them. He’d prefer to watch television. My family, though, plays games. When I was a young teen, our television set broke, and my parents noticed that the house was quieter, even though we had a lot of friends over and we were constantly playing. They didn’t fix it, so we started getting games. Video games weren’t around then, but Avalon Hill made bookshelf games, and we had a LOT of those. Great times. 🙂 Video games are what I play since I don’t have a gaming group I can sit around a table with.

Oh, and I met my husband in karate class. It’s going to be hard to meet a gamer in real life. If you do want to meet one, you’ll need to start frequenting the gaming groups in your area. Eventually you can find someone who seems to be compatible.

– ceolstan

I think what this shows is that gamers should shack up with other gamers; not exclusively of course.

Both my wife & I play games and oftentimes the same games, though we usually have each other to thank: she got me into the Sims and I got her into GTA and neither of us thought we would like it as much as we do.

The benefit of dating another gamer is that when one of us gets a little addicted to a game, the other is a bit more understanding. This of course eventually leads to both of us wanting to play the same game (most recently Fallout 3) but I think our bickering over who’s character gets loaded up is much lighter than the one sided addict arguments I’ve seen tear up a marriage. And yes I’ve known a woman who divorced her husband (of course she started by cheating on him first: with a friend of mine) because he gave his games more attention than her.

– GonzoGamer