The board’s search function is poor, but it ain’t that poor. It took all of two minutes to search for “nearwildheaven” and “video games.”
Being a woman, I’m more likely to hear the woman’s side of the story, I’ll grant you that.
I used to go to a meetup with a woman who realized Farmville was a problem when she cancelled plans with one of her children to feed her crops. At that point, she decided to walk away and let her crops die.
Is there ANY leisure activity that isn’t looked down on by people who don’t participate in it?
Truly, a harrowing tale of addiction and self-destruction. It’s like someone made a sequel to Requiem for a Dream.
Hoe-to-Hoe?
People are quick to take the worst in something and use that to define their perception of it as a whole. This isn’t limited to video games, of course, but video games tend to paint a very big target through a number of ways.
Video games have a tendency to be addictive in the same way gambling can be (for people susceptible to getting addicted to stuff of course). If you are a somewhat lonely/unhappy individual, video games offer a fantasy world in which the rules tend to be much more concrete, the progression linear and measurable, and provide an online community that can serve as an echo chamber for the gamer’s own biases. Suddenly dealing with your own problems doesn’t seem like as big of a deal anymore, because while it might be hard to get your family to take you seriously/get a girl to like you, reaching level 20 is not yet still feels like a personal accomplishment. Maybe the kid who got whomped in dodgeball whomps online opponents in World of Warcraft Battlegrounds. Some people can get REALLY badly addicted by this, and while you can agrue you can be addicted to ‘anything’, personally I’m not seeing people having the same kind of social issues and neglect of their personal lives from being addicted to something a little more ‘active’, like cycling, hiking playing soccer, etc.
Its easier to get someone into something if they’ve grown up with it or have some nostalgia attached to it. In this way other things get the same criticism video games do- a person might not be keen on going to an Opera, for example, if they didn’t grow up enjoying theater/singing/etc. To them it might seem rather pointless and boring, just as some would dismiss video games in the same way, because they didn’t grow up with them or get the same kind of enjoyment out of the activity. Something a lot of gamers take for granted is simply how ‘meta’ a lot of video games are- they are derivitave of older games. Starfox being a shinier version of Galaga, Legend of Zelda being a high-def version of Adventure, and so on. If you didn’t have an early experience, didn’t play the first 4 Call of Duty/Command and Conquer/Grand Theft Auto/etc it can be harder to get into it- this is similar to serial TV shows like the Sopranos or Breaking Bad- you’ll get some people who love it but others that balk because they’re not willing to watch 40 episodes to get ‘caught up’ in order to see what all the hype is about.
As others have said, video games are comparitavely ‘new’. I could play Pac-Man with my future kid the same way my dad played Pac-Man with me (the first video game I ever played), but that’s about as far back as it would go. And for many people in my generation, they didn’t necessarily grow up to be gamers, they saw it as a throaway gimmick like a Pet Rock or Chia Pet or something. So even in my own generation video games are not as universal as some Dopers might claim them to be.
While it would be hard to concretely measure, it feels like people who like video games are more likely to define themselves as ‘gamers’ vs people who just happen to like video games. This makes it easier to assume they spend ALL their free time playing video games. Unfortunately there are a lot of video games (particularly MMOs) that kind of encourage this assumption, since they tend to require a significant investment in time. When a layman sees someone slaving away at a game that looks more like ‘work’ (ie spending close to 8 hrs/day playing, ‘grinding’, doing repetitive tedious tasks for some possible random reward, getting stressed and anxious about changes to the game and how it will affect the player, etc) its easy for them to extrapolate that experience and assume the same kind of poop socking WoW player is also the guy who plays Call of Duty, Madden 2013, Words with Friends, and so on.
While games and consoles are expanding their market demographic, its still a Young Man’s World; the majority of gamers are men 18-35, so the majority of games cater to this demographic. While I see more and more women playing games, I notice the genre of games they play tends to be sharply different than men- they tend to be a very small minority in FPS and sports games for example. I notice that puzzle games and ‘motion’ games tend to have the broadest appeal to different ages. So for the people who poo poo video games but still play Candy Crush, this makes sense. They are playing something familiar and accessible to them, which doesn’t require hours of investment, has a manageable learning curve, is available on a mobile phone (so it doesn’t require a console/computer and hours sitting at home), is free, which doesn’t require extensive background knowlege, that doesn’t change too much over time.
You’ve never met any exercise addicts? I have and while they’re more outgoing than your typical gamer, the ones that are really hung up on exercising have the attention span of a gnat.
Not universally, no, but I notice that people who have an interest in TV or sports have an easier time making small talk than people with an interest in, say, taxidermy or ancient history. I’d also say that some leisure activities are widely seen as virtues, such at going to church or fitness. Pastimes where you make things, even if the things are useless or ugly, are, in my opinion, typically seen as better than those where you consume or create intangibles. Carpentry or sculpting may be seen as “better” hobbies than dining out or movies. I may be projecting. I have no idea where I’d find data for public perceptions of hobbies.
I’d say that perceived appropriateness is a factor as well. Waylon Smithers from the Simpsons has a funny hobby: he collects Malibu Stacy dolls. It’s not funny when Lisa does it. It might be funny if Lisa’s hobby was watching professional wrestling. Not because she’s not in the right age group, but because she’s much smarter than the stereotype of a wrestling fan and it doesn’t match her other hobbies, like jazz.
I’ve run into a bit of this when discussing games with other gamers. One guy was surprised that I liked the Sims. I thought of it as a funny strategy game. He thought of it as something little girls played, and it took a while for me to convince him that I wasn’t a weirdo. If somebody sees gaming as a hobby for nerdy children, you’re going to have to work to get past the preconceptions.
There does appear to be a definite bias against videogames in some quarters, or at least concern about their impact. Google autocompletes “videogames and” as:
videogames and violence
videogames and children
videogames and depression
videogames and aggression
videogames and youth violence
Actually following the autocompletes turns up a mixed bag, usually with a few articles titled “Do Videogames Cause X” and a few about studies that show or don’t show a link, mostly the latter. It’s tempting to blame media outlets like CNN for reliably asking about the link between videogames and mass murder. You know you’ll see one regularly because of CNN’s US base, and the US has a lot of domestic mass murders, at least in comparison to countries that aren’t having civil wars. These killings are almost always committed by males, males play a lot of videogames, so you see how the dots connect themselves.
It’s not CNN’s fault, though. Americans are genuinely perplexed by mass murder, so they look for whatever’s causing it. CNN tries to answer the question. It’s what they’re supposed to do. It just happens that the question is has already been answered.
I must say that the industry and fan base do not help. The industry screws itself by using stupid, over the top, graphic violence to cynically make a buck off creeps and children attracted by MA+ ratings. Game reviewers who tolerate excesses by developers so long as the game itself isn’t completely broken are part of the problem. And communities that harass women or harbor cranks are their own worst enemies.
It seems to me that video games are regarded as roughly equivalent to watching TV in the hierarchy of hobbies. If you asked someone what their hobby is and they replied “oh, I watch TV,” I think you’d get roughly the same reaction as saying they play video games. Most hobbies have an end result that most people outside of the hobby would generally regard as worthwhile. If you cook, you end up with food to eat. If you exercise or do sports, you improve your health and fitness. If you paint, you end up with finished paintings you can display. On the other hand, when you play games or watch TV, you generally don’t have much to show for your time after the fact. Most skills and knowledge developed by playing games have little application beyond use in other games.
Cinephiles don’t get lumped into the category so much because we generally think of movies as having greater artistic potential. Being able to discuss an actor’s performance or camera work is something that almost everyone can engage with, even without specialized knowledge.
Sports fandom seems to get a pass simply because it’s so widely accepted. Honestly, I can’t give any vaguely objective reason for why watching other people compete and learning a bunch of information about those other people competing should be more highly regarded than learning the arcane minutiae of Diablo. The best I can say is that it’s a tool for face to face social interaction, while games are generally either solitary experiences or online social interaction.
I play a lot of games. I like games, I like talking about games, I have an interest in their craft. But I must admit, when someone asks me about my hobbies I’ll probably focus more anything else I’m doing, even if I spend more time playing games. (Though that’s also because I generally am very unhappy with ‘gamer’ culture and don’t like being associated with most of it.)
As it happens, though, you have chosen in “Watching TV” the single most popular entertainment form in North America, so that’s kind of an easy one to paint as more popular.
But again, people who aren’t into it don’t view it positively. “Couch potato” is not a term of endearment. Hell, I’ll be upfront about it and admit I look down on anyone who watches a steady diet of network TV every night. As Garula points out, watching TV now and then is one thing but if you told someone that was your hobby it’s unlikely that would be viewed positively.
Certainly some hobbies are more popular than others (and I’d question whether something like “going to church” is a hobby at all) but they’re all looked at askance by those who don’t like them.
Late 2013 is a really weird time to complain that video games aren’t well regarded; they’ve never been BETTER regarded, and the trend is clearly going up, not down. In the last few years video games have exploded in popularity to a level of social acceptance never before seen; all things traditionally regarded as “Geeky” have never been cooler.
I’d argue the exact opposite in my case; I play video games with a bunch of friends who are all across the country- it’s the only way we have to really keep in touch.
I think they can be isolating IF… the person in question has lots of opportunities for face-to-face interaction, and they spurn these opportunities in favor of video games. I’m reminded of a few people in college who literally spent every waking minute playing games and didn’t make friends, etc… while living in a co-ed dorm!
However, for people who aren’t in a situation like that, they’re not necessarily isolating, and can even be a great communication and socializing tool.
I personally think a lot of the stigma comes from the fact that a lot of the original coin-op games and consoles were aimed more at children, or at least played more by children than adults. So you get a mentality that looks at video game playing as somehow being akin to playing with toys or dolls or something. I suspect that anime and manga and stuff has much of the same stigma (watching cartoons, after all) compounded by the adult themes, which makes it basically thought of as watching porno cartoons.
Usually all it takes to startle someone about video games is to show them some gameplay or stuff from one of the Total War games- usually the tactical combat and the like really surprises them and makes them realize that it’s not a kid game at all. Stuff like Call of Duty or other First Person Shooters don’t do that so much.
I’m not arguing with you at length, Justin Bailey, or anyone else either. But let me elucidate before I go away:
I am not the only one from my peer group that games, certainly not. But anyone even a couple of years older, doesn’t game. We are basically the oldest generation. I happen to deal with a lot of people who are 5-10 years older than me. For example, NO ONE in my office claims to play video games. When you press them on it:
- One of them plays the Wii only with her children, and so doesn’t count that as gaming.
- One of them doesn’t game at all. Her teenage son games, a little, and she thinks it’s disgusting and a waste of his time. Thing is, it probably is - he could do better. But she extrapolates it to everyone.
- One of them plays only phone or tablet games. She’s young, like 22, so she doesn’t play any shooter games or RPG games, and thus doesn’t think of herself as a gamer.
- One of them I haven’t asked. She never talks about video games. For all I know she plays all the time, because I don’t exactly talk about my gaming, either.
Then there’s family! Both of our families only talk about the horror stories of games. But there’s hope yet - as the next generation grows up they get more into it.
The funny thing is, even casual gamers will swear up and down they don’t game. Like the woman I mentioned, who plays Angry Birds but bristles at being called a “gamer”.
And then there’s the additional stigma that I get and that some other women I’m sure get: that gaming is still primarily a man’s hobby, and as a woman, don’t I have something else to do?
I assure you this is not my imagination, that I’ve been told these things directly to my face. There is a stigma about gaming. In my workplace conversations about American Idol or survivor or whatever show is on are normal, but if I was to try to start a conversation about a game I get blank stares and boredom and sighs. If I ever mention I bought a game (which i rarely do) or that I was playing one, I get the same thing, and sometimes even get asked “You still play video games?”
Anyway. I am bowing out of this thread now. Video game threads never get resolved, they just devolve into silly arguments about who is right and who is wrong. 
That’s because “gamer” implies something more than just playing video games. Is it really necessary to imply that you don’t play video games unless you’re willing to use the title “Gamer”?
Is everyone who watches TV a “Viewer,” and if you don’t watch enough/the right kinds of TV you’re not a “Viewer”?
Anaamika, the reason a lot of your co workers, (whom you’ve implied are mostly women in your list) say they aren’t gamers is because there is this association with someone that defines themselves as a ‘gamer’- pop culture depicts these individuals as overweight guys sitting at home alone with a headset and wrist brace as they play some game marathon 12 hours straight. While this isnt universally true nobody wants to get lumped with the stereotype.
A lot of people will compare gamers with sports fans, but unfortunately the difference is that most mainstream sports (American football, soccer, basketball, baseball,etc) have rules that most people generally know, and teams that a layman can have a vauge idea where they’re located. With video games, you have a very wide variety of genres covered, with vastly different rules. While e-sports are slowly becoming a Thing, I don’t forsee them having the same appeal to the general public as, say, a College Football game. If I told my in-laws “Hey let’s all come to my house while I stream the League of Legends Championships. you bring the nachos, I’ll bring the beer!” They’d probably give me blank stares. But if I invited them to watch a soccer game involving their hometown team (Morelia, I think) they’d be psyched.
This extends beyond video games, too. Dopers mentioned people balking at playing games like Settlers of Catan (admittedly I’ve never played it myself, guess I need to give back my Nerd card 
). Again, its based on whats familiar/what they grew up playing. Maybe a person knows how to play ‘war’ or ‘go fish’ but any card game with any depth beyond that is a little too overwhelming. I’ve played enough CCGs that if someone introduced me to a new one, they could say “Its like Magic the Gathering, except you floop the gizelbrak instead of tapping land” I’d figure it out very easily. But for someone who only played playing card games, games with all sorts of syntax rules might be prohibitively complicated.
I don’t think there’s as much of a stigma associated to video gaming among people who are under, say, 30 or even 40. It’s reasonably mainstream now, although there is a bit of tension between, say, casual gamers versus World of Warcraft gamers versus Civilization/Europa Universalis/Galactic Civilizations/etc. gamers. As some people have mentioned above, I think a lot of the contempt comes from assuming modern games are still equivalent to the clunky, shallow video games of the 80s.
Nevertheless, I do think it’s accurate to say that video games aren’t really the art form that they’d occasionally been hyped up as. I’m open to the idea that they are legitimate art and have more to offer than just the gameplay itself; but for all their promise, we’ve never seen anything quite comparable as art (rather than as a game, or some mixture between the two) to the best movies or literature. And I say that as someone who not only enjoys video games quite a bit, but has actually made a couple of them; and I can think of some legitimate reasons why video games haven’t really taken off as an art form. (Compare them to say, anime, where I could point to some specific titles to show that the genre isn’t merely weird cartoons for kids and immature adults.) As for why video games are badmouthed but, say, watching sports is considered a totally reasonable use of one’s time, I don’t have any better answer than that one is far more mainstream than the other.
Have you played the Bioshock series? They’re arguably the video game equivalent of Citizen Kane and IMHO make one of the strongest cases for video games as a form of visual, interactive literature as opposed to diversions or entertainment. I also consider the Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Deus Ex games to be in that category as well.
I think the standard answer for games as art is Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s a fairly good argument. SotC is an experience as much as a game. Getting lost, looking for specks of light so you can check which direction to go in, killing giants because it gets you to the end of the game despite the fact that something is clearly wrong is, in my opinion, much more effective than it would have been as a movie.
I think the best “games as art” examples tend to blend their mechanics and story. Like Bioshock’s commentary on video games railroading you with objectives with the “would you kindly” thing. (I can leave that unspoilered, right? That has to be close to the “I am your father” of video games by now)
My take on it is that video games are a colossal waste of time. I have kids, and I thought I might be interested in games. When the kids were little, 10 years or so ago, I played against them on GameCube and enjoyed the 10 or 20 minutes or so playing a game.
As games progressed and became more complex on X-Box and PlayStation consoles I completely lost interest. There’s way too much time that needs to be invested in creating characters, and learning basic rules and how to play.
I have zero interest in sitting in front of a game for hours at a time. So, I don’t ever publicly denounce gamers, but to be honest I think it’s a very unproductive way to spend time as an adult. Yes, to each his or her own, but I see nothing redeeming about playing video games.
Sorry, but if Bioshock is gaming’s Citizen Kane, then gaming is doomed as a storytelling medium. ESPECIALLY if you include Bioshock Infinite. The fact that you added on Elder Scrolls isn’t doing much to further your argument either.
Shadow of the Colossus sacrificed being a good game for being ‘art’.
**Leaffan ** I promise that I regard some of your hobbies as a ‘colossal waste of time’ too. That’s what hobbies are for, and should not be a valid argument in this discussion.
I submit that hobbies such as golfing, skiing, skating, etc. are not on even par with playing video games.