GAMING CULTURE

The Gaming Recluse is Dead

Retiring a vapid stereotype

While researching a feature of a new survival game, Grounded’s “Arachnophobia Mode”, which offers players spider-free gameplay, I came across the following paragraph on The Gamer:

Obsidian knows that arachnophobia is a fairly common fear among the pampered masses of gamers that rarely leave their bedroom for anything more than food and the occasional social interaction with another human being, so they had to come up with something that would allow people who are deathly afraid of spiders to play Grounded without urinating themselves on their first night.

If I could roll my eyes and gouge them out at the same time, I would.

The pampered masses? Give me a break. This narrative of gamers being this gnarled amalgamation of B.O. and Cheeto dust living in some kind of nerdy hermitage in their parents’ spare bedroom is overdone.

It’s trite. It’s boring. It isn’t even accurate anymore. Let it die, folks.

I get it — it’s a harmless joke! Ha ha, you made the funny. I would laugh harder, but I just remembered it’s no longer 2006, which happens to be when this joke peaked (courtesy of South Park’s timeless Make Love, Not Warcraft episode).