Wednesday Knights Blog

The more I think about the stupid statements made on McCain’s blog, the more upset I get. However, I am not sure who I should be mad at. Sure, McCain’s campaign made a ridiculously stupid comment that appears to have been intended as a demeaning insult. As far as I am concerned, there is simply no excuse for the statement.

However, I wonder if we in the gaming community don’t bear some responsibility for fact that the popular notion in our society is that we live in our parent’s basement. Sure, we hear people make comments about this, but how often do we do something about it? How often do we correct other’s completely wrong impressions?

The main problem with the parent’s basement stereotype is because it is so wrong. I just got back from GenCon (which is a huge gaming convention). In addition to all of the great fun that I had and the great products that I saw, I also saw something else: the most diverse group of people that I have seen assembled. Rather than some pimply-faced teenager from his parent’s basement, the people I saw at GenCon included:

• Men and Women
• Children, Teens, Adults, and Seniors
• Short people and tall people
• Skinny people and fat people
• A large variety of races and cultures
• Christians, Atheists,  Agnostics, Pagans, and others
• Heterosexuals and Homosexuals
• Income levels from poverty level to well into six figures
• Educations from high school through graduate and professional degrees
• Occupations from fast food server through attorney, computer programmer, and physicist
• Liberals, conservatives, socialists, and apolitical people
• Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians
• People with physical disabilities, including amputees, and quadriplegics
• Extremely creative, fun, witty, smart people
• People from all over the country

For example, I played a game at GenCon, whose players included a lawyer, a physicist (who got bored working at FermiLab and switched to another type of physics), two teenagers, and  two other adults in their 50s whose occupation I have no idea about. Significantly, no one was treated differently because they were young or old, or fat or skinny, or anything else. Instead, we all worked together to play a great game.

Similarly, while wondering through the dealer’s room, I watched a quadriplegic playing a demo game. The man maneuvered his wheelchair by blowing through a tube. Obviously he could not draw cards or move counters on his own. However, other players were happily assisting him in playing the game.

Quite simply, from my experience, gamers are the most ecletic and egalitarian group of people that you will encounter

This is something that we need to remember and to point out to others when they want to stereotype us all as basement dwellers. We have a great hobby. It would be nice if others outside the hobby knew that.