Scopique User Info

July 15, 2009 11:14:43 AM

My DS lives right next to my iPhone,so I can grab both if I expect to be waiting anywhere for a while (the hospital, Macy's, etc). My problem is that I don't have enough pockets.

April 27, 2009 2:29:14 PM

@chrisfurniss:

"We sift through the crap and tell people what's good."

Unfortunately, what you'd consider good is not necessarily what _I_ consider good. That is actually a kind of "sub-conflict" within the elitist cadre: they can start internal battles fueled by their own sense of superior knowledge. It's not just turned outwards to those not in their group, but also against one another.

My pet peeve is when you see people posting in forums that "this game sucks", but the game does not, in fact, "suck" (you can't put an absolute on an opinion...including this exmaple :D ). It's just that the game didn't fit the bill for what that user was looking for, and their elitist mindset doesn't allow them to admit that they made a bad gaming decision. They're taking their aggro out on OTHER gamers by trying to sound like they're "above" the game. They want to polarize in order to get people to support them or fight them...and a troll is born :D

April 27, 2009 9:02:34 AM

Unfortunately, this trend extends further back then video games can remember: Art, books, music, movies, and even TV. You can usually see it in music, when the fans of indie acts parade around their original dedication to the act once the act hits the mainstream.

I think that simply assuming that the hardcore crowd want's to exclude newcomers is the easy and most obvious answer. Really, if some Bejewled player started sucking up to one of these hardcore gamers, that hardcore gamer would quickly change his tune. What all of these elitist fans want is recognition and admmiration for their dedication to the mileau BEFORE it was mainstream.

The example of the popular kids in high-school is true. Those kids were popular, so the gamer kids worked their asses off to learn the minutea of the games they played. They put in the leg-work to form their OWN clique with it's OWN heirarchies of respect (since they weren't getting it from the popular kids). It really has nothing to do with GAMING per se; it's the notion that a marginalized group has created their own "society" that they now feel is being assaulted by the demographic that they had originally been excldued from. If they were given the respect as the "gatekeepers" instead of being FURTHER marginalized (as they feel they are, with the rise of casual-focus games which cater to this influx), then they'd probably calm down.

But some people ARE really just assholes. There's nothing we can do with those kinds of people :D

October 28, 2008 12:39:26 PM

Personally, I believe that the only "hardcore gamers" out there are those who DON'T discriminate. They'll play console, PC or handheld, World of Warcraft or Bejewled. Great article!