A Neanderthal Writes on Gamism

While the rest of the world is concerned with free love, via war, of course, and equality, again, through war and oppression, I find myself more entertained with webcomics and futile observations. Speaking of which, I treat you to something original (and hence, rare for this blog). Anyone who just Google'd "gamism" (like myself) will be presented with a load of bollocks regarding theories about Dungeons & Dragons, or something.

What I speak of is an overlooked prejudice! In a world where everything is politically corrected up the arse, I figured I could have a little fun and write an interesting feature about something that exists mostly in game shops. This prejudice is the prejudice between formats, made public through format wars, but this is always just seen as a battle between 3 electronics companies trying to steal as many sales as possible from each other.

In the past, all "format war" really meant was "do you like Sonic or Mario more?", but today, with the two burying the hatchet and every other console finding more reasons to hate each other more, we society has segmented itself once again. Typically when talking to a Wii owner you'll end up having to talk about trading card games and crayons, but my point is that when you talk to an Xbox 360 owner, he or she will periodically spit like a sick camel every time you mention the word Playstation. Similarly, your average PS3 owner will break one of your bones (usually one in your ear, by arguing you to death) every time you use the word Xbox.

There are also those who own a combination of these 3 consoles, and therefore don't give a crap, and those who have real lives and don't own any of them, and also don't give a crap. Then there are people who figured out they can play games on their PCs, and feel that all games consoles should be wiped off the face of the Earth along with those stupid enough to play them. These people also have MP3 players measured in terabytes, but never leave their homes.

This level of emotion over computer games started a little bell ringing inside my head, which typically went off during A-Level English Literature classes warning me to stop paying attention before I got dragged into a political argument. I found this intriguing, because the only times computer games get involved in political arguments are when someone pissed off Jack Thompson with some good old fashioned violence, gore and pornography; but there was nothing sexy or violent about this thought, for a change.

No, what I'm getting at is the prejudice level of hatred spawned by format wars, which I hereby dub "gamism" (think "racism", and you should be with me). I thought I'd jump on this before it got blown out of proportion and we end up with phrases like "obsessively-inclined" replacing "fanboys", or "vibration-challenged" replacing "dirty PS3 owner". Imagine if the FOX corporation got hold of this information. You'd be hearing stories of people forming gangs because of their chosen console and murdering people they claim "defected".

Format wars are friendly banter between big companies by comparison to the little people fuelling these companies and the war, by choosing one machine over the others and questioning the sexual orientation of anyone who opposes them. I found myself immediately estimating the IQ of people who bought a PS3 when it was launched (and it rarely broke into double figures), although truth be told, I was usually pretty accurate.

But while Microsoft is allowing more and more games flood over the 360, spreading their mediocre-at-best-ness all over the poor thing, Sony has been attracting more and more competitive titles... OK, I'll admit I really mean sod all has been coming out on the 360 recently and Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue just came out. What does this mean for you and me? It means that the hate between different console owners is becoming irrational, and I don't really hate the PS3 anymore (even though I'm still indifferent at best, seeing as I don't give a toss about Metal Gear or Final Fantasy).

As a console gamer myself, I vote we stop beating each other to death with our distinguishing control pads and draw our attention to the PC gamers metaphorically sat at the top of the hill, overlooking our futile struggle to wipe ourselves out. While we hurl insults and injuries at each other, they quietly play their games, occasionally fleshing out their wallets for some new hardware to sustain their disturbing erections. Sure, every once in a while you'll overhear them picking on the runt in the group for not having enough RAM to store the average family's music library, but other than that, they get on fine.

The relationship between different console owners, however, is similar to the relationship between homophobes and homosexuals. One fanboy will call the lifestyle of another fanboy sick and wrong, while the other fanboy will claim the first is ignorant and retarded, as such he'll shove his choice down the throat of anyone he comes across, pissing them off immensely because they didn't have any strong feelings about the argument until they got dragged into it. Then you have people like me, who think the pair of them should learn to play nice or just stay the hell away from each other. Then you get people fanboys who try converting and trust me, you don't want to see the mess that causes. It's a weird and expensive case of ambivalence, and contradiction that usually leads to them talking very fast and inevitably foaming at the mouth. Soon after, they go completely still for a while until a man in overalls picks them up and leaves you with a bill for the repairs.

Standing outside this scenario are people like myself who just want to enjoy or games, and can localise their hatred of crap games to crap games themselves other than just hurling insults blindly in the general direction of the place in whatever shop they bought it from, whitewashing everything else in the vicinity too. Joining me Col. Apathy who couldn't give a damn about games in the slightest, with PC Smug standing to his side giggling at this whole argument, because he made the smart move by choosing an entirely separate format with too many companies involved for there to actually be a format war.

There's no gamism in the PC world, but in a world of PC, gamism will ruin the games industry (see what I did there?). Rupert Murdoch and Jack Thompson will convince our families that we're killing each other in the streets, and some other bright spark will decide to replace our consoles which have been honed to perfection for the last quarter of a century with some crappy freeview box things that we play games on by streaming flash based crap off the internet.

What can be done about it? Well, I don't know, personally I enjoy some good old fanboy baiting, as it makes up the more entertaining portion of my internet time. Maybe join forces with me, Col. Apathy and PC Smug and start hurling insults at all fanboys just for being fanboys so they have something to unite against before they attract too much attention from FOX. Well, maybe not Col. Apathy, he'll be busy painting all his earthly possessions beige. Or you could just walk around you local game shops listening out for fanboy arguments, slapping any of the offenders around the back of the head. This could prove to be a bad idea, as you'd have the police to talk to after not that much time. Better yet, get a big tin of beige paint and join Col. Apathy before you do something really stupid.