I will keep this as short as possible as I could ramble on for hours and hours.

I had an amusing experience last night, where I misread (quite badly) the reaction I would get from my fiance on a game related topic.

I purchased guitar hero at Christmas and, having completed the game on easy in a couple of hours, have not really touched the game since. Anyway, I had a sudden urge to play it again last night and decided to try a few of the songs on medium. After about 30 minutes of fumbling around with the fourth button, it finally clicked. My brain decided that my little figure could work independently from the rest of my fingers and I was able to play pretty much any of the songs (not well) on medium (I am not good at this game!).

So impressed was I at this new found skill that I took the game into the living room in a slightly over excited manner telling the missis that I wanted to show her something "really cool." I don't know what part of my brain told me that she would want to watch me play bad rock songs on a Tonka toy plastic guitar similar to the one given to her 3 year old brother at Christmas, but alas I hooked up the game, selected a song that I liked and proceeded to play. I played well achieving about 95% on paint it black by "the Rolling Stones". Having finished and feeling pretty good about myself, I turned around to see what I thought would be the face of an impressed fiancé wowed at this amazing feat that I had just accomplished. What I saw was very different.

A work colleague told me a brilliant story about a year ago where he managed to make his (then) girlfriend cry on her birthday. He did so by buying her a £300 hoover and presented it to her in a pink box with a red ribbon. I can only imagine what thoughts she was having as she woke up on the morning of her birthday expecting some romantic gesture or surprise weekend away, only to be confronted with a device for collecting dust.

Anyway, the look that I saw on my fiance's face as I turned round was not one of pride, or pleasure. She was smiling in the way that you smile when presented with a bad finger painting by a six year old. she did not cry exactly, but I could tell that there was definitely a small part of her that wanted to.

The question that I want to ask all of you is:

...will there be a point in the near future when "gaming" will be considered "cool"?

Currently, I do not advertise to my colleagues at work the fact that I spend hours every night shooting guns and running around like a gibbon in a digital world. When courting women (apologies for the 19th century term of reference) I have never mentioned the words Xbox, Halo, Online, Live or Noob at least until the relationship is 3 months old. I recently watched a good friend initially hide his gaming persona and then slowly introduce it to his lady.

In Korea and Japan gamers are famous like TV, sports and movie stars. This is not the case here in Europe or over in the US. Us gamers are still seen as either 8-12 year olds who can't play sports, or unfit, dorito eating 18-30 year olds sitting in a dark room with greasy hair and a $4,000 PC.

I do not think that this stereotype fits anymore. The introduction of "online gaming", I believe, has widened the pool of prospective gamers to include a very large number of men between the ages of 18 and 30 (I'm 28). I'm not saying that there is a high percentage of that age group (and gender) regularly playing, but I do believe that the vast majority would play, if the consoles were marketed better and people realised what Xbox Live and PSN actually are.

It is my belief that gaming will continue to grow and attract an ever increasing number of older players and at some point in the next ten years it will not be unusual or socially unacceptable to play games with your friends online.

I do not think however, that gaming will ever be "cool".

I throw the gauntlet of debate down to anyone who can come up with an argument to contrary...

well you clearly went to the wrong person with that. What I mean is that if your not a person who at least likes to game your not going to think its "cool". You went to the "wife" and I know one of the last people you could have showed it to (unless she was a gamer herself) would be her. Its like women and I don't know football, you can try and explain it to them but that really doesn't interest them so they won't bother learning it, and there for getting interested in it.

While if she came up to you with, I don't know a manicure you would either have the balls and say you don't give two s***s or you would seem interested. But in truth that does not mean anything to you.

SO what I'm trying to say is if you know they don't care then don't bring it up to them. Unless they try learning about it first. (ex if she asked you how to play, to spend some time together,)

well i didnt read it all as its way too long for this time in the morning, i will go back and read it fully some day.

In terms of the question "is gaming cool" it depends on your social group. In my group of friends, 75% of our lives are governed by games. We do a Computer Games Design Course, we all have next gen consoles and higher spec pc's, and we love playing games, they even have become part of our home drinking rituals. we play King of beers and so on, then on to guitar hero, or mario kart double dash, or soul calibur. If its multiplayer, we will play it drunk.

Then ofcourse we like discussing games, we see games differently, seen as though we are being trained to make em, so we see games in terms of their design, programming, models, ai blah blah like alot of people do now. We live breath and eat games...its not as sad as it sounds, as we are usually down the pub when we talk about it :P anywho, wrapping this whole thing up. Gaming is cool for me, as ALL my friends are hardcore gamers like me.

I would say its going to be "cool" eventually (but then again, what is "cool?")

It seems that once someone has been been bitten by the Gaming bug, it stays with them, thats why the demographic is always increasing.

Me and my friends are all gamers and have been for most of our lives. We are now in our late 20's/early 30's with a wide variety of jobs (a couple of solicitors/DR's/business) and we are still going to play as we get older. I'm sure that as we have kids, we'll encourage them to pick up a pad and they'll be hooked in turn.

I dont know about "cooler", but the more people that get into it, the more mainstream it will become, which is already becoming much more visible.

You really shouldnt have posted this on this forum, this is sarcasticgamer obviously most of the people will like think that gaming will be cool.

of course gaming will be cool, but it will probably be in a hundred years when were all dead, so it doen't really matter. Doesn't stop me from playing halo.

Where I live, gaming already is cool. GA's ahead of the game (for once)

Where I live, gaming already is cool. GA's ahead of the game (for once)

GA as in Georgia? I'm actually posting this at school during break, and I'm looking back over my shoulder to make sure no one is staring at me. I hope such Gaming steriotypes are erased, because most of us aren't like that.

will your mom ever be considered cool?

Spam. Sigh.
In the Silicon Valley, where I live, gaming is cool.

will your mom ever be considered cool?

dude, you need to leave.

GA as in Georgia? I'm actually posting this at school during break, and I'm looking back over my shoulder to make sure no one is staring at me. I hope such Gaming steriotypes are erased, because most of us aren't like that.

Wow, I'm posting this during the school break also! Creepy, wait, are you the weird guy that lives under the couch? I live just a little while away from Atlanta in Rockdale.

eventually it will be accepted, but not for a looong time...

*sigh*

meh in my group pretty much everyone has a next gen console or some gaming device so yeh it kinda is

well that depends where you live because where I live(puerto rico)gaming is not that popular unless you are talking about games like grand theft auto an games like that,for other kinds of games they don't sell well with older people.

Personally I don't care if gaming is ever cool. As long as the media stops blaming games on everything wrong with the world, I'll be happy.

I hope so.

I live in a near back woods area so Im sorta in the same boat( I say sorta because the local hobby store had a Halo 3 torny last week.. 3 people arrived... my self included.) but I never had to hide my hobby from other people.

Gaming (if Jack/Hillary don't ban it.) will rise to more mainstream in about 20-30 years when the "back in my day" generation die off (no offence Dad.) simply because of the casual gaming/Wii market. True hardcore gamers will still be nerds by most stand points.

me and my group of friends had a nice 3 day lan party this weekend, was proper good. UT3, CoD4, CS:S, CnC 3 and lots of peggle! :P as well as movies and the sort. Had 8 High spec top of the range PC's in one room, was pretty awesome, but i feel sorry for the guy who has to pay the electric bill, but we all chipped in a bit to pay for it :P hope to be doing another soonish :D so yeh, most of my mates are gaming fanatics

accepted where I live. Almost everyone likes some form of gaming at my school. Hell, even the jocks talk like complete nerdy idiots about Halo and even WoW!

I'm a geek, and as such hang around with other geeks. All (well, most) of my friends are gamers, and consider it to be "cool". For my future career, I plan to go into Programming for either software or games, so this will likely never be a problem for me.

For the record, I think that it's going to stay the same as it is now, although Nintendo seems to be improving the situation...;)

maybe gaming will become really cool when they make virtual reality games,that be awesome.

can't wait to play Halo 8 in VR! :)

I think that someday gaming will be cool, however it may not be gaming as we know it today. As the oportunities for local and online multiplayer increase we will most likely see more and more social games.

There will always be those of us in the underground. The obbsesive gamers who just plain love it.

As for the whole "coolness" factor involving gamers. I think the greatest thing you can do is just not be to frontal about it. I have friends who like games and friends who don't. I only talk about games to those who really care. Regarding girls (I dont say women as Im not 28 or whatever) the safest rule is to hide the gaming habit. If girls bring it up then thats one thing, but otherwise in front of girls I play the guitar and nothing more. ;)

The most amazing thing I find is the way gaming culture is affecting actual culture. I have actually heard normal people use words like Pwned or newb. (I myself do not.)

can't wait to play Halo 8 in VR! :)

So long as when you get shot you don't 'feel it' cause if that's the case headshots would freaking hurt

So long as when you get shot you don't 'feel it' cause if that's the case headshots would freaking hurt

Hurt? a head shot would kill you, they should have like a ruble pack in the major parts. You get shot, that place vibrates and you can tell which direction you were shot from. Imagine how much fun an fps would be, especially online.

Gaming is becoming cool, playing games like Halo 3 and COD 4 are now being accepted.

Here where I live gaming is accepted and seen alot (even in the schools). Seriously I have seen alot of people in my School bring in there PSPs, DSs, and Jailbroken iPod and iPhones with emulators on them. I have heard peole talking about games. My school even has a strategy club (all we do is play card games, board games, table top games and videogames). So in my area gaming is pretty well received

In my opinion the games considered so cool.

Games already are cool. College students LOVE guitar hero. Anyone I know at school has either heard of, played or owns it. If you say to some one "hey, come over to my joint after school and we will play halo" they will be there. Gaming is cool, well, mainstream games anyway. Games that everybody knows. like Guitar hero, Halo, GTA and to a certain extent Resistance.

I'd get pretty embarassed if most of my friends knew i play WoW or other stereotypically 'geeky' games.

Hurt? a head shot would kill you, they should have like a ruble pack in the major parts. You get shot, that place vibrates and you can tell which direction you were shot from. Imagine how much fun an fps would be, especially online.

It would certainly attract more female players. :D

And ppl would move from Headshots to Crotchshots? :P

Yeah I think the Wii is already "cool", at least, cooler than the traditional consoles.

I know a few girls who you would never think would so much as have a gameboy and yet they love their Wii so it is definitely making games more accepted whether we like it or not.

I do not think gaming is cool now if you go to the average person and say that you play video games chances are they will make fun of you. But who cares really i do it because i love and and i don't care what other people think about me

Gaming is becoming cool, playing games like Halo 3 and COD 4 are now being accepted.

like I said,games that involve killing or extreme violence are the videogames being accepted,strategi or adventure games are considered to be lame where I live.

Well ALOT of people play GH in my area......there are alot of Xbox fanboys though. Gaming is getting "cooler" then it was back in the 90's and early 2000's. Games like Madden, GH, GTA, and Halo are really huge for pushing video games into the mainstream.....even Mario helps (name one person you know who hasn't played Mario).

(name one person you know who hasn't played Mario).

yeah,I have an aunt that was a pretty big fan of mario games for the nes and Snes.

I live in NC. Almost everyone at my school games. Whether it be GH, Rock Band, Wii Sports, Mario, Halo, Metal Gear or whatever else. Maybe were just a cool school. No one really hates on each other.

It might be a while before people actually realize how cool video games are. I mean at the current time we are surrounded with too many ignorant boobs who are just as obsessed about sports in RL as we are with video games if not more. Yet they are the ones percieved as "Way to go trooper" while we are percieved as "Get off your lazy ass and do something!".

As soon as these ignorant people wake up and realize that video gaming is actually what is advancing technology (Other than RL war) then it will become more feasible. However, with news companies libeling or slandering video games as much as they possibly can this will put things further behind and cause a longer wait for Gamer Coolness.

If you want to know the logic behind "Gaming is actually wha is advancing technology" then let me explain.

If it weren't for video games, processors on computers probably would be much less powerful than they are now. How so? Well w/o video games' demand for power that is used to create ultra-realistic scenery *cough* CRYSIS! *cough*. There wouldn't be as much of an incentive to research and fund better processors. To go more in depth:

Video cards wouldn't be sold for such high prices without video games. I mean it is basically only the Hard Core gamer that goes Dual 8800 ultra overclocked GPU's. The high prices give money to video card developers. This money is spent on research and developement of a newer GPU, and so we have a cycle here. The Gamers are basically the people who invest in the future of technology through buying overly priced silicon.

With those advancements in GPU/CPU technology people like scientists can buy their supercomputers with processing power coming out the ass so they can make their scientific discoveries. With those discoveries made humankind as a whole progresses. All thanks to those hardcore gamers who spend their money on overly priced silicon.... which in the end is worth it.

So yeah... things like genetic egineering of the human genome that can come sooner because you decided to get that quad-sli setup.

I will post a picture format soon for the people who need to look at a picture to grasp the idea (or so that you can understand what I am saying at all because I tend to word things weirdly). Click on this paragraph to see my diagram. (http://www.sarcasticgamer.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=93&stc=1&d=1203564965)

This applies to just about ANY computer component, not just Video Cards.

I live in NC. Almost everyone at my school games. Whether it be GH, Rock Band, Wii Sports, Mario, Halo, Metal Gear or whatever else. Maybe were just a cool school. No one really hates on each other.

Do you go to a private school by any chance?

I live in NC. Almost everyone at my school games. Whether it be GH, Rock Band, Wii Sports, Mario, Halo, Metal Gear or whatever else. Maybe were just a cool school. No one really hates on each other.

Me too. Yes, Spudnik. Private school.

A quick update...

I just came home from work to find my girlfriend stood in front of the TV playing... Guitar Hero...

Maybe there is hope...

I go to a private middle school in GA and almost everyone plays games. Even the hot girls play video games. My old girlfriend got me Madden 08 for Valentine's (I got her Oblivion) So I'd say yeah, gaming is cool already here.

Me too. Yes, Spudnik. Private school.

I go to a private school, and some people hate on each other a lot. And a lot of bragging. Nothing physical, though.

well you clearly went to the wrong person with that. What I mean is that if your not a person who at least likes to game your not going to think its "cool". You went to the "wife" and I know one of the last people you could have showed it to (unless she was a gamer herself) would be her. Its like women and I don't know football, you can try and explain it to them but that really doesn't interest them so they won't bother learning it, and there for getting interested in it.


I just want to stand up for the ladies here.

To start off, I love gaming and football.
I've met people of both sexes that don't understand my fascination with gaming. My best girl friends don't understand why I enjoy LANing up with the boys for a little bit of CSS. And I've been made fun of by both genders alike for being addicted to Evercrack. So will gaming ever be cool? Who cares, let's be elitists. LMAO

I go to a private school, and some people hate on each other a lot. And a lot of bragging. Nothing physical, though.

I get hated for my job. I have kicked almost everyone of my classmates out at least once. Exaggeration? Tiny. Every under-age member of the football team? Yes. The entire under-age half was pissed at me for...What month is? Seriously, some people can't give up on grudges.

that is the day ill wear a sarcastic gamer t-shirt in public, dont get me wrong, i love this site and everyone involved, but people at my school might look at me wierd, mabey ill wear it to the gym or something, id probaly buy one to support u guys anyway

Ah lucky Private kids. My school currently has more than 1000 students for three grades. My entire eigth grade class has about 310 kids in it. can you say cliques?

I'm in a private school that happens to have 430 kids in our 7th grade class. Our school is upwards of 800 kids in the middle school alone. Can you say serious cliques and almost no rules? We had an entire day-long-fight about GT vs Georgia State and none of the teachers cared. Seriously, we were decking each other all day long and our nurse got seriously pissed, but no one got in trouble. And Georia won. YEAH!

Wow I assumed that since you were in Private school your classes were smaller than mine. (that has been the cases with every otehr private schooled kid I have met). Your school sounds like a lot of fun though. Mine takes their inspiration from George Orwell. Can you say thought police?

i think it geting cool right now with games like halo and madden

Dude, GTA and Manhunt MADE gaming cool and more hip to impressionable and clique forming youngsters!

So gaming is ALREADY kewl!

who are you kidding if halo can have it s own mountain dew gameing is already cool . some people just dont know it yet

I'm 15 and most Asian girls in my school game. Even though they only play games like Maple Story, I don't think they will mind having a gamer as a boyfriend (Haven't been confirmed yet, T-T... WHY CANT THE ASIANS AT OUR SCHOOL BE PRETTIER!!!! >.<)

Warning: Some people may find this post offensive. If you're easily offended, skip this post.



Videogames are cool, and will be cooler once the older generation (50's and older) pass away, and younger people grow up and get into positions of power. Once everybody can openly admit to playing videogames (as is the case with movies,) we'll see a massive shift.

WTF, gamers are not cool.... why didn't some one tell me.
man now i need to get a life as well, this sux.

I can walk up to most people in my school and start talking about COD4, and they'll know what I'm talking about and actually continue the conversation. I think that I've reached that point.

As long as i get the games i want and the people to play them with im fine.

I'm of the firm belief that anyone or anything that requires other people to call something "cool" to be considered cool is in fact not cool.

Warning: Some people may find this post offensive. If you're easily offended, skip this post.



Videogames are cool, and will be cooler once the older generation (50's and older) pass away, and younger people grow up and get into positions of power. Once everybody can openly admit to playing videogames (as is the case with movies,) we'll see a massive shift.

Dude, while i agree with the spirit of your post, i think as our generation 'grows up' we're going to find other things to get pissed off with with our own offspring.. and vice versa..... Each generation had a set of things that they found socially acceptable and condoned.

Our parents came from the era of 60s and 70s, sex, drugs and rock and roll, but funnily enough they are considered more taboo now than it has ever been before. Our grannies and grandpas blamed those things on the upsurge of violence and moral decadence; the parallel to that now is video games being lamblasted here and there...

So vid games may become kewl , but to our children they'd be considered lame because their moldy old parents enjoy 'em....

Huhuhuhu... talk about the generation gap.

^^ ^^

So true it sorta bums me out :(

one day it will when gamers are gods helping the robots/aliens run the world...(yeah like that'll ever happen) w00t 200 posts holy crap thats like 55 posts today...thats what you get when your internet is slow.you have a crap pc (not for long xD) and you have a day off school oh and when its 45 degrees celcius outside (yeah right like i'd go outside any way)

i think gaming is considered cool. al of my friends like to hang out and game all the time.

Yeah, I was under the assumption that gaming was cool; pretty much every high schooler in Carmel has some sort of gaming system. If you don't you're weird because at least 95% of people here are well-off financially. Most of the people I know either have Halo 3 or CoD 4 and play them often.

I always thought it would eventually be cool and I think it is pretty close now. There are now several shows and movies where people are playing games.

I must say that King of Kong does nothing to help dispel the notion that gamers are dorks though. I think the movie set us back a few years.