21st Century Gamers Are New And Improved

 Professional gaming or E-Sports as it is called is a very rapid growing culture that is turning the heads of many people.  E-Sports has gotten to be so huge so quickly that everyone is learning what it is all about as it happens.  The last world championships for a game called League Of Legends was held in Korea.  "During the final showdown between Samsung White and Royal Club, the peak concurrent viewers (the highest number of fans watching at once) were 11.2 million." ( http://www.riotgames.com/articles/20141201/1628/worlds-2014-numbers ). 11.2 million people sitting around to watch 10 guys play the same game that they love to play. This year, in about 3 weeks there will be the League of Legends world finals.  It is going to be held in Berlin, Germany.   Somewhere in this whole growing phenomenon and since the start of video games there has always been people being discriminatory about gamers and they have also made stereotypes about gamers. That is what this blog will be about: Debunking myths about gamers and more specifically professional gamers.  I will be talking about Stereotypes/ Archetypes of gamers, how professional gamers challenge that archetypes and lastly about the conscious mind of professional gamers.

Faze Censor
(Call of Duty Competitive Player)

South Park Interpretation of a gamer

     What stereotypes do you think of when you think of a gamer? Someone who looks like this? (Image to the left) Or someone who looks likes this? (Image to the right.) To the left is a picture of a south park episode where very clearly their were making fun of gamers and their  stereotypes. But to the right is Call of Duty Pro Player Faze Censor. Clearly as you can see he breaks a lot of the stereotypes of gamers.  Some stereotypes are fat, lazy, and antisocial. Also, society labels them names like nerd, loser and other derogatory terms, even when half of these stereotypes are not even true. Another Example of professional gamers who do not fit the archetypes is League of Legend's Team, Solo Mid (pictured below), arguably the best team in North America.  No one on this team represents any of those stereotypes society gives gamers.

Team SoloMid ( League Of Legends Team)

     My next point is how professional gamers are challenging the archetypes such as lazy, nerds and antisocial.  Gamers get this stereotype from people who think gamers just sit in their room and do nothing. But for professional gamers it is their job to play the game they love and they work long hours either practicing or watching their previous games and trying to improve. An example of this is written in an article by ESPN saying, "Think professional video game players put in 9 to 5 hours like everyone else?

Surprisingly, they do, only difference is, with Major League Gaming stars like Mike "Hastr0" Rufail and Mason "Neighbor" Cobb, the 9 to 5 they're used to is more like 9 pm to 5 am."(http://espn.go.com/espn/thelife/videogames
/blog/_/name/thegamer/id/7420111).  Another crazy stereotype for gamers are the label nerds. According to the Oxford dictionary, the term nerd is defined as: A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious.(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nerd) This is crazy to me,  just because someone plays video games does not make him or her smart or foolish.  More specifically from the five guys in the picture above only ONE of them has completed high school.  The rest dropped out at a young age to pursue gaming as their career. Lastly, I will debunk the myth that gamers are antisocial. For example, a report from Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, states that "27 million people play the game daily." With 27 million people playing the game daily and with teams of five it is almost impossible to play without talking to someone.  This article talks about how gamers are very sociable.  These are just a couple myths about gamers that are not true.  After in depth analysis of over 400 gamers, Dr. Nick Taylor says, "Gamers aren't the antisocial basement-dwellers we see in pop culture stereotypes; they're highly social people," 
(http://www.cnet.com/news/study-finds-online-gamers-arent-anti-social-basement-dwellers/)

Samsung White (2014 World Champions)

     Lastly, I will talk about the conscious mind of gamers.  Professional gamers think about themselves as role models, the best at their game. Also, some pro players think of themselves as athletes.  Are Professional gamers athletes? It's a great question.  The definition of athlete is "a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill."  Professional gamers are definitely gifted at a certain exercise; they train for the game 6-7 days a week.  The definition can almost work but the word physical is the word that doesn't work. Do the Players of Samsung White the world champions for the game League of Legends think they are athletes? Click here to watch a video about what they think. Does that change your mind?  It is a very interesting to think that 4 of the 5 players on the world championship winning team think they are athletes.

League of Legends Logo

Gaming has changed a lot in the last few years and so gamers have changed too. We do not fall under the stereotypes that we used to. Now gamers are challenging archetypes to not get discriminated against because we play games. Even now some gamers think they are athletes and I think they possibly just could be. What about you?