The Players We Love to Hate

Illustration by Yinne Smith

We all know the stereotypical gamer, the greasy twenty-year-old living in the basement of his mom’s apartment, snacking on chips as his face is lit up by a bright screen, headset on, yelling about killstreaks and trash-talking his friends. 

I have never known gamers to be anything else – the gamers at my school fit the bill according to the shallow standards I threw them under, and never did I attempt to make friends with any of them. Their talk of “CPUs” and “hypixel graphics” always threw me for a loop. I found myself inching away until I was near enough to the door that I could escape them. 

Of course, my own predisposition against gamers is something that is of my own blame, though I do accuse the media of influencing a lot of young kids (and parents as well) into seeing gamers as their own species different from everyone else. The media portrays gamers as loud, obnoxious, violent, grubby men. Even in movies, gamers are seen as teenage boys who don’t care about school, college kids whose lives are consumed by their addiction to gaming. 

“Gaming is a drug!” they said. “Gaming makes your brain smaller!” they said. That’s all everyone could see, living outside of the little bubble of gaming. We didn’t see the point in immersing ourselves in simulations of violence and greed and gang activity. We didn’t see the value in knowing how to shoot a gun at the press of a button or perfecting the technique for stealing a car in the midst of highway traffic. The media never showed us the positive sides of gaming, and a month ago I wouldn’t have believed that any existed. I wouldn’t have even bothered looking into these addictions, casting the people afflicted with this love for gaming as silly and unbothered and ignorant of the life around them. 

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon the bizarre adventures of a certain Minecraft YouTuber that I began to see the error in my ways. 

Let me introduce you to Dream (alternatively called “Dream Was Taken”). He’s a Minecraft YouTuber (yes, Minecraft, the oddly pixelated game that many thought targeted pre-teen boys coping with a lack of sunlight). I didn’t know why over 8 million people wanted to watch some guy play Minecraft for hours on end. 

Until I did. 

You see, Dream isn’t just a Minecraft player. He’s a tactical genius. He can beat the game whilst three of his friends (who are all professionals in their own right) chase him and try to stop him. I watched one video of his, and then two, and then three, and then I suddenly it was 6 pm and I’d spent the entire day binging his montages and challenges. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about his genius – the manner in which he’d escaped from his friends in the most precarious situations, how on Earth he was able to fight his way through a game in record time, the way his reactions were so fast he’d fall and save himself all while I was sitting there my heart pounding so wildly in my chest that my watch buzzed with a notification for a high rate. 

My immediate reaction was to keep my newfound addiction under wraps. People would think I was weird for wanting to watch Dream play and win in these ridiculous challenges. People would think I’d lost my way. I felt ashamed for feeling a rush of adrenaline as he ran through the trees and as his friends tried boosting each other to catch up. 

It wasn’t until a few days later, when my brain finally caught up with my heart, that I realized why I liked watching his videos so much. I’d fallen in love with his videos because they made me realize that gaming is so much more than just staring at the screen and yelling to people online about your greatness. It’s about friendship, strategy, outsmarting others in times when the odds are against you. I realized that gaming is as much an outlet as writing or art is. So why is it so frowned upon? 

Why do we shame people for enjoying things that make them happy? Why can’t we all just coexist in a world where judgment is behind us and where showing genuine interest in things, whether it’s medicine or gaming or writing, is something to be revered? 

Empathy starts with understanding others outside of our own little bubble. Empathy continues by breaking the notion of stereotypes. Empathy doesn’t end with gamers – it continues into race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality. Subconsciously or not, we all put people into boxes in our minds. It’s time to break free of this. 

Empathy begins now, and it starts with us.