The other night, I was watching the Food Network’s reality show, "The Next Food Network Star." The premise is to give a selected group of contestants a shot at their own TV show. The people go through a series of challenges having to do with cooking, presentation, stage personality and other things.
On one of the shows, a contestant cooked up a "sloppy Joe," which is basically minced hamburger meat with lots of BBQ sauce. Fair enough. Martha Stewart was the invited guest and sampled all of the contestant’s food. When she came to check out the sloppy Joe offering, she turned up her nose at it, grimaced, looked horrified and said, "Well, I don’t really eat THAT sort of food very often."
In a nutshell, she showed herself as a first-rate food snob. The food was beneath her to eat. She was too good for it. So what the heck does this have to do with gaming? Well, there seems to be a situation where some gamers are becoming snobs too…gaming snobs, if you will.
Gaming snobs refer to games or game platforms that don’t meet with their approval or taste with condescension and a haughty demeanor. "Well, I don’t play THAT console very often," as if to announce to the world, "I am a GAMER. That (console, game) isn’t a REAL (console, game) and anybody who plays or enjoys that (console, game) is obviously not in the same league as moi."
There is a difference, however, between not liking a game or console and being a game snob. We all have certain games or game platforms that we don’t like. This is personal preference and opinion. But when you add the element of looking down on others who enjoy a game or console you don’t consider "real gaming," which subconsciously lifts yourself up as being superior, congratulations, you have just become a gaming snob.
Of course, there is always going to be a certain amount of fanboyism about games and game platforms and this sort of thing is expected. People root for their hometown sports teams, so fanboyism is just a normal result of being a fan of your favorite system. But game snobbery goes a notch or two higher. Game snobs look at people who play "weak" consoles or video games as "losers" and not "real" gamers.
Nintendo’s Wii and casual gamers seem to draw the most amount of game hate from the game snobs. "Man, it’s just a kid’s machine." "I wouldn’t be caught dead playing that game." "There isn’t a decent shooter on it. Why bother?" Comments such as these can be heard everyday and the funny thing is, the people who say these things don’t even know that they are game snobs.
If people are having a good time playing their particular game machine or game, so be it. We can disagree on what is good or bad, but assuming a superior attitude over those that are playing something that doesn’t meet with our "approval" is just plain idiocy.
The whole idea of gaming is to have fun, take on challenges, explore new worlds, and even meet new people. Game snobs need to get a life instead of criticizing those who are having a perfectly good time with their gaming platform or game of choice.
