An Evolving Perspective

The depiction of the stereotypical gamer is very interesting and I think a potent question as put forward in the lecture is how this perception and representation has evolved over time. I was considering how this was proposed in the lecture on Wednesday, as examples of the white, anti-social, relatively fat and male was pictured, and how the media, moreover films, reinforce this mindset. Kevin mentioned that they are typically negatively portrayed because of the financial competition that they offer, but I believe this stereotype has changed; the gamer is represented as being proportionally more intelligent and even cooler than the average Joe and even Government intelligent agencies. An example of this is in Transformers where Maggie, one of the signal analysts positions that there is only one man that could crack this code… and it is none other than an overweight black gamer who lives with his mother, and can inevitably crack the highly sophisticated alien technology. While playing on some of the same stereotypical features, a few implications have evolved. Similarly on the ridiculously over the top Snakes on a Plane, the concept of games having the ability to train players to do certain things is reiterated, as we saw in XXX, with the very cool gamer Vin Diesel. In this movie, the only one able to land the plane after the pilot dies, and do so safely was a large black teenager because of his many hours of ‘training’ in video games. However, as certain sterotypes have progressed, the issue of gender is still never really touched on, but I predict that in the future, with perspectives evolving as they are, gamers may one day be represented as cool highly intelligent females, as I am sure there are many of them out there.