I'm pretty sure that everyone knows one or two of these people. “That Gamer” is the person to me, that makes me feel a little uncomfortable about saying that I play games out loud to other people. The person that makes me feel like I shouldn't belong in the same group of people as they do, even though I do. Finding out that I have the same gaming interest as “That Gamer” makes me kind of sick to my stomach. “That Gamer” is loud, unashamed, brash, somewhat vulgar, fanboyish, and at times way more than annoying. “That Gamer” is the person that gets way too excited at work when they pass by your desk and see that you are playing some random emulator on your company computer. “That Gamer” then goes down the hall expressing how cool it is that you have a SNES on your computer and then gets you in trouble for wasting company time. “That Gamer” also finds out that you have a 360 and immediately says, “Do you play Call of Duty? Dude, I swear that's the best game ever. I play ALL THE TIME!” Then goes on a thirty minute rant about how “broken” the game is and how not fun it is (But you play ALL THE TIME), out loud in their outside voice, while inside. “That Gamer” is the person who knows everything about every game that you mention, but at the same time somehow doesn't know anything about those games. “That Gamer” is incapable of expressing themselves in any other form other than bad game analogies and anecdotes.

I strongly dislike this person. They make work annoying, they make social situations annoying, they make a lot of things annoying. And yet somehow I always find myself knowing this person. In particular, I have a co-worker who is “That Gamer”. He is always talking about the games he plays, and when I bring up games that I am pretty sure he hasn't heard of he somehow comes up with some kind of way to relate to it. “Oh yeah, I played the hell out of Chrono Trigger, man when I was like 6 I played it all the time.” So then I asked him what he did differently the second time he played it and he goes, “No I only played it once cause I ended up not liking it half way through” (If you've ever played through Chrono Trigger, you know for sure about the new game plus of sorts that was available, but since he didn't really play through it he didn't know). Yeah, he probably wanted me to think he was cool and all, but really I don't care if you didn't know what I was talking about. This same guy also always relates something to Call of Duty. I often over hear conversations with customers about “Destroying noobs who use the noob tube in CODBLOPS” (Using his words). -___-

That basically irritates me. I guess I sympathize with this person. For me, a large part of the adult world looks down on gaming, or dismisses it as some kind of childish pass time, or weird hobby. So, these people are ridiculed and shunned and they are clueless to this. Then I came to the realization that I am probably someone's version of “That Gamer”. The gamer that is kind of ashamed of gaming and hides their love for gaming for fear of ridicule. Well that just sucks. I don't want to be “That Gamer” for anyone.