Stay a while and listen, GU reader. I have a story to tell; a story of all things wrong with the current state of the gaming community.

Last summer (2011, for those who neglect to take down that ‘Cuddly Cute Critters calender from 2003) , a few friends and I went on an outing to the local mall. I recall it to be a very nice day, one you wouldn’t want to waste cooped up inside a house. Why we wanted to be cooped up in a larger indoor setting, I have no idea. Though, in the event of a zombie apocalypse our odds of survival would be that of the average Left 4 Dead party; only long enough to watch one of us incinerate the entire group with a Molotov tossing that was only ‘slightly off’. The girls went off to fulfill their sterotype to letter and ran to a shoe store while the other Y chromosome carrier, Justin, and I pranced  to GameStop, skipping like we were giving the girls a helping hand in areas they forgot to cover. We held hands and everything; it was magical.

Inside Game Stop I saw a preorder rack for The Elder’s Scroll V: Skyrim. I let out a giddy little yip. By this time you must think I’m gay or a Hobbit, and with me being 6 foot 3 the latter is out of the question. We paid our respects and bowed down to the burly, Nordic Dragonborn on the poster to assure our faith in the Nine Devine so they may bless us with bountiful loot and the most volumptious wentches when we make our arrival to Skyrim upon release that coming November. That’s when IT came around. He who crawls around the world wide web seeking vulnerable, fun loving communities to plague with his spiteful, forked tongue. That thing that calls you a ‘gaywad’ when you kick his ass online. The insufferable fool who waves his fanboy flag proudly for his favorite brand for a corperation who doesn’t awknowledge his blind loyalty.

For now, we’ll just call him a troll for lack of a better discription. Now, I’ve never encountered a ‘troll’ in the real world before. At the moment, I thought he was just another guy browsing through games when he saw curious scene of two guys bowing down to a video game (okay, listen: everyone is guilty of over hyping Skyrim). It wasn’t only until he opened his mouth that I saw him for what he really was.

“What you guys doin’ here?” He asked curiously.
We got up from the floor a bit embarrassed and told him, “Nothing really, paying our respects to Skyrim.” He jerked his thumb at the Dovahkin and scoffed. I clenched my jaw and grind my teeth to dental mush. He blinked and babbled on.
“You guys got that um…that um…Kinect Box-”
“You mean the XBox 360?” I interjected.
“Uh yeah right.” He continued to stare at me, derped faced.
“Nah, we have a PlayStation 3.” Justin answered.

Then I saw it; the devilish gleam in his eyes when he heard the words ‘Playstation’. “Don’t you do it”, I pleaded in my head, “don’t you start-”
“Aww man, ya’ll made the wrong choice. Ya’ll need to get on board with that ‘XBox’.”
“Not if hell froze over.” Justin gallantly stood his politcal ground. He’s a bit prone to the fanboy caged in side him when the little dude is agitated.
“You’re going to eat them words bro,” the troll chuckled, “The Playstation is losing man. Won’t be long before it’s gone. All the game companys are getting with Microgate.”

That’s when we decided it was time to leave GameStop.

Let’s take a moment to assess my scarring encounter with this moron of the third kind.

  1. He had a stupid face. Unfair judgement? Yep, and I’m not taking it back.
  2. He didn’t know the console he was going to sell us like a Jehovah Witness with his bible armed and ready to spread the good faith.
  3. Microgate? There is no way to describe the the sheer look of pain and confusion on my face when I heard this. Seriously, say it to yourself out loud: Microgate. After a day of catatonia, I realized the guy must have mixed up ‘Microsoft’ and ‘Bill Gates’, giving us ‘Microgate’.

Before Mr.Microgate, I thought people like him only exist on the internet. I also thought that the only people interested in a console war were snotty teens and children whose parents have neglected to read the rating ‘M’ label on the latest Call Of Duty title. This guy had to have been no younger than I, and at the time of this encounter I was twenty. Every notion I had about the gaming community up until that point was dead wrong. It’s not just the spoiled pimple faced teen screaming profanities over XBox Live or the faceless online souls meticulously counting all pixels in an Alan Wake screen shot. It’s all of us. Whether we like or not, Mr.Microgate is the public face of the gaming community today and each and everyone of us have attributed this one way or another. The video game industry has come so far in being a respected entertainment medium, and we still act as if it’s still 1982 fighting arguing about whether or not Activison is better than Atari. The media still treat gamers like we’re still a bunch of quibbling 5th graders, and maybe they’re right in some cases.

Justin and I aren’t any better than Mr.Microgate sputtering his idiot speech. I still was offended when he insulted Skyrim, and Justin was rightly pissed when he said we bought the wrong system. Why does it even matter? So what if he thinks we bought the wrong system? I like my PS3 just fine, and no one’s opinion should infringe on my enjoyment. Yeah, I get it; these burning feelings come from passion, and that’s fine. I’m not saying to remain completely objective, because it’s ridiculous to expect an opinion to be anything but subjective to a person’s particular taste. You don’t have to justify everything you enjoy, you’re the only person who understands your own clockwork  and what makes you tick.I’m not against debating consoles or games either, until that simple debate or conversation about gaming becomes personal battle and the shrieking sirens of war begin to scramble our sensibility. The video game industry has matured significantly over the pasted decade, and unless we want the rest of society to continue to see us as children we must mature with it.