I don’t know any gamers.
I played only two games: Doom (I’m including all variants under that title; they’re not separate games) and Arkanoid, Revenge of Doh, which is a brick-breaking game. These are both DOS-era games… In fact, I keep a bootable stick with DOS and those games.
I also played Neuromancer (and have it on the stick). So call it three games.
But I haven’t played a game (other than Solitaire or Minesweeper… occasionally Scrabble – but those aren’t “computer games” really, they’re meatspace games on a computer) more than once or twice a year for about 20 years.
Of course, we all know a kind of gamer, the kind that’s a jerk on the web. Those seem to range from stoic, polite, libertarian wannabes who are seriously concerned – Concerned! – about freedom for their white male cohorts… to tantrum-queen manboys (maybe boyboys… who can know) hurling abuse from the safety of their recliners (or Aerons… there are flavors and dialects of this type), who are using the freedom so carefully protected by their stoic, serious cohorts.
What about other kinds of gamers? Fun-loving people who love the game, the game world, the game market; they love the hardware and tweak it continuously. Eke out those extra gigahertz! But that kind? They’re kind of busy, so they’re not all over the various channels and forums.
So here’s a thought – for every polite, fun, pleasant, rollicking gamer on the web, there are a dozen more who are not on the web.
But for every complete and total jerk, the true villains… it’s them. They’re all on the web all the time. So the number you see on the web? That’s all of them.
It may be a lot, but it’s not that much. They are vastly outnumbered by more decent folk. Because what makes them decent is society, and for that to happen they have to be out there in society.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
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But about Callister. It’s a pretty damning portrait of someone from a conqueror culture, who has nothing to conquer… or is simply too cowardly, when in meatspace, to take the risk of conquering. And what even is “conquering” in our society?