Whenever a new mass-medium is introduced, the public tends to react in one of two ways. Many people get excited, sometimes to the point of lining up outside the store 17 days before said medium is introduced and giving unabashed news interviews about this odd behavior. But a fraction of the population inevitably regards said medium as if it is an open chute that will unleash a hot load of witchcraft upon the world -- a veritable world of witchcraft. From mass-produced newspapers to television, the introduction of a new medium inevitably stirs unfounded fears of damage to health and morality.
Video games are no different. For decades, speculation has run rampant that video games make children hyperactive, murderous imps with impossible-to-stop hand-eye coordination. But this can't still be the dark ages of video games anymore; years' worth of of data has been collected with regard to the behavior and characteristics of gamers. Instead of arguing abstract reasoning, people can start pointing to hard facts.
With that in mind, it's a good time to re-examine the classic derogatory stereotype of the male gamer. Using studies as a rubric for evaluation, the gamer stereotype will be analyzed in terms of four categories: Poor health, attention problems, lack of sex, and stunted emotional development. My goal is not to buck this image, nor to support it; my goal is to dissect the possible correlations between these stereotypical characteristics and the reasons why they apply/don't apply/no longer apply to male video gamers. I want to turn an eye on gamer stereotypes, armed with the critical analysis of study that has only become available in recent decades. I will exclusively focus on male stereotypes, due to the high volume of theories that female gamers are often cut from a different cloth.
Trait #1: Male Gamers Are in Below-Average Physical Shape
The primary argument for this stereotype has been that nearly every media activity fosters sedentary behavior, contributing towards poor physical conditioning. The media shoulders a sizable share of the blame for the epidemic of childhood obesity. While this argument follows logical reasoning, it does not directly prove that video gamers are more out-of-shape than non-gamers. After all, lots of activities contribute to inactivity without becoming scapegoats for obesity: newspaper reading, journal writing, fantasizing about Ms. Pac-Man in a cocktail dress, etc.
Hopefully, with direct study of the issue, glib arguments can be eliminated, and it can be directly determined whether video gamers are less healthy than non-gamers. An article by James B. Weaver III in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, titled "Health Risk Correlates of Video-Game Playing Among Adults," asserts a strong link between video games and overall poor health. In fact, the author found that gamers had higher rates of depression and other poor mental health, and their body mass index was higher.
Naturally, even peer-reviewed studies always need to be read with a critical eye before application. Here, several factors limit how widely applicable these findings are. The study was done using self-reports -- a notoriously difficult-to-regulate means of collecting data. In addition, body mass index (BMI), which simply relates one's height to one's weight, is not a sound measurement of obesity. After all, male gamers could simply have an average BMI and enormous-sized packages. Also, the study investigated both male and female gamers, so the data must be sorted by gender. Finally, the entire survey was conducted in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Sitting inside all year while it rains buckets would probably hurt anyone's mental health, gamer or not.
A recent study which better addresses the issue of obesity assessment is "Electronic Games and Environmental Factors Associated with Childhood Obesity," which measured 872 Swiss children. Using a combination of skinfold thickness and BMI to provide a better assessment of who is unhealthily overweight, researchers found an independent association between time spent playing electronic games and lack of exercise. Again, this seems to support the findings of the Weaver study, and makes a few improvements. Self-reports are replaced with actual subjects, so that source of error is eliminated. Also, as mentioned, a better measurement of obesity is introduced. However, like its predecessor, this Swiss study suffers from regionalism, and may not fully take potential gender differences into account.
Although these small studies imply a strong link between playing games and being out-of-shape, it seems that a peer-reviewed study involving a large sample size is still needed. However, researchers are focusing their efforts on finding ways to make gaming less stationary. Another study finds that playing video games while exercising tends to be more effective than listening to music. The tools are certainly in place for a revolution, with physically interactive gaming consoles in tens of millions of homes.