QUOTE

I have a theory. Micklewright's research showed that gamers do have certain things in common with the finest of athletes. Reaction time, for example. Competitiveness, too. Their general motor skill levels are first class. Emotionally, they also exhibit little predilection for depression and they quite like themselves.

I wonder, though, whether they feel it would betray an ethos, a culture, a way of life, if they suddenly bought themselves some tight pink spandex and started spending their summers like Suzanne Somers. What gamer of any worth would twitch his pecs at a lissom lovely, when he could destroy a whole galaxy with the merest twitch of a finger?

Gaming, like baseball, was invented for those who were shunned even at elementary school, those who wanted no more to run an errand than to run 100 meters. Gaming is less a world and more an underworld. It exists to accept the exiled, the shunned, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, even at three in morning.