Gaymers

It was vacation time this past weekend, and myself, Nate, the Twins and Brian had planned for a weekend full of debauchery, nerdiness and fun at PAX 2012 in Seattle. For those not in the know, PAX is a 3 day video gaming convention complete with discussion panels, lots of free swag, huge exhibits of the latest and greatest new games, and massive rooms of TVs and every video game console you can imagine.

Anyhoo, on our way down, we stopped at the outlet mall to do some shopping. At the end of the trip, Nate and I walked back to the car while the others stopped at one last store. While we were waiting for them, Nate opened up about some conflicts he was having about his family. Once he was finished, I figured it was a better time than any to ask him about Shane. I asked him to do me a favour and bring Shane around more often, and I explained how impressed I was with his handling of the guy at the club and his demeanor once were outside of the club in the car. Nate seemed pretty receptive and he went on to gush about what a level head Shane has, how he's a lot of fun without being too wild and just how much of a great guy he is. Like he really needed to sell me on him more, but whatever. I told Nate that it would be great to have Shane around to get to know him a bit better. Honestly though, just by the way he talked, I'm not sure if Nate really got the clue that I was interested in Shane and I wasn't exactly being subtle either. Hints like this, subtle and not-so-subtle, tend to go over Nate's head, but as long as he brings Shane along to a few more get-togethers, I can try and make a move on the guy.

Back to PAX for a second, one of my favourite parts of the convention (besides being around my friends, playing the new Tomb Raider demo and picking up free stuff) was one of the panels I attended that talked about Gaymers (they're exactly who you think they are) and the history of Gayming. It was a really good mix of sass, gamer/dorkiness, advocacy and boy-talk. One of the more interesting points that was brought up was combatting homophobia while online. Anyone whose played a first-person shooter (*ahem* CALL OF DUTY *ahem*) knows how liberally the word "faggot" and other homophobic slurs are thrown around amongst players. It's a bit of a tricky issue to tackle as well, given that you're around these people for a few minutes until the rounds are done, and poof...they're gone. It's sort of hard to do advocacy under those kind of conditions, and even if you try like a couple of the panelists mentioned, you may incite the wraith of the homophobes. But just like greater society, banding together, having a presence online and having the support of others is crucial to changing that, and that's where Gaymers come in. There's a pretty big community out there (so much so there's a convention specifically for them), which is awesome and I totally need explore more.

On a less serious note, the topic of hottest video game characters also got brought up, and it was a toss-up between Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series and mature Max Payne from Max Payne 3. I'll let you decide: