Oh yeah, this is the reason I don't miss arcades.

[Darque]

Thanks, rocketpig. As a "car guy," I know that particular brand of fanboyism, too. Maybe that's a little different because of the fact that you can take a Mustang and a Camaro out to the track and bracket-race to your heart's content to see which is really faster. Maybe computers are a better comparison - since I acquired a virus on my laptop and switched from Windows XP SP2 to Ubuntu, I've had a lot of exposure to the whole "Windows sucks" and "Yeah, well you can't play games" variety of fanboyism lately. There are different reasons to go with each, and in the end, what's "better" is the setup that works best for the individual user - and that might even include a computer that has both.

At least with cars, there's a much larger marketplace, and the majority of people don't go around bragging that theirs is better. Most folks just see cars as a way to get from point A to point B, and they could care less which brand they use.

What bothers me with the gaming fanboys, however, is the fact that outsiders - that "vast majority" that don't play any games at all - see this kind of stuff and it turns them off. They think, "If this is what video games do to people, then I'm right never to touch any one of them." What we should be doing is getting more people into the fold. Jeez, I even got my mother-in-law to get a Wii, and I bought my father a classic NES last Christmas so he could play Tetris to his heart's content. My brother-in-law hadn't touched a video game since Tecmo Bowl, but when I showed him Madden '05, he bought a PS2 and Madden that night - and hasn't stopped playing since.

You're right - the more competition, the more fanboys tend to crop up. On the same token, though, the more competition in the industry, the better the games are for everyone. Think of it this way - if everyone back in my glory days had decided to stick with either the NES or the SMS, we would all still be playing 8-bit games. (Nothing wrong with the 8-bit days, mind you, but the expansion of the industry legitimized everyone's love of video gaming and spawned a million advances since then.)

Yeah, I know, this isn't really likely to change anyone's mind, and it isn't likely to make any difference whatsoever in the industry - but wouldn't it be nice if we weren't all seen as a bunch of raging idiots when we tell people we love games?

-Darque