Gamers are easy pickings for comedians, especially out-of-touch comedians who fail to recognize the fact that a vast majority of people in the developed world (as well as many in the developing world) play video games as one of their favorite pasttimes.
I shouldn't even need to mention how the video game industry is the fastest growing, and has become—in recent years—larger even than the music, television and movie industries. Video games are big, and they're here to stay.
Leading the forefront of video game popularity is the newly launched YouTube Gaming service, which takes all of the gaming-related videos from the most popular video streaming platform on the internet and makes them easy to access. On YouTube Gaming, you'll find everything from popular channels like our own, video game commentators like TotalBiscuit, live streamers, and let's players like PewDiePie and Markiplier.
It's a multi-million dollar industry developed by gamers that caters to gamers of every ilk, and there's a lot of us.
Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose staff apparently never even bothered to watch the recent episodes of South Park that focused on the popularity of YouTube gaming, decided to run a skit mocking the newly launched service as well as the millions of gamers who watch game streams.
Despite earning over 500,000 views, the video has since become the channel's most downvoted and unpopular video. Today, Kimmel uploaded a new video where he talked about the angry comments that viewers left on the previous video, mocking them for their spelling errors (choosing of course to only read comments by viewers who don't have the best grasp of spelling) and their hobby, once again.
Obviously, what Kimmel says about games doesn't diminish gaming or streaming. Kimmel has every right to do this, of course, but it betrays how out of touch the guy and his writing staff really are to be making fun of gamers. It's not the 1980's anymore.
As for why people watch other people play video games: it's for a wide variety of reasons. They might not own the game that they're watching and intend to see if it's worth buying. They might enjoy watching a particularly skilled player show them how to play the game. They might enjoy watching competitive players go up against each other in a match or a tournament. Or they might simply be entertained by a witty commentator whose amusing reactions and commentary makes the videos worth watching.
Many sports struggle to see the the kind of prize pools and viewership garnered by the likes of eSports like Dota 2, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike.
Only last month, the winners of the Dota 2 tournament The International picked up $18 million in winnings. Meanwhile, the fighting game tournament Evo 2015 saw 18 million total viewers. There's no word yet on how many concurrent viewers The International 5 drew, but it's expected to be in the millions.
It goes without saying that it's possible to enjoy video games without spending the vast majority of your time actually playing them. How is it any different from watching people—whether professionally or on a local field—play soccer and not personally participating? Many hardcore sports fans spend a good chunk of their time reading about sports, studying the players, listening to podcasts and watching ESPN talk about the sports. When it comes down to it, it's really no different from video gaming as a hobby.
Just as ESPN's SportsCenter serve as a platform for well-respected hosts, commentators and reporters, so too do the gaming communities on YouTube and Twitch feature personalities known for their expertise in certain video games or the industry at large.
Once again, Kimmel and his writing staff have every right to hold and express opinions that betray their ignorance of the gaming community. But by doing so, his skits and his already-outdated jokes will serve as cringe fodder for gamers to laugh at in the years to come.
