I REALLY need to respond to all the guys who were shocked that he was married: hard-core gamers can and do get chicks. I'm of the ovarian persuasion (and neither fat NOR ugly, thank you, Anonymous Coward), and my fiance and I (while not online gamers) are both hard-core pen and paper role-players, and I wouldn't love my man nearly as much if he weren't a gamer geek. Hell, we'd both probably be hard-core online gamers, too, if there were more hours in the day, but with so many AD&D and White Wolf books to read we've no time for other pursuits. Thedeacon's wife runs his computer business with him, so what makes you think she isn't sympathetic to (if not actively involved in) his hobbies? Just because chicks who like gamers are rare, doesn't mean we don't exist...
Lazy bastard that I am, I just got around to reading the NYT article... When I was a junior in high school, one of my school newspaper's reporters came to me asking to interview me because he wanted to write an article to "help people understand the Goth scene". I consented to the interview, and the resulting article bore a striking resemblance to the NYT article about Anarchy Online. One would think that people outgrow high-school crap, but apparently one would be wrong. My only advice: he should sue. I feel that America is far too lawsuit-happy a nation, but suing them could help deter reporters from writing fact-twisting crap like this in the future. The reason stuff like that gets written is because they think no-one will speak up to set the record straight. Now I'm not saying all journalists are evil, but I learned the hard way the same lesson that thedeacon did: don't let your guard down, don't make off-hand comments, and NEVER say anything sarcastic, because sarcasm gets lost in the printed word. Anything you blurt out, if it makes a more "interesting" story, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, whether it was in context or not.
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I REALLY need to respond to all the guys who were shocked that he was married: hard-core gamers can and do get chicks. I'm of the ovarian persuasion (and neither fat NOR ugly, thank you, Anonymous Coward), and my fiance and I (while not online gamers) are both hard-core pen and paper role-players, and I wouldn't love my man nearly as much if he weren't a gamer geek. Hell, we'd both probably be hard-core online gamers, too, if there were more hours in the day, but with so many AD&D and White Wolf books to read we've no time for other pursuits. Thedeacon's wife runs his computer business with him, so what makes you think she isn't sympathetic to (if not actively involved in) his hobbies? Just because chicks who like gamers are rare, doesn't mean we don't exist...
Lazy bastard that I am, I just got around to reading the NYT article...
When I was a junior in high school, one of my school newspaper's reporters came to me asking to interview me because he wanted to write an article to "help people understand the Goth scene". I consented to the interview, and the resulting article bore a striking resemblance to the NYT article about Anarchy Online. One would think that people outgrow high-school crap, but apparently one would be wrong.
My only advice: he should sue. I feel that America is far too lawsuit-happy a nation, but suing them could help deter reporters from writing fact-twisting crap like this in the future. The reason stuff like that gets written is because they think no-one will speak up to set the record straight. Now I'm not saying all journalists are evil, but I learned the hard way the same lesson that thedeacon did: don't let your guard down, don't make off-hand comments, and NEVER say anything sarcastic, because sarcasm gets lost in the printed word. Anything you blurt out, if it makes a more "interesting" story, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, whether it was in context or not.