It seems to me that compared to the population at large, gamers are big fans of the royal "we." Particularly CCG players.
In day to day life, you don't get a lot of people talking about themselves in the plural... "we're going to going to the grocery store later," "we couldn't believe the weather yesterday," "we had the most excellent dinner last night."
But in gaming, you hear it all over the place. "We're going to attempt the mission," "and then we attack you," "we'll have this guy take the damage."
So what is the psychology at work here? Is it that gaming brings out this mildly conceited side of people? Are mildly conceited people drawn to gaming, where they have this bizarre outlet for this impulse? Or are players getting involved enough in personifying their playing pieces (cards, in the case of CCGers) that they really don't mean the royal "we," they mean "we" as in "me and my pieces/cards"?
Or maybe they're talking about the new Nintendo game system.
4 comments:
I think they mean "me and my imaginary friends", i.e. my cards/pieces/doodads/whathaveyous.
Anthropomorphism at its best.
Ensign Bob is the guy that beams the away team up from the planet. : ) and I think I've used "they" attempt the mission, but it's usually "we".
yu-gi-oh players might use the singular since they do it on the cartoon all the time [deep voice mimic] "I'm going to use my Three Headed Purple Teeth Green Toes Dragon!" man I can't stand that cartoon.
in our emails at work we always use the plurals, so we do not single ourselves out. we don't like having things pointed in our direction. a way to avoid responsability?
the moles
No, I don't.
And neither do I.
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