For any of you that know me from Sarcastic Gamer, or GamerCast Network communities, you probably know that I’m active in my son’s Cub and now Boy Scouting life. I was a Den Leader through most of Cub Scouts and have taken the role of Scouter or “active parent” when he recently crossed over into Boy Scouts. Lately though, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend as I’ve moved from a leadership position of a small group into a parent position of a fairly large group. Every time there is a discussion about an upcoming camping trip, there is always the requisite “no electronics” bit that goes along with it. I can understand and fully agree with that rule, but it’s the follow-up discussion(s) that I’m not so keen on. The established leadership seems to be taking every swipe they can at video gaming and seem to honestly see it as a serious threat to Scouting.

Just like team sports or other extracurricular activities, Scouting really does reinforce “fellowship” among those involved. I think we can probably agree that social skills and social networking are very important skills in life. What gets me though, is the need to constantly expand on the requests not to take electronics on camping trips and other outings. The boys understand what “no electronics” means, but we’re bombarded with “otherwise the kids ‘vid out’ on the bus and we inevitably have fights over the videogames… plus there’s always the possibility of breaking them or getting them stolen.” Whoa, wait a minute! These same kids are fine upstanding citizens under other circumstances, but by simply adding videogames they’ve turned into zombies or combat-induced thieves? That doesn’t sound right to me… Stereotype anyone? I won’t even go into the fact that quite frequently in my house at least, gaming is a social activity with many people playing… enjoying that same fellowship.

As we prepare for our first Boy Scout trip after crossing over from Cub Scouts, something clued me in to a possible factor here. You see, there are health record forms we have to fill out if we attend any Scouting trip and there’s a different form you have to fill out depending on whether you’re younger, or older than 40 years old. Apparently the majority of folks are in the “40 and older” bracket and that could very well be one of the bigger reasons they’ve so easily dismissed video games as a waste of time better spent doing something like Scouting.

If they’re much over 40, they could’ve been a bit too old to latch on to video games when they were new since they were probably already in high school or later by then and may have written them off as “toys” (you see, widespread home gaming may not have available when they were Scouting age.) I find that most people that are adamantly against video games (or think they’re a waste of time) are really rather ignorant on the current state of video games and the fact that just like everything else in life, they can and should be enjoyed in moderation.

Even while involved in Cub Scouts, it was clear that team sports was in much stronger competition for the boys’ time. That said, as much as my son loves video games, I’m 99.9% sure that given the choice between going to Scouts and playing video games for an hour, he’d pick Scouting the VAST majority of the time. Making Scouting fun and worthwhile is a much better use of resources than wasting my time telling me one of my hobbies is a waste of time. In effect, we’ve basically just traded what you think was a waste for what I think is a waste. Nice work guys. I like what you’ve done there. Not…

I still believe Scouting is one of the best things for today’s youth (don’t get me started on how Cub Scouts and Brownie Scouts differ, because I’m still not convinced my daughter’s getting anything out of that yet.) If nothing else, this has opened my eyes to how easy it is to alienate someone with comments you may consider to be shared by a group that aren’t necessarily so. I’ll admit it, to look at me, I’m not the stereotypical “gamer” at all. I would never peg someone like me as a gamer.

There are dozens of hobbies out there that other people love that I would consider a waste of time and one thing this has led me to do is treat each comment about those hobbies as if I were speaking directly to someone that loved that hobby. What this basically means is that I try (outside the realm of this series of articles of course, because my intent here is to rant) to curb my disparaging comments about the topic at hand and leave it mostly as something “not for me,” as that gets my feelings across in a non-engaging way. Fly fishing is “not for me” and I feel I could easily say that to a fly fisherman without insulting them. If I said what I really felt… that fly fishing looked boring as hell, some may immediately take offense to that like I take offense to the notion my son will become a detriment to society with the simple addition of video games… or worse yet, so will I. How about we leave each others’ hobbies alone and not judge based on stereotypes, okay?

Have you run into resistance to playing video games in unexpected situations? I’d like to hear what you guys have run into.