I’ve covered all kinds of media on this blog—books, movies, TV shows, music—but there’s one form of entertainment that I’ve never written about: video games. Ironically, games are probably the hobby that I’ve spent the most time on… and that’s also part of the reason why I haven’t written about them. The truth is, I’ve always been a bit ashamed to be a gamer.

Video games are one of the more geeky realms of geek culture, and I grew up in a time before the geeks inherited the earth. As a kid in school, I learned to avoid revealing parts of myself that would invite mockery: being good at math and computers, enjoying Star (Trek|Wars), still watching cartoons well into my teenage years, and yes, playing video games. You had to make an effort to find people, other geeks, that you could safely be yourself around, because the self that you wanted to be was not the socially accepted norm. For the most part, I did fall in with a group of friends with the same interests, but we would only talk about nerdy stuff when we were at our cafeteria table, away from the “regular” kids.

I’ve also shied away from writing about games because I’ve always had the sense that I play them “too much.” Nobody wants to admit their bad habits in a public forum. Even though I don’t know how to clearly define what amount of play is acceptable, I know that I often feel guilty, that I should be doing something better with my time than gaming.