The video game shame file

The video game shame file

Once upon a time, playing video games was about as socially acceptable as owning a 12-sided dice. It was something that nerds did in-between zit-popping and Star Trek marathons — or at least, that was the popular perception in the playground at the time. To talk incessantly about video games was to invite wedgie annihilation from all directions. Needless to say, it was a dangerous time to be a gamer.

Thankfully, things have come along in leaps and bounds since then. Gaming has become one of the premier forms of entertainment, with game sales consistently outperforming movies and DVDs. These days, it’s kind of uncool not to be a gamer.

Occasionally however, the industry descends back into the tissue-strewn basement from its inglorious past. You know the sort of stuff we're talking about. It could be a YouTube clip of a gamer in the throes of a berserker-like rage, or a ‘sexy-time’ video game that consists almost solely of poorly rendered nudity. No matter how hard we try to keep it down, the spectre of the 'nerdy gamer' still lingers in the national consciousness. Sometimes, it's the press' fault, but usually, we only have ourselves to blame.

In the following slideshow, we take a look at some of the geekiest moments in video game history — and we don’t mean geeky-cool, like the Mac guy. These are the things that make us feel ashamed to be gamers...

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