It goes into the human tendency to disparage other people’s hobbies while seeing one’s own as being perfectly fine. It’s a more general case of the instance you’ve observed here.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/my_passion_is_a.html

Oh, and gamers will always have a grudge towards gamblers because they insist on calling their hobby “gaming” ;-)

Ehhh? Why not play the game 3 hours a week? Or buy a cheaper game that only lasts 3 hours? That would be the same amount of time spent, but still a more efficient money expenditure…

I have nothing against people enjoying their sports, but flawed statistics? Nobody seems to enjoy those but me.

Thus, sports fans suck while video game enthusiasts are cool, and I deeply resent your insinuation that deep down inside we are all the same big family with the same interests because we are cool and they suck.

Also it is somehow acceptable to talk very loudly about how cool the frickin’ Red Sox are at work all the time, while it is somehow less acceptable to talk about how great, for example, Half-Life 2 is and how cool Episode 1 was and how cool Episode 2 will be in a million years when it’s finally released. Why? Because the sports fans are used to talking more loudly (they have to shout in their sports arenas, while we have the gain on our headsets turned up so we can mutter and be audible) and do so at work all the time while the video game enthusiasts lurk about feeling justifiably superior.

The point here is that there’s a deeper psychological divide than the simple sports vs. computer games dichotomy would seem to imply.

I guess it’s good that video games are plowing headlong toward the mainstream. Maybe one day it’ll be people complaining about how those damn WoW5 players always talk about their raids at work all the time, but nobody cares about how I just passed the Test of Acrobatics in ATITD7. Jerks!