Watch Morgan Webb Totally Degrade Video Games on the Tyra Banks Show

April 1st, 2008

Up for something totally degrading? I thought not but you’ll wanna watch this anyways.

Below is video from the Tyra Banks show (you know Tyra Banks, that popular super model? Yeah I’d never heard of this show before either), the segment is as she puts it about “decoding your man”. The subject matter is a man “obsessed” with video games, fortunately our video game heroine Morgan Webb was there to save the day. Watch what I am talking about and read below for my analysis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdIZuu6IaQo

If you couldn’t tell by the tone of my language in the introduction I was not impressed by this video. This is a typical situation that perfectly highlights the perception problems that our industry continually faces among such audiences. Over the past few articles I have been edging towards this topic so I want to do a little analysis of the situation and break down what the underlying problem is.

Analysis

The first thing you should be aware of is the use of the word “obsessed”. Obsessed has a negative connotation and much like the word ‘addiction’ is commonly used by the media to typecast us gamers.

The real problem though is the lack of understanding by the female companion (isn’t it always a lack of understanding?). She does not know why her husband plays so much video games, it is incomprehensible to her hence she is on the show to find the answers to this. She announces her lack of understanding with “and I just don’t understand it”.

As you’ve seen, even though the segment is about solving the problems that women have (“decoding your man”, ie. How to understand why your man behaves as he does) the show instead concentrates around the man’s supposive problems (his obsession to video games) and throughout the video the language and choice of questions all fall back onto the him as the problem source. This itself contradicts the point of the segment but nevermind.

When Tyra asks the wife “how often does he play these games?” she answers inspecifically, stressing the length of play time instead of just answering the question. The unspecific nature of this answer doesn’t paint a realistic picture, so she manages to avoid substantiating her claim that he is obsessed and doublely she showcases a possible uncertainty of just how long. I also like how Tyra refers to games as “these games”.
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