The hardcore have one thing in common: they love E-peen. E-peen is slang for ‘Electronic Penis’ which means using electronic media for purposes of boosting one’s ego. E-peen is to the hardcore what gasoline is to the car. E-peen is how the Game Industry manipulates to create the zombie-like hardcore gamers. No one wants to get left behind or have their friends one up them.
E-peen is the culture of the hardcore gamer. Egoism and the quest to show superiority reign on the message forums, the MMO games, and even consoles now that game companies have learned they can tap into it with achievements, special collector edition boxes (you don’t want your friends to be alone in getting the superior version), leaderboards, trophies, and displaying what games the person owns. The hardcore will only listen to you if you work in the Game Industry or if you have a higher E-peen rating than they do (which is measured in achievement points, raid tier progress, number of posts on the gaming message forum, and so on). If your E-peen rating is equal or below that of the hardcore gamer, he will only talk down at you or ignore you altogether.
It is still not understood why the E-peen is so desired. It appears to attract those who lack accomplishments in real life. Since E-peen is based on a lie, on false achievement, the people exhibiting it will have abrasive personalities with a caked layer of politeness on the surface. The hardcore will undergo a meltdown if someone dismisses the entire E-peen infrastructure his life revolves around. This tends to trigger when someone talks of video games as ‘games’ as opposed to ‘philosophies of life’.
E-peen doesn’t mix well with normal society. When arcade games began encouraging E-peen on a level far beyond a simple high score with the introduction of fighter games in the 1990s, it marked the point when the arcades began to die. E-peen consumers altered the social atmosphere of what arcades have always been. It is not a coincidence that the more game consoles and games embrace E-peen, the greater is the decline.
The reader is instructed to be extremely careful in reacting to E-peen behavior. E-peen is on the level of religious faith for the hardcore. Any comments on E-peen will be seen as a personal attack on them as their egos are intertwined with the video game e-peen. It is recommended that when E-peen behavior and comments appear, the reader should not mention anything going on in his or her real life and just nod and agree with the person’s fictional achievements in video game land.
Always remember that E-peen is not about winning but about other people failing. Make fun of the ‘failures’ and call them ‘derps’. This will score big points with the hardcore.
