The Gamers

GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT, TATTOO-ARTIST-IN-DEVELOPMENT, AND MUSICIAN HARRISON GERRARD HAS BEEN GAMING SINCE HIS DAD BOUGHT HIM HIS FIRST X-BOX WHEN HE WAS 5.

Harrison Gerrard (19) has always loved gaming for the sense of escape it offers, the way in which it can transport you away from the daily grind.

“When I was about 16 I used to come home from school and game for about six hours at a time. It was an amazing escape from stuff that was happening in my life at the time.”

He moved on from his early X-Box to a MacBook ... which always overheated and crashed halfway through games.

So a few years back he picked up the components for a bespoke PC and created a dream machine that allowed to him to play uninterrupted.

“People spend thousands of dollars making their own gaming PCs — I spent about $1100, which wasn’t too bad. It runs really smoothly.”

Every tribe has its pariahs; in the PC gaming world they are PlayStation and X-Box users.

“It’s called the console wars. There’s a subreddit called PC

Master Race,” says Gerrard.

“I go on there and have a laugh, but some people take it very seriously, which is ridiculous.”

Then there’s the stereotypes. Gerrard says that players of games such as Skyrim (an open-world action role playing game) attracts the “typical nerds” — Lord of the Rings fans, the people who would have been drawn to Dungeons and Dragons.

League of Legends players (a multiplayer battle game) would be typified as “young Asian guys who never see the sun and Counter Strike (which Gerrard plays) is filled with “regular white males, aged from mid-teens to early 20s”.

He says he’s always surprised at how many people game — it’s no longer the preserve of geeks and shut-ins.

“There are a lot more people than I expect. I’m often surprised by the people I meet who are really into it.”