Tact seems in short supply among gamers. You may have earned platinum trophies across the board in Call of Duty: Modern AssButt 2, but do you know how not to be a dick about it? Ring ring, Pixelsnatch is calling up Miss Manners to ask about these three cardinal sins!

3. [Game x] > [Game y] > [Game z]

SSJNaruto1991’s take on the Mega Man franchiseWhat could be more concise than summing up your opinion for the message board than with this handy trick you learned in the third grade? The breakdown of modern communication has resulted in this gem, succinctly illustrating that it’s just too goddamned hard for nerds to type out “I like FFVIII more than FFVII.”

Let’s take a closer look at this more common bastardization of basic math: Ranking each individual title in your very favoritest series!

DQIII > VIII = IV > I > V > II = VI > VII

“Let’s see… Alex says that he likes Dragon Quest III the most, and VII the least. The original is somewhere in the middle, but he favors it over V and II, the latter which he equates in merit to VI. VIII and IV seem tied in second place.”

The short version is “fuck your opinion.”

If anyone has ever analyzed someone else’s “greater than” game ranking list and actually used this information to contribute to the discussion (without merely posting his own list of ordinals as a response), then I declare him > me!!

3b. [Game title] > *

Neither game nor opine to the exclusion of your responsibilitiesThe worst occurs when the ardent nerd takes his passion that one step too far and perches himself atop the summit of Mt. Durrrrrr, screaming through the whistling winds that “Killzone > *!” If we are (and we are) to believe that the asterisk stands in for everything else in the entire fucking world, what separates his witty hyperbole from every other impassioned opinion out there?

It’s all right to feel strongly about the things you love! It’s not all right to make fumbling declarations about the video game that gives you a warm fuzzy every time you get swept up. I mean, yeah, you can, but not while expecting anyone to take you seriously. Besides, the presence of the asterisk has become the mark of the wanting troll. Serious opinions (serious nerd opinions most of all!) are to be discussed, dissected, and evaluated, not lobbed onto the table in a cloud of Cheetoh dust.

2. I love my [rare/expensive game] :)

It’s often difficult for nerds to conceal their intense eagerness to gloat about trivial shit. But what else have we got? No, the kid down the street doesn’t have the Limited Edition Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete Box Set. He knows that you have it. He also knows that the only reason you say “I love my punching puppet Ghaleon” with that snarky grin is to rub it in his face because he threw your inhaler into the girls’ locker room. You deserved it.

This beI love my crippling feelings of inadequacy :)comes especially egregious when rendered as a single tweet: “I love my MSX copy of Metal Gear :)” Do you? Do you really? Don’t you mean to say, “I own Metal Gear on the MSX and my life is so vacant right now that I… I just have to let somebody else know! Somebody… somebody who doesn’t have it, but wants it!” I know that’s over 140 characters, but the point stands. If your primary source of fulfillment right now is bragging about the Very Special Video Game in your collection, it’s time to reevaluate things and give relationships another chance.

Yes, I have games like that! Rare, sealed, autographed, or LE, whatever! Do you want to know why I don’t gloat about them? I’m an adult. I dick around all the time, I still haven’t the vaguest idea how the economy works, and I struggle to renew my health insurance on a three-month basis. But there are things that must be identified as patently childish and cast aside when you want to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. Showing the entire playground your fully decked out Technodrome should be the first one to go.

1. [My favorite game designer] IS GOD

For a community with such a staggering percentage of atheists, nerds certainly love to equate their most precious game talent with the Judeo-Christian god of olde. When they’re not being held in a headlock and punched repeatedly by the gym coach’s boy at Sunday school, gamers just love the concept of an omniscient, omnipresent being in charge of designing mushroom monsters that go BLIP and turtle monsters that go BLOOP.

But where would gamers be without baseless hyperbole!

Ita- *sniff* Itagaki *sniff* IS GOD!!!This may be the only statement even lazier than (Game Title) > * for the sheer fact that the nerd is willing to promote a fallible human to the lofty stature of a mythical man-force to show just how excited he is about Octocamo. Yes! The man behind the real-time ice-melting and steaming wolf pee in some of your favorite sneaking games must certainly be vaulted to immortality for such humanitarian succor of incalculable worth! My concern now is that gamers will take control of the Catholic church and end up canonizing Hideo after his death.

“Mama! I simply cannot master this ever-so-tricky revolver spin!” “Just pray to St. Kojima… and it will come.”

Hideo Kojima and Motosada Mori (inset) hard at workOkay, so clearly I’m not a religious person. This doesn’t offend me on a religious level; it’s offensive to me for being such an astoundingly lazy way to say how much you appreciate the work of a (presumably) legitimate mind. I’m an unabashed Dragon Quest fan, but if someone told me that “Sugiyama is god!” I would reflexively whip out my iPhone and do a search for “remedial composition classes” before I had even consciously registered what was said.

There’s no question that the gaming industry is filled with incredibly talented people: authors, artists, and musicians without whose contributions many of us would never have continued gaming past the beginning. If you feel strongly about them, tell me why! Or just say what you mean! “Boy, that Kojima sure has some good ideas.” Look! Look how painless and realistic that was! Look how much more seriously I can take you now!

Writing exercise for the intolerable gamer:

• Rank the games in the Zelda series. Use your words.
• Tell me the story of how you got your most treasured game-related item and why it’s so important to you. Assume I own one too, dickweed.
• Describe what makes your favorite game designer great without resorting to hollow deification or glaze-eyed awe.

You can do it!