Via MTV, I just discovered that the upcoming season of Survivor will feature Ken Hoang, a professional (part-time, I assume, since it doesn't pay that much) "Super Smash Bros." player. He will, of course, be listed as "pro video gamer," as this little Entertainment Weekly profile indicates.

"Survivor" is an extremely mainstream show, so on the one hand I suppose it's a good thing that they are including someone from the world of video games (though after seventeen seasons, you would think that would happen just by chance). But on the other hand, as a mainstream show, one can easily imagine "Survivor's" producers editing the show to make Hoang look like the most stereotypical version of a "gamer," reinforcing all the things we are sick of the media saying.

This quote from host Jeff Probst is a bit troubling, since it's immediately that Hoang's identity will be "the gamer":

Ken the gamer is one of my favorite people who has been on the show in a long time. He is convinced his gaming expertise is absolutely in line with what it takes to win, that he knows this game backward and forward simply because he's a gamer. But Ken is a true nerd. I think when the show began he weighed less than [China's] Courtney did.''

The idea that Hoang as a gamer would know more about "Survivor" than anybody else is also incredibly bizarre to me, since the show is all about social relationships and manipulating people, which is one skill that videogames by and large don't teach (maybe you could make a case that multi-player RTS games make you out strategize other people like on "Survivor," but even that entirely misses the social aspect. Not to mention that Hoang's game of choice is "Smash Brother," which is definitely not a game about long term strategic thinking, let alone social dynamics.

The best possible scenario of course is that Probst is calling Hoang a "nerd" in the way that we all (or most of the people reading this blog, I assume) call ourselves "nerds" or "geeks" in a self-affirming way.
But I know a few reality TV producers and given all the possibilities for them to play to the worst gamer stereotypes in casting and editing, I'm definitely a skeptic as to the impact Hoang will have on broad public perception of gamers.

(Photo from EW.com)