Stereotypes of gamers are accurate for a reason: because they are true. But they are not necessarily all negative.
A good news day for gaming: a report from Nottingham Trent University's consistently level-headed Mark Griffiths reveals that online gamers are relentlessly social, with 81% playing in the company of friends and family, and around 75% forming firm friendships - or even falling in love -with the people they meet online.
Why good news? Because the research, it says, "finally dispels any myths of online gamers as asocial, introverted loners".
If only. That image - of the lone figure hunched over a keyboard, curtains drawn against the intrusions of the afternoon sun, typing in vowel-less code to total strangers and peeing in a bottle to reduce time away from the screen - will persist, and it will persist because it's accurate.
I know it's accurate, because I do it.
Fine, not the peeing in bottles, but I have found myself gradually pulling the curtains, not to block out the real world but to chase that annoying glare that catches the corner of the screen.
I have raced to complete the World Of Warcraft triathlon (bathroom break, kettle boil, microwave dinner re-heat) in the four minute lull between sections of a particularly large dungeon.
I know that I'm socialising - interacting in a particularly rich, stimulating and imaginative way with people I've known for years, or have evolved from online friends to real-world buddies, or with distant strangers I'll never meet, but whose courtesy, humour, competence and advice has brightened my day. But it sure doesn't look like that.
