Although it was before my time, I’ve heard of the phrase “around the watercooler” before. I thought the idea that people would all watch the same television show and then gather around at work the next morning to discuss it to be a fascinating quirk of society.

It’s a quirk that can’t really be replicated in the age of hundreds of television channels though. Or so I thought, until I realized that we do the same thing today with video games.

I have personally spent almost as much time sitting around discussing video games as I have actually playing them, but I’ve noticed that a lot of this discussion tends to be a sharing of different experiences. I’ve talked about the different outcomes friends and I have reached in “Mass Effect,” or the different play styles we have adopted in “Grand Theft Auto.”

In a way, video games have become the new television. It’s not that we don’t talk about movies or TV shows anymore, but when we discuss those forms of media, we can only say so much. We all saw and experienced the same things. With video games, the experience is far more subjective.

When my friends and I talk about video games, we all have a different story to tell, regardless of what we’re discussing. It helps make everyone feel like a part of a close-knit community, one in which each person has something to contribute. Regardless of how a person plays a game, everyone has a story to tell. But this sense of community goes further than that.

You might not think that three guys living in Northridge, Los Angeles and San Diego would have that much in common, other than maybe a high school friendship which has long stopped being particularly relevant. But not even a week ago, you could find me with my two friends from California State University, Northridge and UC San Diego going at it in “Starcraft II.”

Just like the world of competitive video games, the video game community has its roots in the arcade days of the ’70s to the ’90s, and, with the advent of the Internet, has expanded to an even broader community. Just like people might have been drawn to each other through their communal love of “Street Fighter II,” so too are my friends and I drawn together through our communal love of “Starcraft II.”

Of course, just like with any aspect of the video game medium, the community has its downside as well. In our eagerness to create a well-knit community, we’ve ended up with an air of exclusivity, and many of us are hesitant to let “newcomers” into the inner circle of the video game community.

This, of course, causes a backlash from those on the outside – which is why you hear the term “gamer” used derogatorily so often (and one of the reasons I try to avoid using the word myself). This backlash only leads to a tightening of this inner circle, and it’s a vicious cycle from there.

This is a mindset that is slowly being deteriorated though. Thanks in part to new trends such as the Wii and iPhone games, the inner circle of the gaming community is opening up. While there are still some people who consider themselves “hardcore” players and spurn anyone else’s attempts to transition into this “hardcore” classification, the idea of an exclusive video gaming elite is slowly dwindling. Of course, there will always be those who embrace classifications like “gamer” and “hardcore,” but I personally am excited to hear the stories that new members of the community will inevitably tell “around the watercooler.”

If you want more information or would like to talk about hilarious glitches in “Grand Theft Auto,” email Overstreet at moverstreet@media.ucla.edu. “Joy Sticks” runs every Thursday.