If you go and look back over this generation of gaming, you’ll realise that being a gamer is not only tough, but also destructive. If you look at fan backlash throughout these past 5 years, you’ll realise that some gamers can say some rather painful things, even if they are true a lot of the time.

Now you might mark this article down as another “Oh he’s hating on gaming, ignore this article blah blah blah”, I’m not. I just feel that at the rate that gaming is going, perhaps one day these petitions by government bodies could one day make gaming a completely different thing on a bad scale all round. Let’s start out with something rather simple. Throughout these past few years, gamers have come up with new terms for words we never thought could mean something else, and one of those words is “troll”.

What is a troll? An ugly man who lives under a bridge and scavenges for riches, someone who plays a trick on you or someone who goes around websites posting hurtful feedback? The trolls I’m on about are the ones who give hurtful feedback. It’s fair to say that you’ll find them just about anywhere; N4G, Twitter, Facebook, internet forums, Destuctoid articles and the list just goes on and on. Now when a gamer posts hurtful comments to another person (gaming related of course) such as “Oh you like this game? Oh you suck; you ain’t a true gamer”, sometimes that comment is spotted by the gaming media, and when the gaming media finds it, they bash the entire industry around. Sure, when they actually do bash around the comments, they haven’t got the faintest clue what they’re on about, but some politicians soon realise how much gaming itself can ruin lives. Why? Posting hurtful comments (gaming related) is still a form of cyber bullying which if you don’t already know is a major problem on the internet. Many people are trying to tackle cyber bullying, and if gaming is slightly apart of that spectrum… well you get the idea. Bye bye gaming… in small doses of course. It sounds dramatic, but do you know what the future holds exactly? Nope.

The next thing: fanboys. You have the right to your opinions on a certain platform; I’m going to get that out of the way straight away. But are fan boys making the games industry look bad? Of course they are. The first reason is pretty much like the point I just mentioned about trolls. Some fanboys go a little off their head and can get so angry that they lash out at another person purely because the other person either disagreed with a point on a certain console or because they like something completely different. For example, say one Xbox 360 fanboy says “Not sure I like the playability of it”, the PS3 fanboy might go “Bullshit. At least we don’t have to pay to use online features” and so begins the fight. If two people have different opinions, can’t they either settle it in a controlled matter without abusive grammar or settle it privately? Do multiple people really need to show major fights publicly? There are people on sites like N4G who have actually built up a reputation to have said harsh things to others, and it’s surprising how many people have actually said “Oh look. It’s [insert name here]. No surprise on your opinions” etc.

Next we have reviewers… no not the ones who write full blown articles with about 1000 words in them; I mean the ones who spend around 200 characters on a poorly descriptive backlash against the company or game. Such backlash really gives gaming a bad reputation, because not only does it make that person look like an idiot (which the media will only see gaming as making the children dumber), but it also supports the fact that the gaming world is an angry place to live in (which the media will also see gaming as making the children more violent) which actually brings me onto my final point: online voice chat.

With online voice chat, you’ll get people being abusive down the microphone if they hear somebody who either sounds funny or talk too much… but then isn’t talking through voice chat the whole point of voice chat? Not only that but when gamers get too competitive and actually do badly in an online game, they’ll get so angry that another person in voice chat will begin to intimidate the other causing a major backlash. Is all that really necessary? You’re there to play the game, not continually insult each other. Are any of us really doing justice to make gaming look like something worth keeping in the world or are we only making it look so bad that before long it’ll be gone or changed for the worse?

I think gaming does need to change; it needs to start becoming a little less angry or else people in high authority are going to find a way to pull the plug. After all, certain games are banned in certain countries. How long will it be before certain games are banned in most countries?

Join the forum discussion on this post
StumbleUponRedditShare

Tags: , , , , , , , ,