Gaming Culture Now a Days

Gaming Culture

Over the last decade, the gaming industry has been booming largely due to the growth and development of mainstream mediums for gamers to talk, give feedback, socialize, share gameplay in live and recorded environments and even monetize gameplay and create communities now this is awesome as gamers we celebrate the huge strides in the gaming community and how that has enabled developers to react to trends and interact with their communities in exciting and creative ways the positive influences of the gaming community in the last decade are innumerable but as with most things in the life you have to take the good with the bad and today I want to highlight some of the ways that gaming culture has shot itself in the foot - and maybe we can challenge each other to be better gamers when it comes to how we interact with other gamers the first the thing I want to shed some light on is elitism and its effect on gamers you know before I was ever a YouTuber or the streamer.

I worked for several years as a pastor and was heavily involved in the social dynamics that you have to monitor and manage to keep a church functioning properly during those years I learned a lot and I saw a lot and I have way more positive memories than negative ones but the bad memories are the easiest to revisit that's just the way it is and a lot of those memories are rooted in some. You know some form of elitism where one person believes their approach is more in line with some moral or ethical code than another person's and that causes rifts and division and ultimately sometimes even people leaving churches entirely the same principle applies to game culture many gamers now hold to a strong set of convictions about gaming and these convictions are often reinforced by things like mob mentality or individual gamers who have a degree of influence right. Let me give you some examples of input methods right many people have an instant negative reaction when I simply say controller or mouse and keyboard the problem is the overwhelming majority of gamers will never be professional gamers doing it for a living most of them play games as a hobby they often jump you know around from game to the game that they play recreationally in between work and family and social activities. But since they love gaming they hear constantly from influential gamers.

For example, the controllers are bad and they're made for little kiddies or they hear mouse and keyboard is for real gamers and it's the pinnacle input method and superior in every way to the controller which makes M&K users this the higher form of a gamer.

Now let's be realistic for the overwhelming majority of gamers, the input method is simply a matter of preference and nothing else like I said they aren't going to be professional gamers and what other people use as an input method has little effect on them but when they constantly hear things from gaming culture they get ingrained into their heads and it becomes a serious point of contention for gamers, it causes them to either look down on other gamers or feel insecure about their preferences, this can cause rifts and relationships and even cause gamers to cut ties with a game and its community sometimes another form of elitism in gaming is platform elitism people will look down on other gamers because of where they choose to play I remember a guy coming in to chat. 

One day and asking if I was poor because I was playing on console that day now he doesn't know or care about my PC build and the fact that I play currently eight different games on PC with M and K and only to one console with on a controller, he doesn't care though he only wants to regurgitate something he was told by a gaming culture or by an influential gamer and try to feel some form of the superiority over another human being simply because he plays on a PC now his dad could have bought him that PC that could be his dad's PC we don't know it doesn't matter he just wants to feel like he has more value than another human being and thinks that where he plays his fortnight or destiny right free to play games makes him better than another person let me just level with you if someone chooses to measure their worth according to how and where they play their video games and uses that to feel like a superior human than you that person is seriously jacked up they lack perspective probably and lack some positive influences but unfortunately, their words can cause real harm to other gamers the old sticks and stones saying is a load of crap because the truth is that even the words of strangers can carry a lot of weight and do a lot of damage again it's all over video games and that's unfortunate because gaming is always at it's best when it's a means for common people to express their creativity socialize and escape reality for a little bit that all gets ruined when the painful reality of our world seeps into our gaming experience and we experience that same level of toxicity in the place where we're trying to escape it gaming culture is often reinforcing this toxicity and it's unfortunate.

The next issue I want to highlight is that gamers use the internet for almost all of their interaction this means the gamers that we interact with can be some of the most unfiltered and offensive people that we talk to they will dump anger and frustration out on strangers at the blink of an eye and just because you like gaming now you're gonna see the unfiltered anger and frustration of gamers in the game you know that you're playing and your messages or even on Twitter and Twitch chats of your favorite streamers and on the forums where you go to find helpful information and funny memes and I can be guilty of this too truthfully I've had to start being more intentional about my interactions online it's really easy when we're frustrated with our gaming experiences to go straight to Twitter or

straight to Reddit and just vent to get it all out and you know try and feel like we're being heard like our concerns are being noticed I had to hear from a trusted friend that my Twitter presence was getting too negative and focused to focus too much on the problems with the games I was playing and that they were concerned because of how that's perceived by other people and they were right and instead of getting a reactionary towards them I looked through my tweets, I saw just how right they were and I had to make some changes I would encourage you all to create rules and limits for yourself to help monitor how you present yourself and your concerns to and I challenge you to remain that the people you're interacting with online are all people just like you they're gamers just like you they just out there trying to enjoy video games the same as you. they may play differently. They may look different they may come from a different background or a different skill level but they're still just gamers we have to try and rule the gaming culture and not let gaming culture rule.

We don't simply adopt the beliefs of others and start shoving them down other people's throats let's be better than that and I'm talking to myself here too I can be reactionary at times too when people come at me it's just easy and it's natural but part of being human is pushing yourself to have a new natural the baseline for yourself not just accept all the flaws that you have well. I've seen so much toxicity and negativity or the last few years I feel like it's our duty that we owe it to each other to be better in our interactions with other gamers.

Thank you guys for being with me till the end of the blog. See you in the next blog stay blessed. 

JazakALLAH!