The current gaming community is growing rather quickly these days. Compared to the early 90s where it was somewhat of a "hobby" or something to waste time with, it's easily able to hang with other big mediums like Movies/Television/Sports. That with the world reconizing it that way or not. But because of this, we suffer the bad end of the deal by still looked at as just a "hobby" or the butt end of the joke. Even still being blamed for silly things like murders and bad influences because "The child was a avid gamer". Let us also not ignore that as this has grown, it's brought the unintelligent folks to make the community bad as a whole. Things like being completely stupid online, talking down to females who play games or literally ruining the fun for others with their idiotic behavior. While this can will all stay for sure, we can at least help in trying to reduce the problems greatly. If you've taken enough interest to try and figure out the connection of the header and this blog (which is nothing more than this being steps.) Then read on and be sure to comment and add to the steps.

1 - Online Gaming


A lot of the problem with the community lies easily with online gaming now. Anyone who's played a multiplayer at a healthy lifespan will know you'll cross paths with the people who are ready to talk trash or complain about losing all the time. Or a said tactic being used against them is cheap. I myself loved online gaming back in its early days for consoles. (which for me is Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast.) As hacked as PSO was on Dreamcast, I still enjoyed it. The community as a whole was quite friendly and both legit and hackers were more than willing to pass off free rares or items to lower levels. Now i'm more than willing to not bother hooking up my Mic whenever I play random people on any online live game. Fighting games suffer from Ragequitters who are usually casual gamers ready to make any excuse to keep that perfect win record or not have a pitiful loss. There's not much the community can do here except ignore and not help out with said problems. Adults get away with acting like a 5 year old bully online and some of that could be avoided. But this also leads to the next step:

2 - Game companies

They're as big of a problem as the community if you've been paying attention. Console wars all of a sudden is a bigger focus with current systems. It was always around (at least the Nintendo/Genesis era.) But it's grown now to be expected and when a new console is announced/dropped, someone has to ask the question: "So who do you think has the better system?". Granted, it's bound to come at some point, but it usually ends with people throwing out fanboy remarks. I'm looking at this more at a casual community rather than the serious community as I feel most of the problem right now is the casuals. Either easing their way in thanks to said system (usually the wii) or on and off player. But to be back on topic, Live has a lot of people running around. I'm not afraid to say some are complete assholes. But apparently Microsoft would rather bother someone with a "Offensive gamertag" rather than deal with half of the people being asses or just downright stupid in games. This has always bothered me. Each time I saw someone post on the front page about Microsoft banning or forcing someone to change their gamertag because someone reported said name. Yet there's more than enough people on Halo bashing someone because of something more serious. As I've never been a victim of the racial card, I've had people play games and get hit with it. Disturbing? I'm sure to some.

Then there's companies running off at the mouth. Jim Sterling's words on all 3 companies a few weeks ago pretty much sums up where this is going. Nintendo's flaunting their money about because the Wii is such a hit, Sony continues to be bad at lying to their audience, and Microsoft continues to ignore its audience. Then there's Namco Bandai that runs with the nickle and dime operation this generation. "Hey guys lets sell Katamari at full next Gen Price and lock up some of main stages. OR lets release Soul Calibur 4, give them 1 star wars character per system, then release the "unlock code" about a month later. On top of that, lets give 360 Tales of Vespira then make a ball grab and release for the PS3 plus extra characters! (Replace Tales of Vespira with Eternal Sonata if you feel that's better.)

3 -Fanboys/Fangirls



The fanboy/fangirl term has changed so badly that it's no longer just for the super hardcore fans, it's pretty much something of a whiny little kid who doesn't care about any other system he doesn't like/buy/appreciate/etc. While there are some fans out there that are at least open to other opinions, it's somewhat of a uncommon site. How to improve on this? Fans in general need to open up and realize people have opinions just like they do. If I don't like said game I don't need you to argue down my throat on why you hate me or why I suck. If you want to get me interested or rethink my thought on buying a game give me more facts with supported opinions that aren't biased. This always amazes me. I like all systems cause I love games. Be a fanboy of gaming not a fanboy of said system and only that system. You're alienating yourself from your type of people because they don't agree with you. Makes no real sense.

[b ]4 - The community in general[/b]



We're all gamers. We all generally love the same thing. If someone needs help or a push in the right direction, help out. It helps keep us all interested and possibly another cool person in general. We all joke on things be it life/games/whatever. Just as long as we don't get another Wiisucks or something of that sort. If someone's out of line online or in real life, step up and say something. You could be stopping someone from needless flaming and trolling. As it's impossible for everyone to like everyone, people can change if they're willing to listen to others. Someone can be mean and rude online but be one of the coolest people in person. So don't hesitate to be friendly in general.

There's many things that can be worked on but these are just some of the things that pop into my head when it comes to "games" and "the community".