To many seasoned pros of gaming and its culture the jerk-wad gamer is a common and inescapable foe, one which makes every level headed and rational gamer quiver with fear. We often get lumped together in one big sweaty pile with every other gamer/stereotype by the media these days and these kinds of gamers give us a proverbial black eye from their irrational behaviour. You know the kind I am talking about the annoying people on Xbox Live that say nothing but racist slurs, the hyper active 12 year olds (you must note that only 12 year olds and proper adults play online) that force you to mute them before they make your ears bleed and last but not least, the ranting angry gamer.



Of all these stereotypes and generalisations (both terms I hate but they are necessary evils in this world) the angry gamer causes me more chagrin than any other. This particular type of gamer, although prolific before the internet forums and/or message boards, is more prevalent in the web 2.0 world than ever before. Having more of a say should really be a positive thing but as we all know it can severely backfire into our collective faces. There will be one gamer saying things like “ARRGHHH EVLENTY!!!111 Jack Thompson is wrong and I’m going to cut his balls off then eat them with soup OM NOM NOM NOM!!!1113453”on any given message board, or at least something to this effect. Now I’m not saying that I expect perfection from the gaming community, far from it, but some people could do well to find some tact before they next log on to their computer.

In recent years the gaming culture has been under fire from many different lawyers, so-called experts and what can only be described as crazy people (or a mix of several in some cases) about the increased violence and inclusion of adult themes in a still fledgling entertainment sector. One thing you must remember is that the previous generation still think of videogames as Nintendo and Mario, bright happy colours and child friendly images. Parents look to the media for advice, albeit a flawed way of parenting it still has its advantages, and see “Super violent game with sex in it goes on sale soon” and get horrified by the thought of their little Jack soliciting sex from a bunch of pixels, then killing the pixels afterword’s to get his money back (Jack was ever so prudent). I am not saying they are right I am trying to say that some parents lack the interest or education to actually find out for themselves that games have matured since the day-glo days of the mid-eighties.

This is the point that the angry gamer stereotype comes into play, for he is the bearer of all things true and pure, except that stash of porn he likes to call Betty, riding his high horse and dousing the uncouth peasants with hot frothy knowledge juice. Except they don’t, what they do is just start shouting at people illogically and, in the majority of cases incoherently, much like a frustrated local would do to try and get a foreigner to understand how much of a douche the local actually was. The one thing that this ‘type of gamer acheieves is cementing the tarnished view of gamers as raging sociopaths with little to no interpersonal skills and a penchant for that 12 year old girl next door(who he suspects played against him on Xbox Live the other day).

If you are going to try and combat the mainstream ignorance of any kind of speciality then please do it in a calm, cool and logical way. Never fly off the handle at people because they haven’t grown up on the same games that you have, don’t claim they have relations with your dog because they can’t see at first why games and movies are seen as completely different beasts and in the public eye can share no commonalities of themes. Think things through before you commit them to the annals of internet archives, if they even sound remotely irrational re-word it so it is not so offensive or condescending. If we all try to do this from time to time, maybe one day our image will improve.

This brings me to my final point in this already-too-long cblog: the upcoming episode of Podcastle. If you do listen to this amazing Destructoid podcast you will have heard last week’s episode and suffice to say it was pretty damn amazing, hard to top in fact. To top the last feat of podcasting they have managed to get Jack Thompson (of legendary game violence hating fame) to semi-agree to come on the show. Now I not for one second think he will turn up, and if he does he will basically ignore anything the crew say. This fills me with more dread than anything else as we all know how angry Jim can get. We all take it in good jest because we know he is kidding about but to outsiders this would be less apparent and the last thing we need is Jack Thompson running around brandishing clinching proof that we gamers are not fit to play games because the crew couldn’t control themselves. Please for the future of all gamers, do try and be considerate and as inoffensive as is possible.

P.S: In before the flames. Before anyone one says “your preaching to the choir” think about how many members of the Destructoid community can be classed as Angry Gamers.