Video Games, Movies, Comics, & Pop Culture

This week, The Escapist published an article with a strange double headline. The page’s tab header reads “The “Gamers” Image is Dead and We Should Bury It” while the article headline itself reads “”Gamers” Are Still Dead Y’all.”

Taylor Hidalgo starts off saying that gaming is alive and well, but “the basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls image others have of gamers is still very troublesome. It’s an image we need to resist.” So is this image dead and we should bury it or is the image alive and we should resist it? Which is it?

And for that matter, an image we need to resist? It’s an image that games journalists have been pushing as the primary representation of gamers for the past 3 to 5 years, if not  longer. If the gaming community is supposed to present a better image, doesn’t that include the journalists who are supposed to have their fingers on the pulse of the gaming community? Countless gamers have voiced their stories of how gaming got them through depression, stopped them from committing suicide, helped them through the awkward period of being a social outcast in school, or how they became more sociable through socializing with their online friends while gaming.

Instead, they feature article after article about the worst they can find about gamers. They push a single side of gaming communities: the very one Hidalgo says is troublesome. Meanwhile, writers like Liana Kerzner are ignored, their voice unwelcome in publications. Liana is one of the few I find on Twitter who frequently speaks on the positives of gaming culture and the accepting attitude the community has offered her through the years.

There are countless critics of games and the gaming community, yet so few first and foremost describe themselves as video game historian and preservationist Patrick Scott Patterson does: as an advocate for video games. Rather than miring himself in the negatives, Patterson most often focuses on the positives or, more often, the facts of industry history.

Journalists refuse to cover these positive aspects of the gaming community. It runs contrary to the basement dwelling goblin they so frequently push as the de facto image of gamers. It also doesn’t earn outrage clicks and drive traffic like controversial articles do, which may explain why inflammatory headlines and accusatory articles are more commonly seen.

A Problem With Vocabulary

I find it ironic that Hidalgo talks about a problem with vocabulary as part of the struggle when journalists, supposedly wordsmiths themselves, seem incapable of considering their audience when choosing their language for articles.

Just this week, Ubisoft announced there would be a mode in Assassin’s Creed: Origins that had no story and no combat. The purpose of this mode was to allow players to simply wander the game world and take tours of historical information to learn about ancient Egypt’s places, cultural traditions, beliefs, and practices. It’s essentially an interactive museum mode, which Assassin’s Creed has always had to some extent. Being able to read entries about various locations has always been in the series, this just removes interruptions for players to focus on that if they choose. It’s an optional mode and one I think could prove interesting after completing the story or, for some, to explore before the story or even separate from the story entirely.

However, articles are presenting it as if Ubisoft is exploring the idea of Assassin’s Creed being “fun without the murder,” as though the series may shift towards a model that removes combat entirely. Nothing I’ve seen from Ubisoft’s quotes or Ubisoft employee tweets suggests anything of the sort, yet journalists choose language that heavily leans that direction.

I have seen a lot of gamers give knee jerk reactions to these headlines, thinking the game is being dumbed down, everything that makes the series what it is (assassin’s gonna assassinate, after all) will be removed. I roll my eyes at these comments and point out it’s an optional mode that just removes the triggers for combat. It likely took no time to implement and alters nothing of the game’s basic premise. I suggest they consider it more of an add on mode rather than exploring a way to alter the series as a whole. I get far fewer responses still raging about Ubisoft ruining the game when discussing it as such.

Assassins Gonna Assassinate

I understand why gamers are on edge. The games media falls over itself to praise games like Gone Home, which gamers refer to as “walking simulators” since there’s no game play beyond wandering around and clicking on things. If you read a few articles, games journalists make it sound like these games are the future and should be replacing violent action games as a whole. The journalists will quickly turn around and say they never suggest games shouldn’t be made, but it’s simply not true. It’s been stated often and repeatedly that games not meeting with the approval of progressive politics should basically dwindle until they’re a footnote in gaming history. Again, ironic that journalists are so unaware of the language, tone, and vocabulary they use that they can’t understand defensive responses from the very audience they write for.

And if gamers are supposed to speak to others without using language that a non-gamer wouldn’t understand, why are journalists constantly writing articles with strings of academia phrases that only make sense to third year gender studies majors? Why use a five dollar word when a ten cent word will suffice? Telling a gamer to approach a game from the critical lens of feminist analysis in regards to cishet heteronormative standards with white colonial influences is just as fruitless as Hidalgo’s examples of “frame perfect links, expert jungling, getting mana screwed, pocket Mercy, No Mercy runs, TAS runs.”

The ignorance of the media in casting accusations while turning away from any mirror directed at themselves astounds me and only succeeds in these writers and their audience talking past each other rather than with one another. While we’re on the topic of using words wisely, why attack “Gamers” as an identity, group, or image when you want to challenge the “public stereotypes of Gamers” instead? That’s something everyone should be able to get behind; Gamers are collectively so much more than that.

Are Journalists Out of Touch? No, It’s the Culture That Is Wrong.

The next part of the struggle, Hidalgo says, is gaming culture itself.

“It’s hard to push into games from the outside because there is resistance to the concept of glossaries. More pertinently, those who need them.” Yet new players have entered Final Fantasy XIV with no knowledge of the series and/or no knowledge of MMOs in general and praise the welcoming community in the game. Forums frequently have beginner guides with, yes, glossaries for those who would need them, not just for MMOs, and there are all sorts of wikis online now generated by the communities.

With gaming growing into the largest entertainment industry, reaching across multiple age groups and a vast array of new players from every age, journalists are surprisingly blind to opportunities before them. If new players, young and old, are coming in unaware of the different cultures within gaming (and there is not actually one single “gaming culture” as RPG communities differ from FPS communities differ from MMO communities differ from fighting communities), why are the games sites not growing a subdivision for these new players? Articles written expressly for people who are picking up a controller or the mouse and keyboard for the first time, regardless of age?

Remember I mentioned Patrick Scott Patterson being an advocate for games? He’s written for a games publication you’ve probably never heard of: Little Player, a bi-monthly magazine for kids. This is a publication specifically for kids, reviewing games rated EC, E, and E10+. I’ve not seen the big sites mention this publication, nor have they emulated it.

Rather than demanding gamers accept that all games need to be designed for all skill levels, why not write for different skill levels? The recent Dean Takashi Cuphead kerfuffle made me realize that if my mother decided to try a video game, where could I tell her to go read about them that would make sense to her? Why are there not journalists specializing in articles aimed at children, aimed at adults, or even seniors who are interested in games for the first time? This idea hit me more profoundly just recently as a friend and I replayed Power Rangers for SNES. It’s not a hard game, but it felt like it was a beat ’em up aimed at kids and people who never played that type of game before. It was a perfect suggestion to play for someone new to the genre before they step up to Final Fight or Double Dragon and then on to Battletoads, for instance.

Now, granted, I do agree that modern games do better with their multiple difficulties than having entire games for different skill levels and I think gamers who despise these options are doing a disservice to their community. If someone isn’t good at video games, but enjoy playing on easy mode in the solitude of their own home, it’s not hurting anyone. If they play easy mode in a fighting game until they are completing entire play throughs perfectly, then start normal to do the same and work their way up to the hardest difficulty, how is that bad? If anything, it’s training to “git gud.” But where are the articles aimed at introducing the different difficulties and advising these new players on which is best for them? Not just commenting on them, in a review, but divisions of sites dedicated to new players diving into the differences of these games, their difficulty level, and introducing them to learning the ins and outs?

If the gaming community accepts different subforums for different aspects of their games, do journalists really think gamers wouldn’t accept a wider variety of skill levels being reported to if the reporting sites were divided into similar categories?

Hidalgo goes on to say that things “that widen games to audiences formerly in the outside of the culture read as some kind of betrayal. Those who feel passionately about games seem to want to keep them close, locked into a familiar shape with familiar communities.” Hidalgo doesn’t give specific examples, so it’s hard to say what gamers are resisting without wild speculation. However, Gamers frequently complain about retreading the same thing on an annual basis and go nuts for innovative new presentations of familiar ideas or fresh new IPs as a whole. Valiant Hearts has a 10/10 on Steam. Okami is still beloved 11 years after its release and the HD PS4 release has many gamers excited to revisit the artistic world. Journey was praised by gamers and press alike.

There’s Room Enough For Us All

The problem we run into is that journalists so frequently push these things that “widen games to audiences formerly in the outside” as replacements for games that are enjoyed rather than new additions to the landscape. You don’t see movie critics saying art films should outright replace the summer blockbuster. And much like Hollywood, the games industry needs their mindless blockbuster tentpoles as well.

If Ubisoft didn’t have revenue flowing in from the annual Assassin’s Creed or Tom Clancy SomethingOrOther blockbuster, would we have gotten Valiant Hearts or Child of Light from that same studio? Journalists don’t seem to acknowledge the concept and as such, I feel a lot of gamers overlook the same when they also complain about “yet another Call of Duty” or the like.

I keep repeating myself that there’s irony in this article and journalists refuse to look in the same mirror they want gamers to gaze upon. But once more, if journalists want gamers to settle down and let new arrivals to the community enjoy games that aren’t violent or take new approaches to gameplay, those same journalists must also allow some gamers to enjoy their boob modded Call of Duty games without accusing them of hating real women.

In-Groups and Out-Groups

Hidalgo goes further in critiquing the “culture that feels those already playing belong to the in-group, and out-groups trying to join either need to fold themselves quietly, or leave. That games don’t belong to anyone but those already in.” This is human nature and something you’re going to find within every community.

Should one expect to enter an Amish community and want them to start using smart phones to text you when the next community event is?
Should one expect to enter the reggae scene and want more heavy metal guitar riffs in the music?
Should one expect to join a romance novel book club and expect to focus on Japanese shonen light novels?
Should one expect to join a local Japanese Cultural Society and expect more focus on tribal cultures in the rain forests of South America?

No, to join any of these communities, the out-groups are expected to fold into the community, to understand the community before injecting new ideas. Why should gamers not expect newcomers to enter and integrate before raising questions and considering change?

And that strikes at the heart of a lot of the problems. Gamers are being told they’re toxic quite often by people who again and again indicate they have no understanding of the community they’re criticizing in the first place. This causes that community to push back, perhaps sometimes too harshly, which leads to accusations of aggressiveness.

Sexism in the Community

Hidalgo gets a little more specific with the problems in the gaming community, claiming women “have a hard time pushing into game communities without the expectation to just tolerate the sexism already present.” I’ve been playing video games since I was in kindergarten and I’ve never been exposed to sexism that women would have to accept. I started playing MMOs with EverQuest, joining a guild that was run by a woman. I played World of Warcraft for ten years where the guilds I was in had single women, married women (their partners often playing), with raids having a mix of men and women and some guilds and raids also run by a female guild leader. In college, my friends and I hung out with one of the biggest gaming nerds you’d ever meet and nobody thought her odd for it. I’ve been to gaming conventions and gaming meet ups where nobody ever said one word about women in a negative way. Most gamer guys want, more than anything, a partner that shares their love of the hobby, so why would they actively want women out of gaming?

I’m not going to claim there is absolutely no sexism in gaming and just because I’ve not seen it directed at the women I’ve played alongside doesn’t mean other women haven’t experienced it, or even the women I’ve played alongside haven’t. Women get hit on in games, sometimes far too aggressively, and are even attacked when they reject the person coming on to them. They can be treated as less capable just for being a woman, but again, I’ve not see it happen in all my years online.

Slut, bitch, and other slurs are hurled too often, I’ll agree, but I don’t think it’s fair to treat this as an exclusively gaming culture issue. This is a wider issue with anonymity and a lack of empathy in online interactions. You see it everywhere online, from debates over film to what toppings belong on pizza. Some subset of people take things too far and while the gaming community can take steps to be better than other online examples, it feels like they’re often treated as an outlier rather than an average example of an issue with society online as a whole.

There’s also the fact that people are unnecessarily cruel to men online as well. The same people who will be blatantly sexist towards women are the same types who will be blatantly cruel towards men for any perceived weakness and will attack what they think is most vulnerable, whether it be race, orientation, or masculinity. I’ll see gaming journalists on Twitter rant about toxic masculinity and men seeing women as sexual conquests turn around and insult men as being “virgin losers.” In doing so, they imply a lack of treating women as sexual conquests makes a man somehow inferior, which seems to feed into the very thing they claim to be against. It’s weird.

Fostering a Positive Community

As for how to address this situation? Attacking gamers as a whole isn’t going to solve anything. Instead, if journalists want to contribute to positive change, they need to be discussing ways developers have encouraged good behavior rather than complaining about bad behavior. This is where developers can take actual action in fostering more positive communities.

Take Final Fantasy XIV, for example. After 10 years of World of Warcraft, the community was often lamenting to being more and more toxic. This happened as the game became more and more anonymous. Queueing for dungeons with people from other servers you’ll never see again for the rest of your gaming life removed any concern for behavior where server reputation previously carried some weight. Players who were new to a dungeon often stayed silent and just hoped nobody noticed they had no idea what they were doing, even after Blizzard added a dungeon guide in the game. If you screwed up, you expected to be assailed with raging accusations of poor performance, being a “shit player” and the like.

Moving over to Final Fantasy XIV, the same cross-server anonymity exists, yet the behavior is largely praised by new players as a completely different experience. The FFXIV dev team have implemented positive reinforcement. When a player has never run content before, the group is notified someone is new to the dungeon. I most often see happy responses because running someone through their first time gives veteran players bonuses for completing it. Players are often more patient to explain fight mechanics as a result and I frequently see reassurances not to be too worried. I’ll even see players give tips to new players about roles the veteran is not currently playing, but have played at length otherwise. At the end of dungeons, players can give commendations to players who did well or were helpful.

Likewise, harassment is dealt with harshly in FFXIV, with cancelled and banned accounts being a real possibility for repeat offenders, but I personally think the various subtle positive reinforcements have more impact.

I’ve been in 8 man dungeons where my friends and I made up 5 of the 8 and thus had majority control. We had one new player, a healer who wasn’t new, and a DPS rounding out the group. The DPS was constantly bad mouthing the new player for mistakes. We tried to ease the tension by talking, but they remained aggressive, so as the majority we kicked them. The healer, who we didn’t know, immediately thanked the group for it, even though they weren’t the target of the abuse. We got a replacement, explained the situation and continued to try the fight. We got closer, but spent our entire 90 minutes attempting and failing to win. In the end, everyone was still happy with the progress and the new player was very grateful for the tips and for sticking with it. We disbanded thinking they had a solid understanding of the fight and would be able to clear it in the future. I’ve seen similar situations where I didn’t have the majority vote being with friends, but the player screwing up stayed and the player bad mouthing them was kicked out of the group.

You’d never believe this sort of behavior happened in any gaming community if you listened to the articles online.

I’m not personally familiar with it, but League of Legends implemented a “Player Reform” system and, while its success and methods can of course be debated, it’s an example of developers looking at how to foster improved experiences for the community rather than simply saying the community is bad. Blizzard has been evaluating what it can do with Overwatch to foster a more positive community as well.

Racism in the Community

Moving from a focus on women, Hidalgo notes that “Minorities who speak against the overwhelming lack of representation are just called racists themselves for failing to accept that whiteness is the default, and any deviation is somehow confrontationally political where overwhelming underrepresentation isn’t.” Once again, writers and readers speak past one another rather than with one another. Many gamers welcome minority characters and a wider diversity of protagonists, but the critics who propose such things so frequently do so by insisting existing characters should be erased, removed from future games, and replaced with the new minority.

Or worse, that the existing character is somehow bad because they’re white. Their tone indicates that simply being white is itself wrong. Any time a game doesn’t have a minority protagonist, it’s “problematic” and entire articles are dedicated to the grave injustice rather than simply noting potential ways a change in protagonist might affect story possibilities or would have fit the period better. The atmosphere has become so confrontational and so bullish that many gamers have become skeptical of attempts by developers as pandering for journalist approval rather than deeply developing these characters, which only makes things worse!

Gamers do have a point, though: there’s a difference between representation and token representation. I also have an issue with utilizing minority protagonists only for said protagonist to be supported by a bevvy of stereotypes, such as black characters being commonly joined with hip hop soundtracks or typical “gangsta” costume design and such. A young black man can’t be into heavy metal or classical music, or dress in comic book t-shirts rather than sports jerseys?

Yes, some people take their resistance to these characters too far and some are likely genuine racists themselves. You’ll find bad apples in every orchard, but that doesn’t mean they’re the standard. Again, journalists tend to focus and report exclusively on negativity and ignore any positivity from gamers.

Fantasization of Sexual Femininity and Toxic Masculinity

The last point, however: “Fantasization of sexual femininity and toxic masculinity is the expected normal, and any push for alternatives is seen as invasive and unwanted.” Without getting sidetracked again about vocabulary and how these phrases come across more like buzzwords now days, the problem, Mr. Hidalgo, is many gamers don’t accept the “toxic masculinity” academia that you’re claiming to be a negative in the first place. I’ve seen claims that a male character killing demons is violent power fantasy and thus toxic masculinity itself. But I’m not sure how would one prefer bloodthirsty demons hellbent on the ruination of all mankind be dealt with if not a bladed weapon to the horned skull.

As for fantasization of sexual femininity, well, that’s not present in every game on the market either. Some are overly exaggerated and ridiculous and even gamers laugh about the silliness of some of them. But they also don’t agree that it’s harmful to society and no studies have conclusively suggested they’re wrong. I won’t talk in depth about this aspect because it would probably take at least another 10,000 words as it first requires agreeing on what constitutes negative sexualization of femininity versus acceptable sexualization. Again, we dive into vocabulary that’s not exactly aimed at the average reader, so I’ll leave this to the previously mentioned Liana Kerzner’s upcoming Lady Bits video series (Disclosure: I backed the series on Kickstarter as I’m interested to see what comes from Kerzner’s approach to the subject topics).

Game Designers Can’t Be Open With The Community

I will agree when Hidalgo says “Honesty about design is read as manipulation, and developers are punished for getting out of line or designing games in “wrong” ways,” though. There are vocal people in the gaming community who have a hair trigger to attack developers and designers and while I find them foolish, I struggle to completely blow them off and blame them for being defensive when journalists and even some developers have actively bred a hostile environment against them. A lot of the time, what Hidalgo may see as aggressive punishment, I see as lashing out over being hurt. “Hurt people hurt people” as the saying goes.

The claims Hidalgo quotes from Charles Randall state that game developers would share everything gamers want to know about game design if not for the toxic community has a grain of truth with a smear of bullcrap. As Liana Kerzner has noted, developers have to be careful what they say because if they dare say something interesting, it becomes controversial, and PR reps are going to keep them gagged from talking whatsoever. The smallest statement can be dragged up years later to smear a developer to force them to make public apologies at what should be a great moment for them, their team, and their career. It’s not just the gamers that developers have to be careful around, it’s the press that’s eager to tear them apart for saying anything not deemed progressively correct.

The Games, They’re A Changin’

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Hidalgo that gamers insist games must continue to be the same as they have been for 40 years. The fact that games have grown and spread as much as they have, to a wide range of diverse types of games, proves this is simply inaccurate. What many gamers are opposed to is that the way games are, and have been, are inherently bad and that they, as people, are somehow inferior human beings and inherently bad for enjoying these games.

While many critics will claim “nobody wants to take away your games,” they turn around and write article after article about how these games are harmful and need to be forever abandoned. Journalists are not approaching gamers in good faith by simply covering new games with different ideas so much as detailing why games that are loved are “problematic” and need to be changed. If developers and journalists would come to the community from the stance that there’s room for both kinds of games, for all kinds of games, a lot of animosity would calm down with time. Then criticism of specifics can be addressed without the overall paranoia. Note, I say “with time.” It’s going to take some time for games press to rebuild a trusting relationship, even if they present an olive branch to the community and start working to build those bridges.

While I can fully agree we need to accept that the criticism about the sexuality built into games like Bayonetta or Lollypop Chainsaw is valid, I fully disagree that “No one is saying these games are inherently bad” because that’s precisely what the journalist-praised Feminist Frequency videos repeatedly stated, as well as explicitly stating there should be no games styled and developed in this way in current year. It doesn’t help that in criticizing games like Bayonetta, or Ivy from Soul Calibur, the critics demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what the game’s story and presentation is commenting on. Bayonetta and Ivy are equally decried as sexual objectifications by feminists while simultaneously praised as strong examples of empowerment flaunting female sexuality by….yes, feminists. If different schools of thought among feminists don’t agree, how can we expect gamers who aren’t steeped in feminist theory to accept that these characters are unquestionably “problematic?”

As for the “skimpy nuns, bikini-clad martial artists, exposed-breast ninjas, and The Witcher sex scenes” creating an image that the games community doesn’t resist, I ask why should the games community resist the image? The games community isn’t presenting this image as representative of them as a whole, YOU ARE. Journalists focus on specific games, or even single scenes in a single level of a game, and treat them as representative of every single game on the market. Not to mention the double standards of sex scenes with female companions being decried as “virtual porn” while sex scenes with male companions get articles gushing over which guy is the hottest.

You don’t see the entire film industry labeled as toxic because questionable pornography exists. You don’t even see the film industry condemned by a majority of publications as promoting toxic masculinity because summer action movies simply exist. Entertainment Weekly hasn’t labeled all of HBO’s programming toxic because of one scene from Game of Thrones. Instead, writers in that medium acknowledge there are a wide range of movies. Why can’t writers in the games media do the same?

A Look In the Mirror

Mirror, mirror, I’m not sexist. But can I prove it to a journalist?

One thing I can fully agree with Hidalgo on is “Dispelling the toxicity does mean taking a hard look in the mirror.” But that’s something the journalists who want to lay the entire blame squarely, and exclusively, on the gamers have refused to do for at least the last five years. Actively ignoring positive communities and gamers within them does nothing to help present the maturity within the community as a whole. As a result, I don’t see the gaming community as responding with aggressiveness, but defensiveness.

Games journalists’, and their sites’, hands are not clean and until you accept that you and yours are fostering a hostile atmosphere with the gaming community, there’s not going to be an end to the unproductive devisiveness. Journalists have to start coming to their articles with a mentality of discussion rather than one of aggression towards their readers. If you stop attacking them, they may stop counterattacking in defense of themselves and their hobby. Once these gamers feel they can stop looking over their shoulder, they can start to look in the mirror at themselves as well.

Let’s Bury The “Gamers” Stereotypes

Yes, the “worst aspects of the “gamer” image need to be universally examined and challenged,” but they need to be examined and challenged in good faith, not blanket statements and accusations stated as fact from on high. And while these “challenges need to be accepted as a part of the culture,” the press needs to report on valid criticism of the criticism as well, accepting that counter points to these challenges are just as valid as the challenge itself.

Where Taylor Hidalgo hits the nail squarely on the head is this:

“The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough, and that’s keeping communities at their most angry. This culture needs to start fighting an image it’s never fully earned but still has. That image is holding gaming to an image that has been in the deathbed for years, but needs to finally by buried.

Games have already changed, and will continue to change, and holding onto an aggression-centric culture isn’t helping.”

He’s totally right. The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough – because their arguments and their points of view aren’t evaluated at all. We’re at a point where criticism is viewed as the truth and any opposing view to that criticism is invalid. The idea that “the truth is somewhere in the middle” has become a phrase of derision, as if it’s somehow a vile concept to explore.

What’s most frustrating about this article’s conclusion is that this image of the angry white straight male gamer is INDEED an image it’s never fully earned but still has, and one that the gaming community has tried to fight for years. The problem is their most high ranking allies, the gaming press, turned against them and perpetuate that image as the only representation of gamers. How can gamers fight this image when the only exposure from the media is to twist everything into this image? How can this image die if it keeps being resurrected over every possible complaint?

Stop necro’ing the stereotype, guys!

If we’re going to finally bury the image of gamers as a “basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls,” then the gaming press has to stop making that the only image they claim exists. The gaming community has raised hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for various charities through the years. They go out of their way to help other games. They are contributing members of society. But if the gaming press continues to focus exclusively on negative stories, weaving negative narratives, and depicting gamers as hateful, nothing the community does is going to change that misconception.

The way gamers have been treated the past few years makes me think of a line from Zootopia: “If the world’s only going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy, there’s no point being anything else.” If the gaming press is only going to portray gamers as mean and vicious people, how many gamers have given up on trying to be anything else? The press has, in a way, engaged in psychological warfare against gamers and I’ve seen more than a few admit on Twitter that they’ve essentially given up on trying to prove they’re better.

And that’s a pretty sad thought.

If the gaming press wants the community to be better, they’re going to have to accept that they truly are better than their worst. The gaming press has to stop judging gamers by the worst actions of some while judging themselves only by their own best intentions. Your readers aren’t evil. The majority are not sexist or racist or bigoted.

If you want them to show you their best, give them the chance to be their best. Spotlight them at their best. The more you call them monsters, the more you encourage them to give up and accept the role along with the title.