Dear Jef Rouner,

Yes, there are some real shitty people in the games playing audience. I’ve been writing about them for the past two years in particular, and beyond. I’ve been policing them in the games I built (MMOs) for even longer.

They are not the norm, as your article would suggest. They are aberrations and accidents. Many – even most – gamers are good, standup, quality people. Some are trolls. Some are awful trolls. Some of these trolls become celebrities amongst those trolls, despite the fact that they rarely, if ever game.

The truth is, it only takes a handful of trolls to make things seem poisonous. As I’ve written before, people used to think that 10% of the population of UO was griefers. It was closer to 0.1%. Assholish behavior just rises in consciousness, and we tend to ignore people who are decent human beings.

So don’t call these people you refer to as ‘gamers’. That’s a term for good people. Go with ‘fuckwads’.