On Gamers

As we saw at the beginning, gamers are a diverse group when considering just the identity of gamers as a behavior of playing games. They are of all races, ethnicities, ages, and genders. As a gay male gamer, I can say we also come from all sexual orientations.

So let us now turn an eye to the public perception of gamers both as an identity and as a behavior.

Daily Beast’s Alec Kubas-Meyer wrote on 9/17/2014, “You see, Gamers are angry, and they’re attacking prominent figures, especially women, with slanderous claims and death threats serious enough to drive them from their homes.”

TGDaily’s David Konow wrote on 9/17/2014, “Yes, labels and stereotypes are terrible and limiting, but why deny what you are? Gamers aren’t just gamers, although there’s some who desperately need to get out of the house and breath the oxygen, we all know this, but that can apply to any obsession.”

Pocket Gamer’s Carter Dotson posted a story on 9/16/2014, “Gamers aren’t dead – but the culture is sick and needs medicine to be better. And it’s not just gamers that need to change the culture – there are plenty of good people that got caught in the crossfire.”

New York Post re-published an Associated Press story on 9/15/2014 which states, “Intensely competitive war games that blur the lines between fantasy and reality could also contribute, said Dr. Kimberly Young, a psychologist who directs the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pennsylvania.”

The Koalition’s Austin Conway posted a story on 9/4/2014 stating, “Whenever a situation “stirs the nest” many “Gamers” ban together to attack the target, the most recent “Gamers Gate” debacle is evident of such an outcome.”

Bustle’s Chris Tognotti posted a story on 9/3/2014 which states, “In simple terms, it’s best described as a long-simmering pot of male privilege, misogyny, and slut-shaming in the gamer community boiling over. Writers who’ve discussed this have often been criticized by gamers on social media for being duplicitous, or having unstated motives.”

The Week’s Ryan Cooper writes on 9/2/2014, “The gamer Taliban are typical online trolls who organize themselves on anonymous message boards like 4chan and Reddit. They often argue that gaming should be preserved as a “safe male space.” It’s probably a safe assumption that they skew white and male.”

As our first female writer, Emma Woolley writes for The Globe and Mail on 8/27/2014, “The stereotype of the all-important adolescent boy gamer persists, partially because of the entitled us vs. them behaviour exhibited by gatekeeping gamers who continually say: ‘No outsiders allowed, especially women and people who disagree with us.’”

Yahoo’s Brad Reed writes on 2/7/2014, “In some ways, of course, this isn’t surprising. Spending too much time playing games in lieu of social interaction is obviously unhealthy. But the researchers found that the same drift toward sociopathy was not present in people who played non-violent games such as Madden or Mario Kart. In other words, while spending too little time socializing with others is obviously bad, it’s much worse if you’re spending too much time engaging in virtual violence.”

All of these are recent, you may say. So, let’s go back.

The New York Times’s Adam Nagourney, Michael Cieply, Alan Feuer, and Ian Lovett all write on 6/1/2014, “[Elliot Rodger] hardly spoke, spending even more time immersed in his video game; at home, he fought with his stepmother when she told him to get offline.”

Forbes’s Kashmir Hill writes on 5/24/2014, “[Elliot Rodger] favorited more Pokemon videos on YouTube than PUA (pick-up artist) ones; the most disturbing favorites I saw in his YouTube videos were eight minutes of the gory Game Of Thrones “Red Wedding” episode and Philosophy of the Knife, a graphic film about Japanese torture during World War II. Thrown in among the video game and cartoon videos, they almost seem planted for dramatic effect.”

Rolling Stone’s Janet Reitman writes on 7/17/2013, “There was never room for everyone around the tiny kitchen table, so the [Tsarnaev] would engage in epic games of manhunt, or play video games on the giant TV in the living room, while their parents ate and socialized.

CNN’s Matt Smith writes on 11/26/2013, “By late middle school, Lanza “did not like noise and confusion and began to have issues when he had to walk to different classes,” the report states. He didn’t want to be in a crowd. He started receiving tutoring and home schooling. By ninth grade, he was “shutting himself in the bedroom and playing video games all day.”

“He was so enormously isolated,” Jordan said. “His mother was not allowed in his room. No one was. So this didn’t happen overnight. This was years of him slowly withdrawing, and we have that history going back to fifth grade, sixth grade.””

We’re still pretty recent! Let’s keep going back, shall we?

NBC News’s Lindsey Tanner writes on 6/22/2007, “A leading council of the nation’s largest doctors’ group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.”

NBC News’s Winda Benedetti writes on 4/20/2007, “Video games. They were to blame for the dozens dead and wounded. They were behind the bloodiest massacre in U.S. history.

Or so Jack Thompson told Fox News and, in the days that followed, would continue to tell anyone who’d listen.”

The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas writes on 5/20/2006, “Games that many would find tasteless and insensitive have sprouted up in recent years. Two years ago, you could play as Lee Harvey Oswald in a game based on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Another game that, according to its Web site, allows players to “shoot Mexicans crossing the United States border,” has been making the rounds.”

The American Psychological association posted a release by Drs. Karen Dill and Craig Anderson stating, “’One study reveals that young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games,’ said psychologists Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., and Karen E. Dill, Ph.D. ‘The other study reveals that even a brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants.’”

The Hartford Courant’s Valarie Finholm writes on 12/29/1998, “A recent survey by the organization found that children and teenagers who play video games do so an average of 7 hours a week — yet most parents are oblivious to the content of the games. Walsh said a national survey by his organization found that only 40 percent of parents say they routinely look at industry ratings before buying or renting a game.”

Research goes back as far as 1983 in a piece published by PersonalityResearch.org and by Thomas Kooijmans which states, “Continually playing games in which the only positive outcome is the violent demise of enemies could positively reinforce antisocial behavior and perhaps even cause such a physiological difference over time. Some researchers have claimed that exposure to antisocial behavior can be a cause of antisocial behavior in others (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995).”

And how does the general population outside of the press view video games?

On 2/27/2013, Harris Poll published a new polling where they found:

Of the 2,278 adults questioned in the survey, 58 percent (roughly 1,321) said they believed that violent games contributed to violent behaviour in teenagers and young adults. 47 percent of American adults have no confidence that age ratings can keep violent games out of children’s hands — less than a third believe that they can.

On 2/7/2013, Public Policy Polling published a poll that revealed that 67% of Americans think video games are a bigger safety threat than guns. A majority of all cross-sections of the population, all ages, genders, and political affiliations, agreed that video games are a larger problem than guns. A poll from Reason-Rupe, however, shows that only those 65+ believe that violent video games should be banned.

Edit: On 2/11/2015, television show Law and Order: Special Victims Unit aired an episode where Reina, a female developer, was harassed, kidnapped, assaulted, and abused by three white male gamers. The associated reason? The white gamers had lost touch with reality in a misogynistic fit of toxic masculinity. They were unable to differentiate reality from fantasy. They were mentally ill.