Very early Article I did on the dangers of FanBoys

The most frustrating thing about being a gamer is when people do not take you seriously because of that fact. C'mon, how long have games been around? 20 years at the least I think. On top of that, the industry raked in more profits in 2006 than the film industry, shouldn't that qualify it as a major form of digital media?
Apparently to conservatives and so called "protectors of the innocence of American children" it is not. Or how about the fact that the average age of gamers is 18-30? Nope still doesn't count to the media. Again, everyone says it's a guys thing, but the ESA has stated many times that 38 percent of gamers are girls. It feels like critics only look at our hype over certain games coming out, or the mass conventions, and of course Grand Theft Auto. I mean if it wasn't such a good game and a staple of the industry, I might even consider saying it is one of the worst things to ever happen to the gaming industry with all the controversy its brought along with it. However, as the media typically forgets, GTA is an amazing game that innovated the sandbox genre and basically made a name for itself overnight and has continually sold excessively well ever since.
However, through recent talks with Dr. Michael Hoechsmann, whom you should know as having recently been smashed by gaming media for speaking out on how the game industry continually chooses a war theme for video games. Mind you I am not saying that I agree with his opinion, because I personally believe that conflicts like war allow games to develop the emotional extremes of their characters and further a sense of struggle in their stories. Yet for some reason, he was heralded like another Jack Thompson by us(me included at first). One of the things he said to me was that it was a unique experience to see 130 comments saying he was an A**Hole on a report that didn't even represent what he said correctly. For future reference, I have an upcoming post where I have a full interview with him and how a few wrong words landed the gaming community against him but that is for later since I'm still talking to him. I mean the only reason I am in contact with him was because I was also outraged when I read the article on game politics and sent him a less than nice email where I was quite literally a jackass. However, as it turned out when he replied to me(very quickly I might add), his words had been twisted and he was unfairly represented( the point of my next post or upcoming post).
It proved to me that we are just as failable to media as the people who oppose everything we love, and whom tend to insist bluntly with very underdeveloped research that violent games are bad for you and should be censured.

Now let me take a step back and say that I still think us gamers have a huge leg up on the competition and more than one individual has learned not to cross us, but that's because we have the internet. It's familiar to us and many people who come from earlier generations havn't spent much time on it and many politicians are afraid of the rallying power that it represents.

However, most of the representation we get from discussion on the web is one of division. Tell me you haven't been on a forums site( I know i experience it on gamespot all the time) and been shouted down by some nameless person for liking Gears of War better than Resistance or some other similar situation. It's natural to want to fight back and I can't tell you how good it feels to finally win and curse off your opponent when you discover he is 12 . However, the fanboys do need to stop! They show a level of immaturity thats beyond me! You can't just sit there and ignore Metal Gear Solid 4(which I am proud to say that I fully understand the storyline of) just because it isn't going to be on the 360 and vice versa. If you ask me, video games are beyond the point where you can sit there and shame the industry by saying "you like Sony more than anything else and that you won't ever even play a 360 game because it isn't the playstation and that makes it bad in your eyes", blah blah, it's an interactive media form and a story telling medium now; and if you really want video games to be taken seriously then take them seriously yourself and have respect for your fellow gamer despite what their opinions are. It doesn't mean you can't have favorites, I mean I know that the 360 is above and beyond my chosen system, but that doesn't mean that I think Sony and the Playstation suck either. It's just that I have seen fan boys shoot down valid arguments about Japanese game developers falling behind just because they thinks it's a veiled insult at Sony. Gamers already have the bigger picture than their opposition, but we need to look bigger still in order to win the fight and establish video games as a common activity and not a harmful one.

Just to tell you, I don't think I am in any place to be telling people what to do, but I did make this blog to tell people my opinion, and by god thats what I'll do.

It's just so hard to fight for video games when you have to fight gamers along the way.

- Ichi