Reading this gets me so angry each time. How is it that many like this guy recognise that sexism, racism, homophobia, and death threats are prevalent and identifiable traits of "Gamer Culture" and accept these as negative, but is ok to just accept it and go against anyone who wants to change that?
A large part of the fighting game community pulled that one after some arsehole Tekken player harassed the fuck out of a female player on a Capcom sponsored stream.
'Rape threats and harassment are part of the FGC!'
Well guess what? Your community fucking sucks.
It's what happens when a bunch of self entitled manchildren decide to form a group to "stop" others playing, when really, they've been playing all along. I've never identified myself as a gamer, even long before the internet was a big part of life or the Xbox Live trollfest started I didn't like the label, it had negative connotations back then as being a loser, but now thanks to these idiots it's an extremely negative and hate filled label that I will never use for myself.
I feel that, as over time games have become more cinematic and are probably more mainstream than movies are now, these morons I mentioned have slowly become more and more butthurt that their precious "secret hobby" is slowly being eaten up by normal people and of course women, and they're not special snowflakes anymore. You could even argue that the word gamer isn't that relevant anymore as so many people qualify for the title.
There are many reasons for this, prevalence of the internet in our lives making "unknown" groups of players suddenly appear and the rise of social gaming, success of the Wii with groups that have never played games before, etc etc.
It's not even exclusive to gaming, other hobbies like Cosplay have had problems with sexism and harassment, and elitist self entitled idiots thinking they own the hobby, and others can't join in.
10 years of Xbox Live, which is an extremely negative environment, dominated by fps and sports games, the main genres for self entitled idiots to troll the night away, has also contributed to this mindset. I find it extremely upsetting when I play sometimes, and I get bullied and insulted. But I am a boy, if it's this bad for me, what must it feel like for the rare female voice or name online?
Another reason for all the butthurt backlash is women themselves, but that's because because of the prevalence of the internet, women are actually finally being heard as a large part of the audience, and what they would like to see in games, especially in recent years. This drives these men insane as they see it as women ruining their precious secret hobby all of a sudden, plus the mindset developed from years playing on xbox live, added to the sexist mindset many men have, like "girls can't play football" etc etc and other nonsense make them act like this.
I must mention that the FGC (fighting game community) is built around tournament players, who play in tournaments for money, so tension is high and trash talking does and will happen. Unfortunately women are rare here too, and as tournaments get bigger and bigger with larger and larger prize money and women and even kids are playing in them more and more, incidents like these are happening more often. A large amount of the influx of players come from Xbox live too, so there's that. But it is being stamped out by tournament organizers wherever possible.
But with all that being said, the positive side of the FGC is there too, it just doesn't make headlines.
I just wanted to clarify that, as I know people can confuse the FGC with playing fighting games in general, or being a fan of Street Fighter for example, while there is some spill over, the negative view of the FGC certainly doesn't represent me, even if I watch tournament streams or play online sometimes.