My thoughts on what's happening in the gaming community:
With everything that's happening in the gaming scene, what concerns me the most is the fact that gamer are questioning other gamers if they are really "gamers". This is good and bad for me personally. Good, because people now feel that being called a gamer is kind of a priveldge and a title one must carry with credibility. Bad, this is because we gamers ourselves are creating an elitist mentality in which we don't want to recognize people we think aren't gamers.
What the hell started all this? There are numerous reasons why this is happening but let me give you five reasons why I think this behavior in our gaming society nowadays.
1. The rise of mobile gaming
Mobile games since its inception has always been called casual games. No gamer before ever treated their cellphone as a gaming device because we had better toys called the playstation, xbox and of course the personal computer.
Up until the rise of mobile esports titles such as mobile legends, AOV and the transfer of Hearthstone to Mobile, competitive games were non-existent in this platform thus stigma of casual gaming in mobile phones remain to this day. I think those games changed this platform and some gamers who are used to playing other platforms that I mentioned above haven't fully accepted the idea of mobile gamers being part of the gaming community.
On the other side, the mobile gamers have the same mentality as when they see people who suck at mobile games even though they came from pc or console, they'll easily tag someone as a pretender. I see this a lot. The truth is, not all gamers can be good in multiple platforms thus judging someones' skill in one game for me is really unfair as he/she might be good in a pc game but that doesn't mean that that will translate to console and mobile and vice versa.
In the end I think what's creating this is the competitive drive of gamers to be categorized as the upper echelon of the gaming society. I don't think this is a bad thing because we are wired to be like this. All games have ladders, rankings, points and other measures to see if where you are in the gaming pyramid. I think what's happening here is a result of that mentality and that mindset translating into the gaming society.
2. The facebook gaming wave
In the days of twitch, gamers were streaming in front of other gamers while in this era of facebook gaming. Streaming games has turned into a trend but this content is not just in front of gamers but it's in everyone's newsfeed. I think that has contributed to all the toxicity as it is an effect of a culture shock from the people who are not used to seeing people gaming in their feeds.
I really believe that this will pass. I've been in facebook long enough to know that wild reactions always exist when things change. It's just a simple reality that we must accept. Not everyne can cope to change as easy as others and not everyone is open to change like others. What i'm saying here is that all these streams in fb is a huge change, in my eyes it's for the better as people now see that gaming is cool, mainstream and it's happening. You can't stop it, no one can, that's what i saw from day one and i don't really get it why people are so surprised that gaming has turned into an industry.
3. There is no one true definition of what is a gamer?
No academic study has been conducted yet of what a gamer is and the layers of its society. I think gaming has become so big that we have to recognize that there are numerous types of gamers already. Before these were the type of gamers.
1. PC gamer
2. Console gamer
Now, there are so many gaming categories i personally don't even know how to count. On top of my head:
1. Pro-gamer
2. Game streamer
3. Casual gamer
4. Mobile gamer
5. Pc gamer
6. Console gamer
7. MMO gamer
And many many more..
At one point the gaming society has to understand that even inside the "niche" that is gaming, the whole gaming community is still diverse. It's composed of different type of people who have different gaming behaviors.
My point? That this whole mess is because we are lost in translation of what a gamer actually is. This is the reason why we hear the accusations like "di ka naman gamer" a lot because in the middle of all this, we forgot what a gamer is.
4. Sando streams
You have to accept the fact that when Bianca Yao started calling her group sando gang and continously wore sando on stream.
Streamers realized this... It works.. because of that the whole streaming community were brought to three school of thoughts.
1. I'll apply what she's doing
2. I will not recognize its effectivity and say something bad about it because i might lose viewership if beauty becomes the currency so i'll make it a point that people should think skill should be the only currency.
3. I don't care
Whatever your position is on this matter, or if i may have missed some school of thought. The competition for viewership has created this stigma that when you're pretty you're just using your beauty for the views. All this skill being the currency for streamer credibility has came from nowhere but the people who are skilled.
Simplehan ko at tagalugin ko. May nagtanong pano mo po ba masasabing magaling kang streamer??
Sabi ng maganda: "Pagmaganda ka"
Sabi ng magaling: "Pagmagaling ka"
Sabi ng entertaining: "Pagentertaining ka"
All of them are right it's just that people tend to want their currency to be the currency to define what a successful streamer is because they want to discredit their competition and that's capitalism. Sa mundo na to obviously kaya magaling ang nagiging currency ng streaming kasi yung mga magagaling d makakuha ng views and they feel like hindi dapat yanun yung nangyayari kaya sinasabi nila "bakit kayo nanonood sa maganda lang". So in effect nagiging ganito yung society. Don't get me wrong, i personally am neutral about this i'm just trying to explain the roots of this behavior.
5. Gaming is big and it has officially entered mainstream
Despite lahat ng drama kaya nangyayari lahat ng to kasi malaki na tayo. Congrats sating lahat. We got here. Now it's time to fix ourselves. Kung tinapos mo to comment Fix and your thoughts on what i wrote.
