When Did Gamer Become An Insult?

One of the first video games I remember playing was the original Super Mario Bros. I never got further than the first few levels, but I still enjoyed the hours I spent trying to rescue the princess (who was always in another castle). I loved everything about the game, from the soundtrack to the simple story, but eventually, I expanded my game collection.

I played games about Barbie, the Ninja Turtles, Mickey Mouse, and more. Every weekend, my family would make a trip to the local video rental store, and I always ended up picking out a new game to play. My family would even upgrade our gaming system whenever a new console was released, so there was never any shortage of games to play.

My family visited arcades frequently, and I ended up developing a lifelong love of fighting games. I even saw the Street Fighter movie in theaters the week it was released. I carried that love of video games and the movies based on them into adulthood. Gaming got me through hurricane Katrina.

In college, I wrote my first essay about gaming. It wasn’t anything special, just my amateurish attempt to dive deeper into the world of the rating system and why it was established. I vaguely remembered seeing footage of Mortal Kombat on the World News when I was a child, but I remembered little about the segment. It was the first time I’d seen video game footage on TV, but I didn’t fully grasp what was going on. I decided to rewatch the segment for my essay.

When I’d originally seen the segment, I wasn’t aware of how much some people disliked games and the people who played them. I couldn’t fathom the idea of someone wanting to take away my hobby simply because they didn’t enjoy it. There even seemed to be a war on Mortal Kombat in particular, which is one of my favorite games.

As I continued my research, I found that politicians and parents also blamed video games for acts of violence, like the Columbine massacre, and they warned parents to limit their children’s screen time so that their children didn’t become violent and lazy. Video games were no longer viewed as they had been when I was a child playing Super Mario Bros., but I ignored the negativity and continued to enjoy my hobby.

During one of my relationships, I purchased a capture card intending to launch a YouTube channel with my then-boyfriend. After a volatile breakup, I kept the capture card and launch my own YouTube channel. I put little effort into the YouTube channel, as it was one of his goals and not mine. I had only made two videos when I received a comment from a woman that said, “Oh, she’s a ‘gamer girl, eye roll.”

What did she mean by that? I’d seen people attacking female gamers before, but it was the first time this had happened to me. Did she think I had a boyfriend who was playing the games for me and that we were passing the gameplay off as my own? Maybe she thought I was only gaming for male attention. Whatever the reason, she was the first of many to vocalize her disdain for my hobby.

Female coworkers often claimed the hobby was for boys or made comments about how gaming was childish. I soon felt that I couldn’t express my excitement about my hobby around them, because they always seemed to have unlimited negative comments about gaming. I realized being a female gamer was frowned upon, but I didn’t care.

I knew I would face backlash when I started writing about the way female game characters were portrayed, but I didn’t care. The first article I wrote was about Chun Li, a character who was very important to me. It got 4k views, which was the most views I’d gotten. The article received its share of praise, but there were also a handful of women expressing how much they disagreed with me. Some of them even said that they couldn’t play games because they hated the way females were portrayed in them.

While I was promoting my writing, I came across a thread on Reddit where women were vowing to never date a gamer again. I read comment after comment that called gamers lazy and childish. Some women even claimed that their former significant others could no longer hold a job after becoming a gamer. The main reason for these women’s disdain for the hobby was that they weren’t getting enough attention. I grew more disgusted with each comment that I read. Didn’t these women know about their boyfriends’ hobbies before dating them? Why didn’t they get a boyfriend whose hobbies mirror their own?

As more people delve into gaming, I thought the negative stereotypes surrounding us would disappear, but it hasn’t. I recently read an article that referred to a gamer as the worst thing a man could be. Why is that the worst thing he could be? I can think of many much worse things, but the writer was probably too ticked off by a gamer to see past the stereotype.

Now, as I sit here writing this while wearing a Mortal Kombat shirt, I can’t help wondering how gamers got such a negative reputation. When did we become lazy bums who can’t hold a job down or violent criminals? Why is it so unbelievable that a female could be interested in playing video games, and why do so many women feel comfortable telling me that I only play games to impress men? I may never know the answer to the above questions, but I know that no one is going to take away my lifelong love for gaming.

Originally Published On Medium