(incoming some rambling. If this feels too off topic, signal it to me and i'll delete and keep it for some other occasion. This is also somewhat of a big opinion piece)
What I find extremely curious in all this is that "gamer culture" and "gamer" that journalists like to blame today didn't really stem out of the will of old video game players. But mostly by publishers, console manufacturers and lo' and behold, video game related media.
When I was a kid, there wasn't much of a concern about game culture, nor was there a real want for one. It usually limited itself at "hey, did you play that ?" or "Oh man what did you think of that bit" or whatever bad game/good game came about, a bit of console warring of course, and lot's and lot's of pokemon and bomberman for me.
If anything, the gaming group was very similar to what the tabletop/RPG/larping group was and still kinda is today: Sure we had our magazines and gatherings, but mostly it stayed as some geeky, nerdy sub "thing", occasionally target of the media like tabletop was, but it didn't go much further than that for a while.
The key difference for me is that, while tabletop and roleplay stayed relatively the same in scope (it grew larger but still keeps being this "niche" thing compared to other medias and hobbies), games grew large because of the money involved. Around the early to mid noughties, with the boom of big consoles like the PS2, and then later on, the Wii, games were "in". Publishers and console manufacturers started to spin this image of the cool new "gamer", and media followed suit, because it also allowed them to be "legitimate". They would be no longer journalists for a geeky nerdy hobby but respected for "covering a new art form".
So suddenly we're told that there's this culture, and gamers and gaming is great. It's no longer for children, it's the art movement of the new generation. That's when we started seeing more rebuttals against the likes of Jack Thompson who constantly attacked video games, asking for games to be taken seriously. And for a very short while, it was kinda just like that. And "gamers", or rather the people who used to play games before kinda rolled with it, while they didn't necessarily ask for it. Because hey, games are getting a bit more popular and accepted, but as long as we can keep playing them, no so sweat. Even though it meant that a bunch of journalists started speaking for us. But at the time, no one really cared
But thing is, the general change in internet media, and games journalism started to change. It wasn't just enough to cover games, they wanted to be respected. Moreso, they wanted to be respected by people outside the medium. Social issues started to be all the rage. Key personalities started to rise, in both the media and the indie scene. But to really get that respect they wanted, they had to get rid of the old image. More important, they had to get rid of "old gamers", or "the old guard" as they started calling it recently. Because who wants to be associated to nerds anyway if you're trying to appear legitimate. And for a few years now, there's a confrontation that started brewing, as people who initially didn't really care about gamer culture in the first place are started to be painted in quite a negative light, reminiscing for most for their school years. We're back to being "gross" and "awkward" and "weird" and nerdy, all in a bad way. We don't fit in the progressive narrative, and we're ruining the "culture" that they claim we created.
Funnily enough, if you go on /v/ for example, they really don't like the idea of "gamer culture". In fact, most of them HATE this stuff. They don't want to be associated with any kind of culture of association, they just care about good video games (or ranting at bad video games, or your taste in video games are shit and you're only having fake fun, jesus christ why aren't you playing 10/10 GOTYAY you...oops, got distracted). Of course, not gonna deny that there are anti feminists, racists, and whatever bigots you might think of. I have yet to find a single group of hobbyist that doesn't. My father who has been a journalist for most french-swiss newspapers for decades still has to face the same kind of dumb people that we see today in games media.
But most of them don't care, don't want to care, and don't want to be told what to care about, especially for something that they didn't really want in the first place.
So now we have a weird simultaneous movement of almost a dozen game media who, in the space of 2 days, are all trying to say that gamer culture is dead or dying, and gamers are dead, and try to paint "us" in the most pathetic human beings that could possibly exist in a 1st world country.
If they want to kill gamer culture, sure, fine, go ahead. I think it's mostly their mess in first place. But I find it a bit distasteful to avoid responsibility of it in the first place.
I hope this was not too long or dumb. English ain't my first language, plus talking from a personal view point and I PROBABLY said some incredibly dumb stuff. If so, do point it out (politely please) and i'll "eat crow" as I think it's the saying here
EDIT: I'm also realizing that I'm unjustly throwing every game journalist under the bus here. And I have to point out that not everything is bad from what came of games journalism. For example one of my fav articles, and it was from kotaku of all place, was about the state of Japan Studio at the end of the 7th gen. It was really really well made and I usually recommend it to people curious about SCEJ. And there are some voices I actually like to hear like Jim Sterling and Yahtzee from the escapist it did help in getting the indie movement popular and for that I am grateful
