Three Reasons the Video Game Industry Won't Be Taken Seriously Any Time Soon

Let's face it-- the video game industry is a joke. Like comic books before it, video games are often the martyr for the mainstream. With games like Duke Nukem portraying women as sexual objects and nothing more, gamers with a superiority complex even though all they are doing is playing with glorified, expensive toys, and people on message boards trolling companies as if that company ran over their dog, the industry has a long way before it is ever taken seriously. I have three reasons (but not only three) for why video games and gamers will seemingly forever be the butt of jokes in the world.

The industry provides consistent classy quality.

1) Fanboys and Trolls

Fanboys and trolls were around way before the Internet. The days of "Sega does what Nintendon't" had Nintendo fanboys and Sega fanboys beating on one another on playgrounds across the globe. With the advent of message boards it became even easier for people to make complete morons of themselves. If you are older than 18 and you behave in a manner where you take potshots at a company just to make the other side angry or vehemently defend a company that does not care about you at all at every opportunity, you should ask God to stop the ride so you can get off. There are honestly people who get off just on trolling people and will make numerous accounts after being banned time and time again to continue to troll. Constant arguments and pissing matches over which console is more powerful, laughing because you got a third party exclusive and your rival fan group didn't, and rubbing it in that Sony has low sales this generation don't do this industry any good. Grown adults acting like they're prepubescent teenagers only give a black eye to gaming. Even the press and developers aren't innocent of this. How many times have we've seen "Wii is two GameCubes duct-taped together" and "Call of Duty is a tired franchise unlike Battlefield 3" from people inside the industry? The video game arena is full of man-children, and a simple gaze at a gaming forum where discussions of games devolve into personal attacks and slander or the reactions at an E3 press conference are all that is needed to see this.

12 year old kids, or people with the maturity of one,
 should not have forum access.

2) The Hardcore Gamer

One of the most selfish and obnoxious groups in gaming is the "hardcore" gamer. Never have I been more embarrassed to be associated with this league of fools than this generation. After producing a console with hardware strength comparable to its competition, Nintendo's GameCube still failed to do well with the hardcore, even with a nice and steady library of games. With this failure, Nintendo tried a different approach towards gaming for everybody with the Wii. Now these hardcore gamers have the gall to claim Nintendo abandoned them? Seriously? Who actually abandoned who here? The hardcore had their chance, and they failed. It's not like Nintendo stopped making games for them either.

Hardcore gamers are also incredibly selfish as I previously stated. They constantly want more. They are never satisfied. "I'm going to boycott you if I don't get what I want!" When companies focus on the nontraditional gamer, they whine and moan. "Why aren't you paying 100% of your time and resources on us?" Heaven forbid we get the mainstream to take our hobby seriously and allow them to share in what we enjoy.

Or how about how complacent they are? If the industry worked like they wanted it to, we'd still be using a controller with one joystick and one button. They hate on new control inputs like motion controls because they're too incompetent to learn them. Same with touch controls like seen in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Hardcore gamers are just too lame to adapt, hate if they have to *gasp* go out of their precious comfort zones, and instead blame their ineptitude on the games/controls and not themselves, you know the true villains here. Note: I am not meaning to paint all hardcore gamers with one broad stroke. I realize there are many of us who do not behave like petulant children at all.

3) The Enthusiast Press

The group of man-babies that essentially act as another public relations branch for video game companies (at least the ones that they like), the enthusiast press often gets pandered by companies, getting free trips to foreign countries, party-like events, and free swag that could easily be worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. This goes into their reviews where they oftentimes sound overly emotional and hyperbolic. IGN is a great source of this. Who could forget the infamous "Oscar-caliber drama" passage from the Grand Theft Auto IV review? Or how about when they act as damage control for their precious companies such as defending Mass Effect 3's pitiful ending, and calling anyone who didn't like it and wanted it changed "entitled"? They not only have their hands in the pockets of the companies for which they review games for, but they're absolutely shameless in their actions. The enthusiast press is just another reason why video games will continue to be a laughingstock to the mainstream.

"You can't arrest me! This is an Oscar-caliber drama!"

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Do you agree or disagree with my arguments? Sure, it's more interesting for discussion to disagree, but I'm always open for people who share my opinions. Let yours be known in the comments section.