10 Biggest Mainstream Misconceptions About Video Games

3. That Gamers All Act Like Badly Behaved Children

Some clarity on that headline, it's already established that gamers aren't all kids and aren't all adult males, but the point around this one is that there is a perception that gamers act like badly behaved children when they're playing online. There are plenty of stories about Call Of Duty or Halo matches full of people screaming down microphones, enacting 'hilarious' motions towards your enemy's digital corpse or intimating towards their mother's sexual promiscuity, but thankfully most players aren't like this. Online gaming can bring out the worst in people but it's beginning to bring out the best in them too. For instance, if you are invaded in Dark Souls and another player challenges you to a fight, the community has an unwritten rule that you must acknowledge your opponent before you fight. This often manifests itself as your opponent making their character bow in a strange form of fantasy sportsmanship. Elsewhere, team based games like Team Fortress or Borderlands encourage players to work together, not just scream at each other or their opponents. Both Microsoft and Sony introduced feedback systems in their online systems which allows players to report badly behaving players and eventually ban them, so it seems that people are learning their lesson or being taken out of the ecosystem. Either way, it makes online play better for the rest of us.