Game Community Appreciation Week

When: March 10-14th

Where: Here

Who: Me

Why: I feel like it

What: Appreciating what it is to be part of a gaming community.

How: Care stare!

For the past 5 years on various blogs I've had a thing called Developer Appreciation Week (DAW). Every March I tried to instill pride in the gaming community and just appreciate what developers do without all the complaining, hate, and rage.

The problem with DAW was, it was narrow-minded. It didn't encompass everybody that made games happen. Developers are great and all to appreciate, but what about the IT guys, community managers, podcasters, bloggers, lawyers that draw up NDAs, or that one guy that has a million posts on forums before the game even gets out of alpha? These are all the people that make up the development process of a game. They are the passionate and the positive in our community.

So, I'd like to spend a week talking about the really cool things that go into the community aspect of game development. I'm even planning on interviews with real people. I haven't asked them, but I'll send out my interview questions this week. No its not going to be big time developers like Smedley, Smart, Lord British, or Jacobs because they don't answer my emails. It's going to be real people that answer my emails. That doesn't mean they're any less. On the contrare mon frare, it means that person is exactly the person I want to interview; they perfectly represent what it means to be part of a gaming community.

When I did DAW I wanted other bloggers to mimic my enthusiasm for developers. Unfortunately, it never really got as enthusiastic as I wanted it to. So instead of expecting other bloggers to do anything, I really don't care if they do or don't. I'm doing this because I want to; because I want to show my application for the gaming community and what it totally involves,  not just the developers in the spotlight.

It all comes down to caring and making the gaming community I follow a better place for me. I read forums and gaming news sites like Massively or MMORPG.com (which are the best gaming writers in the world!). The community of these sites are just shit. We empower people to act like asshats with articles that only serve to anger people. We all know talk about payment models will bring out jerks. OK it is $15 a month... fuck who cares!

We let people talk about the negative things just to get clicks and add to paychecks. I love my paycheck and all, but at what price am I willing to cash it? Pitting games against each other and bringing up past failures brings our community down. I can't help that. I know now I'm just a little guy that can't change the way we as gamers, show the world we're not 12 year old boys that have never seen a pair of tits behind a keyboard.

That said, I don't mind an honest bad preview or review. I mind the baiting. The Internet is filled with assholes and gamers are stereotyped as raging morons. How many articles are written a year reminding the world how stupid gamers are and how they're influenced enough by them to walk into a mall and shoot people? Of course we know it's not the video game and it's underlying mental issues that required medical help. But of course our society looks down on mental issues in a negative way, only to punish the people with the problems instead of helping them. Again, we see our hateful society is to blame, but instead of fixing the problem, we point the finger at someone else.

I'm just one guy. I can't save the gaming community in 1 week or ever. If I don't try to do my part, I'm just as guilty as the rest. I love games and the gamers. I wish people were more positive. I love breasts too. Just sick of being ashamed of being a gamer because 90% of the gamers that are popular are negative and the only reason they are popular is because they attract attention to more negative people. The good people are too ashamed to say anything. They read silently and lurk around the Internet scared to say anything nice because of the pack of hyenas waiting for them. Sooner or later the nice people give up or join the pack if they ever hope to be anything in the gaming community. It's just sad.

I'm going to take a week to do my own thing and appreciate everybody in the gaming community. I'm going to pretend it's all unicorns with rainbow hooves shitting rose petals. It's going to be my own thing. I hope you read me that week and enjoy what I write. If you don't... Meh oh well, at least I'll feel great to be a gamer. For once I won't be ashamed of the truthful things I write. Maybe it should be called Gamer Pride Week instead?