Games are ubiquitous. I don’t know if they’ve quite eclipsed movies and TV as the world’s entertainment medium of choice but they’re certainly close. Pretty much everyone plays games, to a greater or lesser extent.

Which is why I think it’s slightly unusual that a.) people tend to refer to “the gaming community” as a whole, and b.) tend to position it as something weird/edgy/underground/geeky/pick your adjective.

Now don’t get me wrong– gaming communities exist. Obviously. These, however, tend to be focused on a game or series, a genre, or a company. Or they’re centered around some other sort of common ground: a blogosphere, an idea, or what-have-you.

These communities have one base thing in common– a passion for games– but after that, you’re dealing with a very wide range of individual people with differences in opinion, taste, and so forth. And I think that sometimes, everyone forgets this. Players forget this. Companies forget this. The “non-gaming world” (as it exists) forgets this.

Just as one can’t make sweeping generalizations about any group of people, one cannot make sweeping generalizations about “gamers”. For example, not all gamers like DLC and microtransactions– but not all gamers hate those, either. Some like them a great deal. Some have complex opinions on them.

Likewise, not all gamers play Call of Duty or WoW or TF2, but some do. Not all gamers dress up and go to cons, but some do. Not all gamers think Portal jokes are still funny, but some do.

When you have a group of people that is this diverse in tastes and interests, you’re going to have a lot of differences in both opinion and background. And that’s a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, stereotypes exist, and so depending on who you ask, “gamers” all do this or “gamers” all want that. Even we, as game players, are guilty of making these generalizations sometimes. It’s okay, it’s a part of human nature. But I think the world as a whole would do well to try to remember that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

…anyways, not sure where I was going with that. I just thought it might be an interesting subject to toss around. I will tell you one thing that all these different communities have in common, though: friendships (and more) are forged in them. Heck, Mister Adequate and I met on a video game forum seven years ago, which explains how a couple of kids on opposite sides of the pond got together in the first place.

And that’s pretty fantastic.