"You must chill! You must chill!"

--John Cusack, Say Anything...

There is a trend in our industry hat a lot of gamers are unwilling to talk about. Most people outside the industry who have heard of RPGs tend to see gamers in a fairly negative and tereotypical light: unwashed, lacking in social skills, obsessed to the point of mania with the games - you know the image. The perceived "dorkness" of RPG fans has been a constant part of role-playing's image, and yet is often cast aside or brushed under the rug.

Gamers tend to immediately bristle at the mention of "RPG dorks" and most role-players resent the judgmental opinions of those who have never touched an RPG. In that way, gaming is not unlike computer programming or Star Trek, two other hobbies/careers/pastimes that suffer under the distorted perceptions of others.

But to simply dismiss the stereotype out of hand, as many gamers do, ignores a nagging problem that the industry has always had. Like any hobby, there are people who take gaming too seriously, and the impressions they leave do a lot of harm to an otherwise wonderful pastime.

The worst aspects of it tend to surface as a sort of ultra-competitiveness. You can find symptoms of it quietly hovering beneath the edges of the hobby. Everybody's had the nightmarish experience of encountering a fellow gamer who's got a 400th level paladin, and wants to compare him point by point to everyone else's character. Conventions abound with chestbeating trash-talkers that make Deion Sanders look like Emily Post.

At GenCon, I passed a twelve-year-old on a crying jag because someone twice his age felt the need to utterly crush him during a Magic tournament. Like it or not, this sort of thing is part and parcel of the gaming industry. To deny that is to deny plain fact, and ignores a root cause of its bad image among nongamers.

So where does this sort of thing start, and what can we do to stop it? Here is where people start getting into trouble. For many, the answer is simply "Well, games attract people like that," or "Gainers never have a grip on the real world." Such explanations are not only untrue, they're dangerously stereotyping, and the vast majority of gamers suffer because of it. For me, the cause lies in the different ways people approach gaming, and what they each hope to gain from the experience.

Gaming is, by its very nature, competitive. Role playing, while ostensibly "cooperative", grew out of wargaming, and thus has always had combat (and the "win/loss" stigma that combat implies) as a integral part of the experience. Computer games thrive upon player improvement and on "pushing the envelope" further than before. And anyone who thinks CCGs aren't competitive has spent too much time amongst the Amish.

In this aspect, gaming is much like professional sports. With the right attitude and a healthy sense of perspective, it makes gaming a lot of fun: it allows people to blow off steam and spend a few fun-filled hours with people whose company they enjoy. On the other hand, if left unchecked, it can develop into something nasty. People with low self-esteem and/or a need to prove themselves to others can use gaming to boost themselves up at the expense of others. And gaming, unlike professional sports, doesn't require a lot of practice and devotion to become heavily involved in.

The solution to this problem lies in the way individuals approach gaming, and as such, depend upon individuals to change their way of thinking. We need to remember sometimes why people play games in the first place, and what presumably attracted all of us to gaming in the first place - it looked like fun. Roleplaying, card gaming and computer games always had the enjoyment of those who played them at heart. And we can all keep that in mind, we can do a lot to eliminate the negative stereotypes plaguing the hobby we love so much.