Videogames and stereotypes

When I personally think of a video game I automatically visualise the male gender. I picture a young, white, anti-social male playing the game as we all talked about within the lecture. Not only that, but the characters within the game I think of as male. For example the character James Bond in the video game, well James Bond. The masculine stereotype surrounding gamers is captured in negative terms by the audience. It is presumed that ‘geeks’ and ‘losers’ play games during their free time. I think that this type of concept is supported within the media, especially in films where visually the audience will relate and stereotype the character playing the video games. All it takes is for one film to portray a character in this way, and many more will follow suit. Contradicting this however, I feel that the negative stereotype surrounding video games is changing. An example of this is shown in the film Rolemodels where at the ‘cool’ party that is being held, gamers are seen in the corner playing whilst drinking and socialising at the same time. I then personally viewed this message as the characters are popular and social therefore contradicting the original negative stereotype that is associated with gamers. It makes me question, who came up with this concept and why is it all of a sudden ‘cool’ all of a sudden to be a gamer?