As everyone is piling on to chastise the appalling Pixels, the movie itself is emblematic of a wider cultural problem within Hollywood; it despises gamers.
Despite the fact the movie should be called "Voxels", Hollywood’s continued fumbling of gaming properties is based around the main issue that it can’t bear to see gamers shown in a positive light. Much of what makes Pixels excruciating to watch, bar its appalling script, is how it treats the protagonists as being utter failures on account of their gaming expertise and skill despite the fact it is supposedly crucial to humanity's survival in the context of the movie's narrative.
The few times Hollywood stumbles on a moderately decent gaming movie, such as Tron, The Last Starfighter or maybe even Wreck-It-Ralph, they are often quick to correct matters by shutting any real continuity down. Even with the success of Tron: Legacy, Disney famously won’t be following up with a sequel.
This ire directed at gaming comes in two parts; the first is the fear of competition. Games are a tactile medium and film isn't, so games have an edge that movies don't. The second issue is one of social status; gaming is constantly blamed for all manner of societal issues. From violence to sexism and an almost endless litany of other faults, gaming is this generation’s bogey man and Hollywood is happy to capitalize on that, likely as it feeds into undermining the competition element as well.
Shaming gamers, not only in movies but also in real life (as many Hollywood stars are terrified of mentioning they play games), is something that is culturally encouraged on the whole.
The result of all this is that gamers and the medium itself has to prove its cultural worth, this is also where the whole “games are art” debate originates.
Thankfully there seems to be a movement from within gaming to thwart this rigged setup, as Ken Levine recently and quite eloquently pointed out, “Waiting to have your medium be anointed as "art" is the saddest kind of "Senpai chose me!"-ism. Just do your thing. Love it. Hope others do.”
It is clear Hollywood won’t come around anytime soon to acknowledging the worth of gaming, so trying to get its approval is an obvious waste of time.
Instead it makes more sense to not only openly acknowledge this cultural bias from places like Hollywood but also simply to continue playing games.
Gaming is a massive industry and ultimately if Hollywood wants to make a gaming related movie that will draw in the crowds they need to come around to realizing the type of people that will want to see it.
It's not all doom and gloom though, the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis recently admitted she is an ardent Street Fighter player, she uses Cammy in case you're wondering, and took her family to the recent Evo 2015 event. So some public figures are willing to come out as gamers despite the culture of shaming that exists.
In the meantime, avoid Pixels it really is as bad as everyone is saying.
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