If you have ever played a computer game online, you will know that the online gaming community is one that is full of a lot of egos. Many players will big themselves up at every opportunity. So why do these gamers have such an attitude?
Well if you look at the kind of people that play these games, it is predominantly young males, ie people in their late teens and early twenties. These people obviously have many friends, both online and offline, so they want to be the best they possibly can, and not look bad in front of their friends.
This means that they will do anything they can to do well at the various different games that they play. They may buy all the latest guides that are being sold online, or they may simply hang around on Facebook and various different computer game forums in order to pick up some useful tips and strategies.
This is perfectly normal to some extent because we all want to excel at certain things, whether it's computer games or a certain sport, for example. You could say that conquering a particular game is a lot easier than conquering other types of activity because you can find cheats, hacks and strategies online.
The thing about multi-player gaming and playing games on the internet is that you can get to see your name in lights if you do well. Other gamers will respect you, and of course your friends will respect you as well if you are always beating them. You may even become semi-famous if the game is really popular and you become one of the best players.
However I think it's important to realise that the people who do really well and brag about their achievements may seem to have big egos, but this may not necessarily be the case.
When you do something online whether it's playing computer games or just visiting various forums, it is easy to hide behind your computer screen because no-one knows who you are in a lot of cases. You're just an anonymous name. So you can pretty much say whatever you like. You can make fun of other players who aren't as good as you, and boast about your achievements.
However it's important to realise that a lot of these people will not be like that in real life. In the online world they can be anything they want to be, but in real life they may well have a completely different personality. Indeed in my experience many people who I meet in real life are not anything like what they seem in the online world, and this applies to gamers as well.
So the point is that you shouldn't form opinions about people based on how they act online. If you play a particular game online, you will encounter a lot of people who seem to have massive egos and quite a bit of attitude.
You may well have a similar ego yourself if you are particularly good at a certain game. However in real life they are probably really friendly people who are completely unrecognisable from their online persona.
James Woolley runs a blog that features articles on computer games, and a variety of other subjects. Click here to read a full WoW Crusher review to learn how you can master World of Warcraft, and to read this BF3 Dominator review for help mastering Battlefield 3.