Stanley Pierre-Louis, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, at Games for Change 2023.
Stanley Pierre-Louis, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, at Games for Change 2023.
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How gaming can rise above its stereotypes | Stanley Pierre-Louis interview

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 12 min

Games are for nerds. Games are too violent. Games ruin your grades. Games breed toxicity. And only antisocial teenage boys play games.

We’ve all heard the stereotypes, and the Entertainment Software Association’s CEO, Stanley Pierre-Louis, is trying to discredit them as ancient myths. I talked to him about that and the lobbying group’s latest report on the diversity of games and gamers at the Games for Change 2023 event last week in New York.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.