Illustration by: Leandro Stavorengo
Illustration by: Leandro Stavorengo
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Making the gaming industry more emotionally intelligent — and bigger as a result

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 14 min

This article is part of GamesBeat’s special issue, Gaming communities: Making connections and fighting toxicity.

When I was growing up, gaming was new. For many years, it was stuck in a subculture of nerdiness. It was toxic. It was full of bullies. And there weren’t many women. It was clearly in a subculture off by itself.

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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.