I think a lot of it has to do with the games being popular rather than violent, though I guess you could say in the current culture of gaming, violent games are

I think a lot of it has to do with the games being popular rather than violent, though I guess you could say in the current culture of gaming, violent games are more popular. For example, parts of the Pokemon community are extremely vitriolic and relentlessly criticize every new entry in the series. As a fan base gets bigger, its easier for people to dehumanize each other over the internet and thus be meaner to one another, where as smaller fan communities don't have that problem because you see a lot of the same names around and maybe even have an easier time talking to the actual devs. It's less of an anonymous mob, so people are less terrible to each other.