The Hostility of Online Gaming - AKA: It's Only a Game, Why You Haef 2 B Mad

[Quijibo69]

Most online multi-player games always felt the same to me. You only need to play one game and you pretty much played all of them. Same with modern racing games.

 

[c-no]

it's as if everyone forgot that talking shit while playing vidya has been going on since the dawn of online consoles. who cares if someone called you a fag? call them a fag back.

It makes one wonder how many are even aware of this trash-talking being around long before we even had MOBA shit.

 

[It's HK-47]

Strangely enough, after doing a significant amount of rifling around in my library to run through all of the old games that I had but never really toyed around with all that much, I found one game where the community is actually very polite and patient, even when the entire match goes to absolute Hell in a handbasket: Payday 2.

I've been fooling around on there for days now, and even during high-ranked Shadow Raid runs where-in we flub it up and lose a half-hour of high-stakes sneak-stealing over and over and over again, everyone just seems to shrug their shoulders and go, "Well, shucks." I really was not expecting that, I'd have wagered good money that Payday 2's community would have been awful this late into the game, but for whatever reason everyone's just uncommonly pleasant and there's still so many people playing it that there's never a problem wrangling up a group for just about anything you want to do.

 

[Vex Overmind]

We wouldn't have those rage videos if everyone in online gaming was friendly.

 

[Zaragoza]

Older/classic games are often great places to find nicer and more mature communities.

You're absolutely right on that one.

When I booted up CS:S for the first time in like 6 years, I noticed that the community for Source are a bit more mature and patient than GO, when I reinstalled GO on the other hand, the fucking community are at each other's throat constantly accusing each other of hacking and being all belligerent towards each other, with those fake ass passive aggressiveness on the chat log.

On a side note, it's pretty funny when a girl starts talking on the server, the entire server starts talking too.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Strangely enough, after doing a significant amount of rifling around in my library to run through all of the old games that I had but never really toyed around with all that much, I found one game where the community is actually very polite and patient, even when the entire match goes to absolute Hell in a handbasket: Payday 2.

that is until you're XXV-100 then people will kick you because U MUST BE HAXORZ
prepare to see
[hosts username]
IN OPTIONS

when you're XXV-100... A LOT!
but otherwise, the community is pretty nice.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

Gaming gives people a rush of adrenaline similar to sports because they're putting all of their focus into competing. It isn't physically taxing, but your stressing out about the same fundamental factors. The difference is, in sports, you're also exerting physical motion and tiring your body out. It's exercise and gives you a more immediate venue to run your competitive energy into the ground.

Gaming doesn't do that, so when people lose or are losing, they're stuck with all this pent up adrenaline they don't know what to do with, thus the salt commences. This is why a portion of competitive fighting game players either exercise or take up some other hobby that teaches patience in order to better handle that rush of energy.

 

[RJ MacReady]

I will say there's been an obvious pushback from developers against online shit-talk in recent years, for several overlapping reasons:

1) Gaming accumulates more press than ever, which makes publishers especially sensitive to troubling PR from any drama that goes public.
2) Current hits are overwhelmingly multiplayer titles designed to appeal to wide audiences, and the scale of their success is record-breaking.
3) Shit-talk in online gaming has been conflated with harassment, sexism and racism due to gamergate autism, which makes it a lightning rod for yellow journalism.

League of Legends is a clear example. It's always been notorious for its community but Riot has become noticeably aggressive about handing out bans for chat behaviour. Then there's Microsoft's recent terms of service update promising to bring moderation to XBL, and whether it's lip service or not it indicates the general trend from the industry to be outspoken against "toxicity".

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

When I was in high school I played Call of Duty multiplayer with my history teacher, which was a pretty good way of mitigating trash talk because I didn't want to get detention for calling someone a faggot.

 

[Wallace]

Gaming gives people a rush of adrenaline similar to sports because they're putting all of their focus into competing. It isn't physically taxing, but your stressing out about the same fundamental factors. The difference is, in sports, you're also exerting physical motion and tiring your body out. It's exercise and gives you a more immediate venue to run your competitive energy into the ground.

Gaming doesn't do that, so when people lose or are losing, they're stuck with all this pent up adrenaline they don't know what to do with, thus the salt commences. This is why a portion of competitive fighting game players either exercise or take up some other hobby that teaches patience in order to better handle that rush of energy.

What do you think about the social competition aspect of it? Winning gives you social standing in your circle.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

What do you think about the social competition aspect of it? Winning gives you social standing in your circle.

I'm not some sort of social scientist or anything, so that part would just be me spit-balling. I will say that it's a bit more complicated than most other social environments in that the conditions of being a well-respected member of that community are a little more vague than other walks of life.

People don't just want you to win, they care about how you win. Are you tier-whoring? Is your gameplay exciting to watch? Do people like or hate your confidence? How do you treat other players? Do people like the things you have to say? Do people look to you to develop the competitive scene?

There's a ton of extra caveats to being a respected competitive gamer that are taken into consideration whereas in conventional sports or other competitive spheres such as chess or talent competitions the only real demand is that you're nice to people and talented. Gaming is inherently social and about interacting with people, however, so this potentially could have more to do with it than anything.