I would love to be optimistic about this, but I don't think the solution to this is going to be "creating a consistent set of standards and rules across multiple multinational companies".
In my opinion, some of these games are bound to create toxic situations when playing with randoms. Take a game like League, where a single player that's underperforming can cause the entire team to lose. This dynamic is core to the game, and it's the root cause of toxicity.
Compare that to a game like Counter Strike, where an underperformer might not drag their team down that much, and there is an option to kick the person from the team. The game is still winnable -- it will be harder, but it would not be impossible like in League.
Also, surprised not to see Valve in this list. Dota 2 and Counter Strike are still pretty big titles, even if they haven't made a game in a while.
I'd really rather not have video game designers and video game journalists dictating their versions morality to me.
I'll bet this will turn into the usual identity politics nightmare that ultimately caters to a tiny fraction of gamers while worsening the experience for the majority. If this were such a massive problem, millions of people wouldn't be spending billions of dollars and hundreds millions of man hours playing these games.
In the instances which are the subject of this article, I am sure you're correct. My point is that in-game behavior can be decoupled from behavior in the real world. I've seen in-game bigotry between factions in MMO's, and while I'm sure many of these people are also prone to such behavior in real life, others are role-playing; and although the behavior may be considered toxic, it may seem "fake" to the participants (and some politicians have argued in the past that "fake" murders in video games are also toxic).
I've come around to the idea that role playing racism/sexism in gaming is just a dodge. It's the "just a prank bro"/"can't you take a joke?" of online shitlording. And the vast majority of the stuff that goes down in these games doesn't even fall under obvious role playing -- it's just abuse.
I agree with that. I am not trying to defend bigotry. I think there is room to point out that many people engaged in abusive behavior don't perceive their own actions as abusive. It could be valuable to understand how these people perceive such interactions, and how they might be presented with an alternative viewpoint that may help them to eschew behaviors involved in any harm they could unintentionally be causing others.
As for people who intentionally cause harm, that's a very real issue which I was not addressing with my above comments.
" I think there is room to point out that many people engaged in abusive behavior don't perceive their own actions as abusive."
It doesn't matter if they don't think it's abusive or not. It's still abusive, and they need to be informed of that. If, after that, they amend their behavior, then great. They've learned and grown as humans are supposed to do. But if they continue to insist on the behavior, then they're abusive, full stop.
I agree fully. My initial comment was simply a reaction to the idea that getting racism out of video games would be a first step on the road to getting it out of politics. I think it would be absolutely desirable, but I don't see the issue as one of serial progression. I am afraid it may not have such a causal link that cleaning up some games would lead to cleaning up our politics. Many of the people acting abusively in games may be unwittingly participating in behavior that is encouraged by a smaller set of malicious actors who also influence things outside the virtual world.
> I'd really rather not have video game designers and video game journalists forcing their versions morality onto me.
Unless you're using your own servers for the game and they're still doing this, they aren't really forcing you to do anything. They're their servers, so they go by their rules. If you don't like it, you can just, y'know, not play the game.
I was going to agree that forcing was a less than ideal word choice, hence my edit, but it occurs to me that we've invested time and money into these games, only to have rules potentially changed on the whim of developers. They're not exactly going to issue refunds to suddenly unhappy players.
Moreover, when these developers have access to the minds of hundreds of millions of people, including children, there is a degree of cultural forcing involved. These developers' ideas of right and wrong are potentially influencing society, and this is something that non gamers have little control over.
At the very least, journalists have a responsibility to recognize that toxicity is not universal. One could argue that there is potential for priming young people toward obscenity laws and nanny statism, when they are conditioned to look toward authority for resolution of all problems.
Farfetched, perhaps, but I personally believe that people need to learn to deal with such problems on their own, because external solutions are not always available or enforceable. This could easily have unforseen consequences.
> I'd really rather not have video game designers and video game journalists forcing their versions morality onto me.
You know what, I would.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want these same people regulating speech or whatever. But I do want them regulating their own userbases. I do want moderators on HN enforcing the HN guidelines, just like I want Blizzard to enforce the "Blizzard guidelines" in their games, whatever they may be.
And honestly, the fact you think this "ultimately caters to a tiny fraction of gamers while worsening the experience for the majority" tells me you're part of the problem; you're probably often toxic to other players (even if you don't notice it), get your account muted/locked out/whatever, and then think that you did nothing wrong and everyone's in the same boat as you.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen this. People who think their behaviour is OK, who think they're not making the experience worse for other players. Then they wonder why they got banned. They go on the game's forums, subreddit, etc and complain "[studio] is banning people randomly!". And then some fed up dev from the studio pulls up chat logs and reveals some disgusting behaviour.
> If this were such a massive problem, millions of people wouldn't be spending billions of dollars and hundreds millions of man hours playing these games.
Thousands of companies are spending millions of dollars fighting that problem because it's affecting their players' experience, which ultimately affects players' willingness to buy and play the studio's games. Once again, that you think they'd willingly cater to a "tiny fraction" of their base, is absurd and gives a glimpse of your true nature.
>And honestly, the fact you think this "ultimately caters to a tiny fraction of gamers while worsening the experience for the majority" tells me you're part of the problem; you're probably often toxic to other players (even if you don't notice it), get your account muted/locked out/whatever, and then think that you did nothing wrong and everyone's in the same boat as you.
Sorry for having the wrong opinion, but personal attacks are uncalled for.
Ironic.
So, to illustrate my point, would you prefer that heavy handed mods step in to censor you according to their definition of toxicity, or would you rather have the freedom to continue this discussion to possibly reach some resolution?
I prefer to put faith in peoples' ability to resolve conflict without vague rules regarding inconsistent notions of toxicity, especially in the context of gaming, where I can leave and join another game more or less any time.
If you prefer to put faith in people's abilities (at this point in time) you're being intentionally headstrong in the face of overwhelming proof that that doesn't work. It's been a very long time since the games in question have launched and they're filled with toxicity.
Like billions of dollars and probably billions of man hours worth of gaming in an industry that is only growing?
Have you considered further that some degree of so called toxicity is inherent to the fun of gaming?
Why stop there? Why not set standards for content as well? You're talking about games that simulate violence, killing, war in general, but you demand that the playerbase act in accordance to your personal sensibilities?
What proof do you have that the majority of gamers aren't fine with the status quo? Why are you so convinced that arbitrary rules against toxicity don't lessen the experience for the majority?
> Like billions of dollars and probably billions of man hours worth of gaming in an industry that is only growing?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: just because the industry is growing doesn't mean that people don't mind toxicity. It's possible the industry would be growing even faster if there was less toxicity, for example.
> Have you considered further that some degree of so called toxicity is inherent to the fun of gaming?
Maybe some people enjoy being called a faggot by randoms on Xbox, but I don't. I'd go so far as to say the majority of people prefer not to be called slurs by random strangers. Can't we do something to stop that?
> Why stop there? Why not set standards for content as well? You're talking about games that simulate violence, killing, war in general, but you demand that the playerbase act in accordance to your personal sensibilities?
Why is any attempt to prevent any form of toxicity a slippery slope that can only lead to some sort of Orwellian nightmare of censorship?
> would you prefer that heavy handed mods step in to censor you according to their definition of toxicity
Heavy handed modding has flagged me and even limited my ability to post in the past. I don't necessarily agree with it (although it was deserved a few times), but mods are the arbiters of the community, not me. They have the option of listening to user feedback in aggregate.
It works the same in games. The studio is the arbiter of the community, not the players. The players give feedback to the studio. The studio has the option of listening.
And players have been giving feedback in troves that toxicity sucks, that toxic players ruin other players' gaming experience, and that they want that gone. Studios are listening. If you're getting caught on the wrong end of this, try being nicer to people.
Are you even old enough to play games? I feel like mother told you about the baddies if you venture outside and so long as you suckle her breast, you will be free from the horror and disgust of the world. You latch on with white knuckles waiting for cotton wool ball to take you to Nursery.
Feeble statements like this define who is fun to kill, who is cocky, and who you are going to target.
Every time someone says "this is about politics" or "they should leave politics out of it" what they mean is the politics they don't agree with. Same applies to the use of "identity politics".
Obviously unpopular opinion, but the reason I enjoy online games is the wild-west attitude. CS:GO, Dota, League, etc all are very exciting to me because the point of the game is engineering your team mates, learning who is going to be obnoxious, shit talking with them, etc. Every once in a while games will be 100% ruined by someone, but I find it's very rare. Cost of playing the game, and it happens equally as often on the other team no doubt (I'd argue more, because my entire focus is on team cohesion).
I really don't understand why people think it's okay to push a perfectly sanitary online gaming atmosphere. To me the whole point is that it's NOT sanitary.
Here's the thing. How much that toxic shit bothers you is a function of multiple things, but ultimately it's a bell curve. Some people are going to fall to the far left and think it's great, some people are going to fall to the far right and be unwilling or unable to engage with even the slightest amount of shit.
You're at the median of your own experience, but what if you're near the far left of the bell curve across all players?
> what if you're near the far left of the bell curve across all players?
I probably am - I honestly enjoy the trash-talking, even when it grossly violates cultural norms. I feel like it's a part of the "gamer culture" that I enjoy.
I also get that there are (probably a lot) of people that don't want it. I just hope that there will continue to be a place for people who don't want to be subject to the censorship.
To be honest, I really don't understand why it's acceptable to constantly spew racial or sexual slurs at other people. I also don't understand why it's acceptable to throw a ranked match because you believe someone else did something wrong.
I don't want either of those to happen. When they do, it ruins the fun for me. After a while, I will stop playing. Plenty of others agree with me, which is why these companies are taking this seriously. They don't want people to stop playing.
I used to think the same when I started a forum. But after 10 years, I can say with confidence that you're wrong and won't create the ecosystem that you want.
For example, by allowing toxicity to be rampant, you're really just catering to a tiny fraction of people, the toxic people. The opposite of what you think.
If you want to play with quality, respectful players, you'll need to put in the elbow grease to create that ecosystem. Compare the average HN comment (moderated) to the average /r/programming comment (unmoderated). I don't see a lot of "identity politics" going on around the moderation here as you seem to suggest must coexist with such moderation.
Man, I wouldn't want to be a community manager in those games. Trash-talking is one thing – and I'm quite quick with the mute-button (and usually let them know), but something that is incredibly hard to spot/punish is behavior in competitive games. Once you reach a certain skill level, a single guy on the team makes or breaks the entire match.
With League of Legends, the problem is that a match lasts at least 20 minutes (not sure if this is still the case) until someone can surrender. A while back, I then played Heroes of the Storm, where most matches aren't longer than 20 minutes.
Nowadays, I played a lot of Rocket League, where each match is 5 minutes (or 7 at most, depending on the amount of "goal cams"). But still, they can feel a bit like an eternity, if your mate decides that "you're a fucking noob, because you missed the ball 10 seconds into the game and we certainly can't win in the next 4:50 minutes" and just plays like an idiot. Sure, you can report those players, but ultimately, someone has to review the games and I suspect this is quite impossible to achieve.
So, what's the solution? I don't know. Maybe the solution is on an individual level – stop playing "for the win", but try to enjoy the ingame moments (like "I hit the ball mid-air" or "I achieved a pentakill"). Or only play with friends on your team and mute the other team.
After all, in most competitive games, you achieve about 50% win rate anyways, once you reach a certain mid-range skill level and don't play with your friends, because the match making algorithms will sometimes give you good team mates and other times bad, or toxic, ones.
Are you confused with this idea that people can be assholes, and in a moment of frustration would do something bad in the hopes of screwing over someone else?
yes, valve has had constant problems in dota2 with abusive reports leading to bans. Streamers that stream all their gameplay that have never even once done or said anything abusive got bans.
The solution is to block the person you don't like, never having to see or hear from him again. Seems pretty fair. You'll be matched with less "toxic" people, they'll be matched with similar minded people, which they may or may not like. No need for suspensions or bans, imo.
It would be great if many of the games worked like that. Sadly, in my experience, you can report/block someone and then immediately be matched with them again. This is especially true in games like Heroes of the Storm which have smaller player bases.
Being able to block someone and not be matched with them again is also a great mechanism to dodge better players. If you have a hard time beating a particular player? Block/report them, avoid being matched with them, and have an easier time winning.
That is the most obvious solution, and completely wrong.
If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to keep themselves from being matched with players who play poorly, but aren't at all toxic. At higher skill ranks, where the player pool is small and there is a high chance of being matched with the same players repeatedly, it has huge opportunity for abuse.
It is a good demonstration of why it is a hard problem, because you can't just implement the most naively obvious solution: you have to design against the abuse-case.
I'd much rather have a system which may fail for a small subset of players, than having a game company tell me what constitutes good or bad behaviour.
This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other:
Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)
I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or not, because, while I don't think it's possible to solve this problem using a central authority, it is a problem that affects a very large portion of the playerbase, so your dichotomy is false. It is not a problem that affects a "small subset of players"
No the "small subset of players" was referring to top players that would be affected by people misusing blocking other players.
As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected".
Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article:
"There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now."
WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
And the games companies, the ones making the games, disagree. They believe that this toxic behavior is affecting more people than the alternative options are, and so they want to nip it in the bud.
I think a better solution (better than what currently exists) would entail centralizing gaming profiles which would require you to share profile data across games and game companies so bad behavior in one game is reported to all of your games.
> The solution is to block the person you don't like
No. This doesn't work in Overwatch. Because Blizzard removed this ability.
Right when Overwatch came out, you could select a player's profile and essentially tell Blizzard's algorithm that you didn't want to play with this person anymore (Avoid Player).
But Blizzard decided to remove it because they found out a very good Widowmaker (a sniper character) was being excluded by a ton of people so they decided to just remove the feature altogether so that scenario doesn't happen.
However, at the time the Widowmaker character was overpowered where Widowmaker should have just gotten a nerf to her abilities (she went through a nerf and a buff since then) but instead, nope, now you can't stop playing with toxic players until they've been banned by Blizzard.
Now blocking players just means, I don't want to read messages from them. It doesn't prevent players from throwing matches, which is the biggest issue since you can't "block" bad play
I think the said the "solution is", it does not matter if the functionality exist today. Its more of how the gaming industry should handle these situations. Simply blocking somebody should make it so you can't ever be matched with, or have to communicate with them again.
In some games that might be harder said then done, but you could at least make sure you are never on the same team, and that if the player becomes an opponent that its name is obfuscated and they can't chat back.
The entire problem though is what is 'toxic' is subjective. Today we find this behavior okay, and tomorrow we don't.
It could be simply having a MAGA hat on could be 'toxic'.
You also have to worry about /toxic/ group behavior. The masses are not always right. So just because somebody has had a lot of people report them does not mean they are toxic.
For any of this to work the very behavior that is not allowed must be defined to the T.
But anyways, This is not my argument, I was merely trying to correct the assumptions of a post. And suggesting that because some feature does not exist today is not a very good reason why a suggested solution can't work or should not be considered.
That's not really a great solution, because it doesn't really work all that well. Toxic people are toxic and they work to find ways to actively subvert the mitigations against their toxic behavior.
It puts the onus on the people just trying to have fun to carefully manage and curate their experience just so they can have a good time.
These companies care and take these measures because as a player, if I open Overwatch and my first match of the day is full of assholes actively trying to ruin my experience instead of just playing the game, I'm just going to log off and not play anymore.
Valve already implemented that in Dota 2 with a hidden tier where game ruiners, bot users/exploiters, etc would be grouped together. They also capped the max ELO you could gain during calibration if you are in that shadowbanned tier. It was calculated based on the number of reports you received in the last n games.
Overwatch tried that. People started blocking everyone better than them. In the end, one of the top widowmaker players couldn't find a match, because everyone who didn't want to play against him had blocked him.
Actually, I'm not sure block is the word blizzard used. Avoid, maybe? The end result was more or less the same.
Let me make sure I understand your position correctly. You want to punish players who, for whatever reason, play worse than their rank/score/position would imply they should play?
This sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. There can be dozens of reasons for a player "underperforming". Take whatever punishment the game gives for conceding and leave the game if you are stuck with a bad team of randoms. Or, better yet, make friends or join a clan of like-minded players.
Even if someone is being rude in chat/voice chat - mute them and move on. It's weird to me to see you and other posters in this thread look to a higher authority to solve such a trivial problem instead of doing this yourself.
You missed an important qualifier. OP is talking about players who play badly relative to their rank on purpose in retaliation for perceiving a team member's skill level as not being high enough. It sounds like it's overly specific, but is indeed a common issue. Especially in LoL.
How much have you played as far as ranked games go?
Throwers and leavers are a huge problem in ranked competitive games, like League of Legends or Overwatch. There's a difference between having a poor game, and throwing with Hanzo because your team needed you to play a healer.
The real solution is not to play on a team with randoms, and not allow comms between competing teams.
PUBG is a perfect example of this. You can play on 1 to 4 person squads, so if friends aren't online, just play it solo. You're not forced into a match with randoms on your team. You can easily turn off comms with enemies (and it's proximity only anyway).
I've never played a less toxic multiplayer game for this reason. If you just reduce comms with enemies, and give players the ability to play a game with 1 - N friends without needing randoms, the problem solves itself.
> The real solution is not to play on a team with randoms
That's not a solution, that's a workaround. It's like saying "The solution to a community being toxic is to leave it". It's only a solution if only the toxic members follow that advice.
I disagree, it is a solution that you yourself can actually implement. It isn't dependent on anyone else. I've only played PUBG with randoms once, before PUBG changed the interface there was one time my team forgot to uncheck the box and the guy we played with was actually really cool. Even though most of the people were screaming "CHINA NUMBA ONE" in the lobby.
A game like that depends a lot on communication though and even if randoms aren't toxic, they won't universally be willing to use a mic, or have one. There are lots of other reasons it is better to play with people you already know. Even while mostly playing with friends, I've still managed to meet cool people through these games that I've become friends with.
Eventually the toxic people will realize that their toxicity isn't getting an outlet and will either move on to another game or change their behavior.
Point being, there are steps you can personally take to mitigate the toxicity you experience and giving you those tools is pretty much all a developer can do.
I'm cautiously optimistic on this. I don't know what they can actually do, but I'll take anything at this point. Toxicity really ruins the gaming experience.
Game devs and designers nowadays go out of their way to prevent people from being assholes to each other in games, but it still happens. Even games such as Hearthstone or Clash Royale, that are entirely limited to emotes, still develop a language around telling the opponent "fuck you".
I'd argue that in games, it's worse than around the web. If someone's being a jerk to me on HN, Facebook, Twitter etc I can just choose to ignore them, block them, not mind them, etc. But in games you are forced to interact, either as co-op or opponent.
Being matched up with respectful people (either as teammate or opponent) is one of the most rewarding things in gaming. And being matched up with assholes is one of the worst experiences. So every match you roll the dice on whether you're going to feel great or feel like shit by the end of the game, and it usually has nothing to do with winning or losing. I find that whenever I start truly enjoying a game, regularly being paired up with toxic people impacts the experience to the point of quitting. Both Overwatch and Rocket League, two delightful, fantastic and rewarding games, were completely ruined for me because of that.
I think you've hit on the core of the problem but the solution is always skated around.
"But in games you are forced to interact, either as co-op or opponent."
The typical response here is to give players a greater degree of blocking and selection, which I find to be particularly unappealling as it becomes a case of "whack-a-mole". Similarly muting toxic players works the same way, you have to expose yourself to it to find out if you want it blocked.
For me, I'd opt for an option that is muting/deafening myself. Allow me to say I don't want to interact or be acted upon and have that apply globally. There is never an instance where I'd turn this back on and have these set throughout the duration of the game (I.E, I can't turn it back on, just to emote my fuck you and block the opponent from replying.)
My ideal scenario in multiplayer games is to have the skill and randomness of human players without any of their personality. Games that do this reasonably well are games like PUBG, where I can mute the mic and there is no text chat. Similarly the game is frantic enough that taking the 20 seconds to emote your way to some obnoxious point backfires more routinely than not. (However I'm not a fan of the fact they have just introduced emotes... it bodes not well.)
I think because of this there is a class of "not-multiplayer" online game players who want all the game play aspects that multiplayer has to offer, but none of the interactions. I'd sacrifice the respectful people matching rewards (and you're right, it's awesome when that happens) if it meant getting rid of dickheads. But that is up to the individual.
Blocking is massively abusable in competitive games, just block everyone better than you, instant rank up against people you can beat every time. This can be, will be, and has been abused.
Agree. I think Guild Wars 2 is a good example (in stark contrast to GW1). There are a lot of people but you don't really have to bother dealing with them. But the game itself embraces anonymous "the more the merrier". You don't have to group up or talk to others. But the more people are around, the more enemies, the more loot, experience etc.
Everyone can res and you get experience for ressing. I haven't seen any other game where you die and a dozen people rush in to ress you.
That being said, as a teen I loved Ultima Online exactly because you could steal from players, block them, kill them, loot everything, kill their horse, steal the house key and loot the house, steal their boat etc.
The thrill was amazing because it didn't happen all the time. Might be you are on a guild trip and a group of other pass by and kill you all. But often it did not happen, or you needed a couple PvP savvy people with you as escort.
When they later split the world into a PvP and PvE mirror, the thrill was gone. The PvE world was boring and the PvP world was only full of people attacking you anyway (actually it was awfully empty but the couple of guys you met wanted to strangle you)
There’s a lot of nice players that play hearthstone, and most of the time that people add me after the game, they say something nice, but that 20% that is just like ‘I hope you get cancer’ just makes me never want to accept friend requests.
Blizzard has no way to report people for making shitty comments in chat. So you just never talk to anyone.
Noble goals, I hope they don't lose their way and try to overextend their influence by silencing non-"progressive" behavior or "wrongthink".
I hope everybody wins.
It seems like they're going to heavily censor popular streamers:
"This is just all reality now. So streamers are ambassadors of culture bigger than just League of Legends or whichever game. They’re ambassadors of online life."
Maybe I'll be able to play Overwatch again! I aged out of that environment so suddenly after I took a year long break from gaming, but to be honest it was never good for me to begin with.
I thought China is the only one want to regulate their people's everyday behaviors...
It turns out the whole idea of freedom is nothing but a degree of how alone one can live. The more alone the more free, but that isn't what freedom stands for...
The management of an online community is just a pocket sized version of a full blown government. There's no reason to not make a comparison due to lolbertarian rationales.
Perhaps but the consequences of breaking the rules are nowhere near as devastating. It trivializes the human rights abuses by those governments by putting them in the same category as a video game chat
Why do you feel you have more of a right to use Blizzard's resources to be toxic to others, driving them from the game, than someone else has to enjoy the game they paid for?
That's true. But there are two big reasons why we hold governments to those standards: they hold significant lethal power in enforcing their policies, and they have no competition in their domain.
Corporations absolutely quality for one of those. If every game manufacturer starts enforcing draconian free speech rules, players have no recourse beside "don't play". That's an option. If it gets bad enough, hopefully "good business" kicks in and they pull back.
The big problem is the reasoning behind why these policies are in place. They aren't really doing it because they think it'll lead to better business; these games are already ridiculously popular, and are approaching the carrying capacity of their respective markets.
Instead, they're implementing them because they think its the morally correct thing to do. That's a very dangerous road to go down, because its politically very hard to reverse a policy like this. Once you start restricting what people can say under the guise of something as buzzwordy and pure as "preventing toxic behavior", no one will be "that guy" who says "we're losing business because people are afraid to even speak, we should pull back". All it takes is one softer soul to call that person a bigot or an enabler of toxic behavior, and they're fired.
I worry about platforms like Twitch, where "twitch chat" has become such a meme that it almost defines the platform. Its not about whether that definition is good or bad; its about trying to fundamentally change who you are. YouTube tried it with their comments section. No good discussion ever happens there. Not before their change, not after. But at least before it was fun and people used it. In essence, they destroyed legitimate business value in the pursuit of perceived business value based on moral righteousness, that perceived business value was never realized, and now they can't go back.
Living together requires some kind of mutually acceptable standards of behaviour. It cannot be everyone doing whatever they want at the expense of others' happiness.
Why do you believe that you have the "freedom" to shove toxicity into other people's games? Why do you believe you have more "freedom" to be toxic to other players than they have "freedom" to enjoy the game they paid for?
This has nothing to do with freedom and you know it.
Where is Valve... cs:go is the most toxic game i've ever played... and its one of those games which has no support team behind it, once you report something noone from the company gets to see your report...
The amount of racist names etc that goes unpunished in there is unbelievable.
Valve have traditionally taken a hands-off approach to the communities surrounding its games; I would be surprised to see their name among the list and I like how they do things currently. Though I have experienced toxicity in CS:GO, it has been no worse than in other competitive games.
It was better when people hosting their own servers was the focus (CS:S and CS1.6). This way you could find a nice community, with good moderators and rules that you liked, and settle in.
Nowadays you are just thrown in a blender with every other player.
Your name in cs:go is always your steam name. Shouldn't even need a specific support team for a game to find those (if anything, that makes it worse, though).
very true, how many names and pornographic images are out there is beyond me, although this game is not rated 18+ since there are so many profile images with pornographic environment.
For starters the problem isn't the games, or the enforcement mechanisms, it's the gamers. There are plenty of other competitive activities with "randoms" that do not result in this type of behavior.
Another issue is that there will be those that get punished/removed that will play the victim and attribute it to politics, etc. You can see this beginning already in some of the comments in this thread about "dictating morality" and "silencing non-progressive behavior."
Bad players drive out good players. If you had a game that had zero tolerance for shitty behavior and an enforced code of conduct, you’d have a better community.
Throughly and clearly defined shitty behavior that had wide agreement.
Had an effective form of zero tolerance that was both deterrent and enforcement.
Had a clear code of conduct that was neutral to all.
Correctly identified players and prevented false positives.
Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how popular they were.
Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how profitable they were.
You know what else would make for a better community? Better citizens.
From what I heard Blizzard is already overdoing it, going as far as punishing a professional player for posting a meme on Twitter or muting people for "toxicity" and then punishing them again for lack of communication.
For me, this isn't a problem to be solved on such a high level. After all, a mute function exists already and can be applied to anyone and the best thing is that it's a power within the hands of a player.
The problem is plenty of people wont mute, and toxicity is majorly contagious, so you get reverberations from the inital toxic incident going on pretty much ad infinitum.
Part of the thing with Blizzard is they have the Overwatch League which they're trying really hard to legitimize as a true spectator sport. I don't know the specific person you're referencing in your post but there are players like xQc who have been banned as they're official league members who have agreements about their public behavior and repercussions if they break those. Blizzard does go pretty hard on the ban hammer in Overwatch overall, but most of the news worthy bans have been about Overwatch League players, who have a bit more of intimate relation with Blizzard than regular professional gamers.
People say they go heavy now, but when Overwatch came out, they didn't really do anything, and it was a pretty toxic cesspool. From what I've heard, most people are happy that they've started to clean it up.
There's plenty that the creators can do to empower change at a lower level. Like making people muted by default, or maybe if someone has been reported they are muted by default.
An issue with muting is that, depending on the implementation, the person behaving badly may not be aware they are being muted, and certainly won't know why. Providing some sort of feedback mechanism so that people being immature online get some sort of encouragement to change their behavior. Maybe a reputation system, that is viewable by others, so they can choose to not interact with toxic players.
It's not about having tons of moderators policing everything, it's about the fundamental mechanics of the system you are creating, the incentives. This can involve the peripherals of the game like player chat, community events and outreach, and even the core mechanics. A competitive multiplayer game where the mechanics are set up so that each team is only as strong as their weakest player, for example, is naturally going to increase tension and be unfriendly to new players. This was (possibly) alluded to in one sentence in the article: "the team emerged with a new focus not just on disruptive players, but on the ways competitive games can make assholes of us all."
All this goes to say that preventing a game community from becoming toxic is not a simple or trivial thing, and it's important if you want your game to succeed. It sounds like a coalition sharing ideas and experiences dealing with toxic behavior is exactly what we need.
Developers are very quick to level the finger at players for the emergent behavior that their game systems create.
Frustrating game experiences where players feel like they've had no agency in their loss lead to people being upset, which leads to people venting, which leads to people avoiding communication unless they vent. Most games that have this cycle start off fairly pleasant, and become increasingly angry places over time.
I'd be exceptionally surprised if this initiative actually deals with the core issues of frustration and poor skill conveyance rather than improved methods of having people suppress their anger while playing.
I miss games that allowed players to host their own servers. Players could find a server with a community they like and play there. Ultra-competitive players, people who wanted to mess around on weird custom maps, and people who didn't want to see or hear any swearing could all find a server that fit them and enjoy playing.
In the past 10 years or so new games have mostly stopped including this, in favor of matchmaking systems. I guess having a single, official server makes easier to enforce "progression" systems and sell microtransactions. I'd also suspect the the disappearance of community servers has to do with the rise of online multiplayer on consoles, which never really had that as an option.
This to me shows the biggest problem with games. They aren't made by gamers anymore. It's Yet Another Media Outlet so it's been cash cowed to death.
Split screen is gone too. It used to be mandatory in the 1990s-2000s for FPS, now your lucky if a current gen title has split screen at all. This ruins one of the primary fun things to do with a game which is couch play.
Both of these things make it harder to microtransact and make games RPG like, so I get it. But I hate it really. The games are worse.
While not the sole or even probably a significant reason for the decline in split screen; I think split-screen has really suffered because of the need for consoles to be both somewhat affordable but also not terribly behind in terms of horsepower of what PCs can do at the time of the console's release. Depending on the game, the split screen can double the load on the cpu and gpu, and with consoles the way they are now their fps would plummet. A lot of games still are locked in at 30, some 60, which by most PC gamer's standards is already horribly behind. Now of days the vocal crowd of PC gamers say the only way to game is by playing games on 144hz monitors. While I would love to see the return of split screen, I don't think it will with the push to have games be on every platform now and run decently on all those platforms as well.
Nintendo seems to be the only brand left that understands the concept of "party" games. You can do 4p split-screen in Mario Kart, and you can do wireless ad-hoc in Splatoon (but this does require multiple consoles). Kirby Star Allies is also 4p same-screen.
Chat rooms and games with self-hosted servers are some of the best social media I have ever used. I wish there was a focus on building meaningful communities online.
Reading all this controversy over poor behavior really surprised me. I have played online games on and off in a highly casual fashion for about two decades now - the quake series, counter-strike since the beta days, starcraft 1/2, warcraft 3, etc. - and I have always seen these antics as mostly miniscule and harmless.
Someone writes hateful/immature messages in the chat? Ignore them. Someone's audio-spamming the voice chat with their stupid music? Mute them. I mute voice chats by default these days because I am not interested in hearing other peoples' voices when I'm immersed in a game. I rarely use the chat, often removing it from my HUD altogether. It's a distraction and I think it gets in the way of the gameplay.
Are we so easily offended that we'd rather be overly-sensitive towards the immaturity of others? Do we all need to remember the sticks and stones rhyme our parents taught us? Aren't we better off by learning how to be unbothered by this stuff?
"and I have always seen these antics as mostly miniscule and harmless."
Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean that it shouldn't bother others. I've talked to gay people who play games, and they want to do so as an escape from the world, like everyone else. But it's really hard for that to happen when they constantly have these slurs hurled at them just like they do in real life.
"Are we so easily offended "
Why do you find it acceptable to blame the targets of this, instead of blaming those that are hurling the toxicity.
"Do we all need to remember the sticks and stones rhyme our parents taught us?"
You mean the one that has never, ever been true?
"Aren't we better off by learning how to be unbothered by this stuff?"
Again, why do you seem to want to encourage toxic people to be toxic?
Well, I usually don't care for some time. But if you play a lot and you see this crap every evening for hours... it just starts to dampen the mood. For me at least.
I can not ignore the chat, from time to time there's useful stuff in there.
Actually when I was a teen it didn't bother me at all. I so played counterstrike when it was a HL mod, Ultima Online when killing, cleanlooting, horsekilling, resskilling, notokilling, blocking and cleanlooting, house raids etc were still the norm. Didn't bother me.
Actually the older I get the more I don't have the nerves anymore for all this crap.
I think a large problem is people often attribute their loss to their team's lack of skill rather than the excellent performance of the other team. Sometimes you get stomped. Sometimes you're playing against a really cohesive group or against some outstanding individuals. If people complemented more often than they criticized games would feel amazing to play. I have no clue how to change that besides slowly calling it out as you see it.
Edit: The only thing that makes me sad about these changes is you can't mess around any more. It is sometimes fun to grief. It's fun to learn new characters or play shitty ones. Everyone is so hyper competitive now and if you don't look like you're giving 1000% effort and getting mad at your failures you're called toxic. It's a game though, have fun, mess with your team a little.
Maybe i'm too old for the communities now. I gave up playing Arena games due to the toxic communities and now stick to arranged teams in Rocket League.
A far more enjoyable experience even if i do meet a shockingly large number of my moms sexual partners.
136 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadIn my opinion, some of these games are bound to create toxic situations when playing with randoms. Take a game like League, where a single player that's underperforming can cause the entire team to lose. This dynamic is core to the game, and it's the root cause of toxicity.
Compare that to a game like Counter Strike, where an underperformer might not drag their team down that much, and there is an option to kick the person from the team. The game is still winnable -- it will be harder, but it would not be impossible like in League.
Also, surprised not to see Valve in this list. Dota 2 and Counter Strike are still pretty big titles, even if they haven't made a game in a while.
I'll bet this will turn into the usual identity politics nightmare that ultimately caters to a tiny fraction of gamers while worsening the experience for the majority. If this were such a massive problem, millions of people wouldn't be spending billions of dollars and hundreds millions of man hours playing these games.
This is about politics, not gaming experience.
As for people who intentionally cause harm, that's a very real issue which I was not addressing with my above comments.
It doesn't matter if they don't think it's abusive or not. It's still abusive, and they need to be informed of that. If, after that, they amend their behavior, then great. They've learned and grown as humans are supposed to do. But if they continue to insist on the behavior, then they're abusive, full stop.
Unless you're using your own servers for the game and they're still doing this, they aren't really forcing you to do anything. They're their servers, so they go by their rules. If you don't like it, you can just, y'know, not play the game.
Moreover, when these developers have access to the minds of hundreds of millions of people, including children, there is a degree of cultural forcing involved. These developers' ideas of right and wrong are potentially influencing society, and this is something that non gamers have little control over.
At the very least, journalists have a responsibility to recognize that toxicity is not universal. One could argue that there is potential for priming young people toward obscenity laws and nanny statism, when they are conditioned to look toward authority for resolution of all problems.
Farfetched, perhaps, but I personally believe that people need to learn to deal with such problems on their own, because external solutions are not always available or enforceable. This could easily have unforseen consequences.
You know what, I would.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want these same people regulating speech or whatever. But I do want them regulating their own userbases. I do want moderators on HN enforcing the HN guidelines, just like I want Blizzard to enforce the "Blizzard guidelines" in their games, whatever they may be.
And honestly, the fact you think this "ultimately caters to a tiny fraction of gamers while worsening the experience for the majority" tells me you're part of the problem; you're probably often toxic to other players (even if you don't notice it), get your account muted/locked out/whatever, and then think that you did nothing wrong and everyone's in the same boat as you.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen this. People who think their behaviour is OK, who think they're not making the experience worse for other players. Then they wonder why they got banned. They go on the game's forums, subreddit, etc and complain "[studio] is banning people randomly!". And then some fed up dev from the studio pulls up chat logs and reveals some disgusting behaviour.
> If this were such a massive problem, millions of people wouldn't be spending billions of dollars and hundreds millions of man hours playing these games.
Thousands of companies are spending millions of dollars fighting that problem because it's affecting their players' experience, which ultimately affects players' willingness to buy and play the studio's games. Once again, that you think they'd willingly cater to a "tiny fraction" of their base, is absurd and gives a glimpse of your true nature.
Sorry for having the wrong opinion, but personal attacks are uncalled for.
Ironic.
So, to illustrate my point, would you prefer that heavy handed mods step in to censor you according to their definition of toxicity, or would you rather have the freedom to continue this discussion to possibly reach some resolution?
I prefer to put faith in peoples' ability to resolve conflict without vague rules regarding inconsistent notions of toxicity, especially in the context of gaming, where I can leave and join another game more or less any time.
Like billions of dollars and probably billions of man hours worth of gaming in an industry that is only growing?
Have you considered further that some degree of so called toxicity is inherent to the fun of gaming?
Why stop there? Why not set standards for content as well? You're talking about games that simulate violence, killing, war in general, but you demand that the playerbase act in accordance to your personal sensibilities?
What proof do you have that the majority of gamers aren't fine with the status quo? Why are you so convinced that arbitrary rules against toxicity don't lessen the experience for the majority?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: just because the industry is growing doesn't mean that people don't mind toxicity. It's possible the industry would be growing even faster if there was less toxicity, for example.
> Have you considered further that some degree of so called toxicity is inherent to the fun of gaming?
Maybe some people enjoy being called a faggot by randoms on Xbox, but I don't. I'd go so far as to say the majority of people prefer not to be called slurs by random strangers. Can't we do something to stop that?
> Why stop there? Why not set standards for content as well? You're talking about games that simulate violence, killing, war in general, but you demand that the playerbase act in accordance to your personal sensibilities?
Why is any attempt to prevent any form of toxicity a slippery slope that can only lead to some sort of Orwellian nightmare of censorship?
Heavy handed modding has flagged me and even limited my ability to post in the past. I don't necessarily agree with it (although it was deserved a few times), but mods are the arbiters of the community, not me. They have the option of listening to user feedback in aggregate.
It works the same in games. The studio is the arbiter of the community, not the players. The players give feedback to the studio. The studio has the option of listening.
And players have been giving feedback in troves that toxicity sucks, that toxic players ruin other players' gaming experience, and that they want that gone. Studios are listening. If you're getting caught on the wrong end of this, try being nicer to people.
Feeble statements like this define who is fun to kill, who is cocky, and who you are going to target.
I really don't understand why people think it's okay to push a perfectly sanitary online gaming atmosphere. To me the whole point is that it's NOT sanitary.
You're at the median of your own experience, but what if you're near the far left of the bell curve across all players?
I probably am - I honestly enjoy the trash-talking, even when it grossly violates cultural norms. I feel like it's a part of the "gamer culture" that I enjoy.
I also get that there are (probably a lot) of people that don't want it. I just hope that there will continue to be a place for people who don't want to be subject to the censorship.
I don't want either of those to happen. When they do, it ruins the fun for me. After a while, I will stop playing. Plenty of others agree with me, which is why these companies are taking this seriously. They don't want people to stop playing.
For example, by allowing toxicity to be rampant, you're really just catering to a tiny fraction of people, the toxic people. The opposite of what you think.
If you want to play with quality, respectful players, you'll need to put in the elbow grease to create that ecosystem. Compare the average HN comment (moderated) to the average /r/programming comment (unmoderated). I don't see a lot of "identity politics" going on around the moderation here as you seem to suggest must coexist with such moderation.
With League of Legends, the problem is that a match lasts at least 20 minutes (not sure if this is still the case) until someone can surrender. A while back, I then played Heroes of the Storm, where most matches aren't longer than 20 minutes.
Nowadays, I played a lot of Rocket League, where each match is 5 minutes (or 7 at most, depending on the amount of "goal cams"). But still, they can feel a bit like an eternity, if your mate decides that "you're a fucking noob, because you missed the ball 10 seconds into the game and we certainly can't win in the next 4:50 minutes" and just plays like an idiot. Sure, you can report those players, but ultimately, someone has to review the games and I suspect this is quite impossible to achieve.
So, what's the solution? I don't know. Maybe the solution is on an individual level – stop playing "for the win", but try to enjoy the ingame moments (like "I hit the ball mid-air" or "I achieved a pentakill"). Or only play with friends on your team and mute the other team.
After all, in most competitive games, you achieve about 50% win rate anyways, once you reach a certain mid-range skill level and don't play with your friends, because the match making algorithms will sometimes give you good team mates and other times bad, or toxic, ones.
They don't have to review the games if one account has many reports of "Unsportsmanlike conduct".
Because people are assholes. They'll blame that person for them losing a couple points on their rating, and report them as a form of revenge.
Why would the reports be anomalous?
There really isn't a deep thing here.
When designing any system you have to think about how it can be abused.
Being able to block someone and not be matched with them again is also a great mechanism to dodge better players. If you have a hard time beating a particular player? Block/report them, avoid being matched with them, and have an easier time winning.
If you give people the ability to block others from being matchmade with them, they will use it to keep themselves from being matched with players who play poorly, but aren't at all toxic. At higher skill ranks, where the player pool is small and there is a high chance of being matched with the same players repeatedly, it has huge opportunity for abuse.
It is a good demonstration of why it is a hard problem, because you can't just implement the most naively obvious solution: you have to design against the abuse-case.
This is a problem which _can't_ be solved by a central authority. That's like asking the police to go around making people be nice to each other:
Yes, they can control the most blatant abuses (IRL: violence, theft, etc. -> Online: Cheating, DDosing, etc.), but they will never be able to - and should never have the right to - control for every possible sub-optimal communication. You yourself have the tools to do that (IRL: go away, call someone out, etc. -> online: Mute, Leave the game, etc.)
As for all the players "affected" by this problem: People should learn to chill out. In a virtual, anonymous setting, some people will use the opportunity to be mean to you. That's why muting and block was introduced. I don't get the big deal, even though a big number of people seem to be "affected".
Actually, one of the wort statements in the whole article:
"There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now."
WTF? That is the _point_ of creating virtual spaces or play per se. If I want a dose of reality I might as well watch the news and do some bookkeeping.
No. This doesn't work in Overwatch. Because Blizzard removed this ability.
Right when Overwatch came out, you could select a player's profile and essentially tell Blizzard's algorithm that you didn't want to play with this person anymore (Avoid Player).
But Blizzard decided to remove it because they found out a very good Widowmaker (a sniper character) was being excluded by a ton of people so they decided to just remove the feature altogether so that scenario doesn't happen.
However, at the time the Widowmaker character was overpowered where Widowmaker should have just gotten a nerf to her abilities (she went through a nerf and a buff since then) but instead, nope, now you can't stop playing with toxic players until they've been banned by Blizzard.
Now blocking players just means, I don't want to read messages from them. It doesn't prevent players from throwing matches, which is the biggest issue since you can't "block" bad play
In some games that might be harder said then done, but you could at least make sure you are never on the same team, and that if the player becomes an opponent that its name is obfuscated and they can't chat back.
Would you say that's a solution for hackers, too? "Meh, just block them."
It could be simply having a MAGA hat on could be 'toxic'.
You also have to worry about /toxic/ group behavior. The masses are not always right. So just because somebody has had a lot of people report them does not mean they are toxic.
For any of this to work the very behavior that is not allowed must be defined to the T.
But anyways, This is not my argument, I was merely trying to correct the assumptions of a post. And suggesting that because some feature does not exist today is not a very good reason why a suggested solution can't work or should not be considered.
It puts the onus on the people just trying to have fun to carefully manage and curate their experience just so they can have a good time.
These companies care and take these measures because as a player, if I open Overwatch and my first match of the day is full of assholes actively trying to ruin my experience instead of just playing the game, I'm just going to log off and not play anymore.
Actually, I'm not sure block is the word blizzard used. Avoid, maybe? The end result was more or less the same.
This sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. There can be dozens of reasons for a player "underperforming". Take whatever punishment the game gives for conceding and leave the game if you are stuck with a bad team of randoms. Or, better yet, make friends or join a clan of like-minded players.
Even if someone is being rude in chat/voice chat - mute them and move on. It's weird to me to see you and other posters in this thread look to a higher authority to solve such a trivial problem instead of doing this yourself.
Throwers and leavers are a huge problem in ranked competitive games, like League of Legends or Overwatch. There's a difference between having a poor game, and throwing with Hanzo because your team needed you to play a healer.
It is called "intentional feeding".
If you are playing a game and purposefully f stuff up, you will be banned.
It has to be pretty egregious, but yes this is ALREADY against the rules in the vast majority of online competitive games.
If you're an "A" player and you throw a game, I thought penalties generally applied and you could eventually find yourself downgraded to "B"?
For example, what if a teammate only "throws" a game when the game is already lost (but the game will likely last for another 10 minutes or so)
That wouldn't effect win rate very much, but it is still a bad player experience to be with a teammate who is intentionally trying to be bad.
Every single multiplayer game suffers from toxicity at some level. Even in 1 vs 1 games the other play can mess with you until you go full tilt.
PUBG is a perfect example of this. You can play on 1 to 4 person squads, so if friends aren't online, just play it solo. You're not forced into a match with randoms on your team. You can easily turn off comms with enemies (and it's proximity only anyway).
I've never played a less toxic multiplayer game for this reason. If you just reduce comms with enemies, and give players the ability to play a game with 1 - N friends without needing randoms, the problem solves itself.
That's not a solution, that's a workaround. It's like saying "The solution to a community being toxic is to leave it". It's only a solution if only the toxic members follow that advice.
A game like that depends a lot on communication though and even if randoms aren't toxic, they won't universally be willing to use a mic, or have one. There are lots of other reasons it is better to play with people you already know. Even while mostly playing with friends, I've still managed to meet cool people through these games that I've become friends with.
Eventually the toxic people will realize that their toxicity isn't getting an outlet and will either move on to another game or change their behavior.
Point being, there are steps you can personally take to mitigate the toxicity you experience and giving you those tools is pretty much all a developer can do.
Game devs and designers nowadays go out of their way to prevent people from being assholes to each other in games, but it still happens. Even games such as Hearthstone or Clash Royale, that are entirely limited to emotes, still develop a language around telling the opponent "fuck you".
I'd argue that in games, it's worse than around the web. If someone's being a jerk to me on HN, Facebook, Twitter etc I can just choose to ignore them, block them, not mind them, etc. But in games you are forced to interact, either as co-op or opponent.
Being matched up with respectful people (either as teammate or opponent) is one of the most rewarding things in gaming. And being matched up with assholes is one of the worst experiences. So every match you roll the dice on whether you're going to feel great or feel like shit by the end of the game, and it usually has nothing to do with winning or losing. I find that whenever I start truly enjoying a game, regularly being paired up with toxic people impacts the experience to the point of quitting. Both Overwatch and Rocket League, two delightful, fantastic and rewarding games, were completely ruined for me because of that.
"But in games you are forced to interact, either as co-op or opponent."
The typical response here is to give players a greater degree of blocking and selection, which I find to be particularly unappealling as it becomes a case of "whack-a-mole". Similarly muting toxic players works the same way, you have to expose yourself to it to find out if you want it blocked.
For me, I'd opt for an option that is muting/deafening myself. Allow me to say I don't want to interact or be acted upon and have that apply globally. There is never an instance where I'd turn this back on and have these set throughout the duration of the game (I.E, I can't turn it back on, just to emote my fuck you and block the opponent from replying.)
My ideal scenario in multiplayer games is to have the skill and randomness of human players without any of their personality. Games that do this reasonably well are games like PUBG, where I can mute the mic and there is no text chat. Similarly the game is frantic enough that taking the 20 seconds to emote your way to some obnoxious point backfires more routinely than not. (However I'm not a fan of the fact they have just introduced emotes... it bodes not well.)
I think because of this there is a class of "not-multiplayer" online game players who want all the game play aspects that multiplayer has to offer, but none of the interactions. I'd sacrifice the respectful people matching rewards (and you're right, it's awesome when that happens) if it meant getting rid of dickheads. But that is up to the individual.
That seems like the weakness in someone's naive weekend-ware implementation, but is there a reason it cannot be improved?
That being said, as a teen I loved Ultima Online exactly because you could steal from players, block them, kill them, loot everything, kill their horse, steal the house key and loot the house, steal their boat etc.
The thrill was amazing because it didn't happen all the time. Might be you are on a guild trip and a group of other pass by and kill you all. But often it did not happen, or you needed a couple PvP savvy people with you as escort.
When they later split the world into a PvP and PvE mirror, the thrill was gone. The PvE world was boring and the PvP world was only full of people attacking you anyway (actually it was awfully empty but the couple of guys you met wanted to strangle you)
Blizzard has no way to report people for making shitty comments in chat. So you just never talk to anyone.
I hope everybody wins.
It seems like they're going to heavily censor popular streamers:
"This is just all reality now. So streamers are ambassadors of culture bigger than just League of Legends or whichever game. They’re ambassadors of online life."
Blizzard already do.
It turns out the whole idea of freedom is nothing but a degree of how alone one can live. The more alone the more free, but that isn't what freedom stands for...
The management of an online community is just a pocket sized version of a full blown government. There's no reason to not make a comparison due to lolbertarian rationales.
The behaviors of community moderation are comparable to those of a government.
Corporations absolutely quality for one of those. If every game manufacturer starts enforcing draconian free speech rules, players have no recourse beside "don't play". That's an option. If it gets bad enough, hopefully "good business" kicks in and they pull back.
The big problem is the reasoning behind why these policies are in place. They aren't really doing it because they think it'll lead to better business; these games are already ridiculously popular, and are approaching the carrying capacity of their respective markets.
Instead, they're implementing them because they think its the morally correct thing to do. That's a very dangerous road to go down, because its politically very hard to reverse a policy like this. Once you start restricting what people can say under the guise of something as buzzwordy and pure as "preventing toxic behavior", no one will be "that guy" who says "we're losing business because people are afraid to even speak, we should pull back". All it takes is one softer soul to call that person a bigot or an enabler of toxic behavior, and they're fired.
I worry about platforms like Twitch, where "twitch chat" has become such a meme that it almost defines the platform. Its not about whether that definition is good or bad; its about trying to fundamentally change who you are. YouTube tried it with their comments section. No good discussion ever happens there. Not before their change, not after. But at least before it was fun and people used it. In essence, they destroyed legitimate business value in the pursuit of perceived business value based on moral righteousness, that perceived business value was never realized, and now they can't go back.
If you want the benefits of society, you cannot ignore the needs of others.
This has nothing to do with freedom and you know it.
Nowadays you are just thrown in a blender with every other player.
For starters the problem isn't the games, or the enforcement mechanisms, it's the gamers. There are plenty of other competitive activities with "randoms" that do not result in this type of behavior.
Another issue is that there will be those that get punished/removed that will play the victim and attribute it to politics, etc. You can see this beginning already in some of the comments in this thread about "dictating morality" and "silencing non-progressive behavior."
Throughly and clearly defined shitty behavior that had wide agreement. Had an effective form of zero tolerance that was both deterrent and enforcement. Had a clear code of conduct that was neutral to all. Correctly identified players and prevented false positives. Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how popular they were. Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how profitable they were.
You know what else would make for a better community? Better citizens.
For me, this isn't a problem to be solved on such a high level. After all, a mute function exists already and can be applied to anyone and the best thing is that it's a power within the hands of a player.
That, and blaming someone for not muting is blaming the victim, rather than blaming the other person for being toxic in the first place.
An issue with muting is that, depending on the implementation, the person behaving badly may not be aware they are being muted, and certainly won't know why. Providing some sort of feedback mechanism so that people being immature online get some sort of encouragement to change their behavior. Maybe a reputation system, that is viewable by others, so they can choose to not interact with toxic players.
It's not about having tons of moderators policing everything, it's about the fundamental mechanics of the system you are creating, the incentives. This can involve the peripherals of the game like player chat, community events and outreach, and even the core mechanics. A competitive multiplayer game where the mechanics are set up so that each team is only as strong as their weakest player, for example, is naturally going to increase tension and be unfriendly to new players. This was (possibly) alluded to in one sentence in the article: "the team emerged with a new focus not just on disruptive players, but on the ways competitive games can make assholes of us all."
All this goes to say that preventing a game community from becoming toxic is not a simple or trivial thing, and it's important if you want your game to succeed. It sounds like a coalition sharing ideas and experiences dealing with toxic behavior is exactly what we need.
Frustrating game experiences where players feel like they've had no agency in their loss lead to people being upset, which leads to people venting, which leads to people avoiding communication unless they vent. Most games that have this cycle start off fairly pleasant, and become increasingly angry places over time.
I'd be exceptionally surprised if this initiative actually deals with the core issues of frustration and poor skill conveyance rather than improved methods of having people suppress their anger while playing.
In the past 10 years or so new games have mostly stopped including this, in favor of matchmaking systems. I guess having a single, official server makes easier to enforce "progression" systems and sell microtransactions. I'd also suspect the the disappearance of community servers has to do with the rise of online multiplayer on consoles, which never really had that as an option.
Split screen is gone too. It used to be mandatory in the 1990s-2000s for FPS, now your lucky if a current gen title has split screen at all. This ruins one of the primary fun things to do with a game which is couch play.
Both of these things make it harder to microtransact and make games RPG like, so I get it. But I hate it really. The games are worse.
Someone writes hateful/immature messages in the chat? Ignore them. Someone's audio-spamming the voice chat with their stupid music? Mute them. I mute voice chats by default these days because I am not interested in hearing other peoples' voices when I'm immersed in a game. I rarely use the chat, often removing it from my HUD altogether. It's a distraction and I think it gets in the way of the gameplay.
Are we so easily offended that we'd rather be overly-sensitive towards the immaturity of others? Do we all need to remember the sticks and stones rhyme our parents taught us? Aren't we better off by learning how to be unbothered by this stuff?
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hockey-dad-found-guilty/
Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean that it shouldn't bother others. I've talked to gay people who play games, and they want to do so as an escape from the world, like everyone else. But it's really hard for that to happen when they constantly have these slurs hurled at them just like they do in real life.
"Are we so easily offended "
Why do you find it acceptable to blame the targets of this, instead of blaming those that are hurling the toxicity.
"Do we all need to remember the sticks and stones rhyme our parents taught us?"
You mean the one that has never, ever been true?
"Aren't we better off by learning how to be unbothered by this stuff?"
Again, why do you seem to want to encourage toxic people to be toxic?
Actually when I was a teen it didn't bother me at all. I so played counterstrike when it was a HL mod, Ultima Online when killing, cleanlooting, horsekilling, resskilling, notokilling, blocking and cleanlooting, house raids etc were still the norm. Didn't bother me.
Actually the older I get the more I don't have the nerves anymore for all this crap.
Edit: The only thing that makes me sad about these changes is you can't mess around any more. It is sometimes fun to grief. It's fun to learn new characters or play shitty ones. Everyone is so hyper competitive now and if you don't look like you're giving 1000% effort and getting mad at your failures you're called toxic. It's a game though, have fun, mess with your team a little.
A far more enjoyable experience even if i do meet a shockingly large number of my moms sexual partners.