There are plenty of multiplayer games I adore. However, it seems like every community has these “brain dead”, patronizing, or out right toxic elements that are just nasty. I’d rather debate politics than make suggestions in some gaming communities because the responses are just so … annoying.
As an example, I once dared to suggest that a game developer implement a mode to prevent crouched status from rendering on death cams so that players that are bothered by t-bagging could avoid it (after a match where a friend rage quit because someone just kept head shotting him – possibly with cheats – and then t-bagging). This post got tons of hate, and like -50 upvotes on reddit because of course someone should be forced to watch someone t-bag them.
Another example on a official game forum… I made a forum post suggesting Bungie use Mastodon (or really just something else being my intent)… The response I got was some positivity but mostly just “lol nobody uses that sweetie” and other patronizing comments.
Meanwhile studios themselves often seem to be filled with developers that understand this stuff is a problem, and the lack of sportsmanship (or generally civilized attitudes) does push away players. It just doesn’t make sense to me that no studio is saying “get lost” to these elements or implementing anti-toxicity features. I just want to play games with nice normal people, is that really so much to ask?
I hate to say it but many people play multiplayer games because it gives them the ability to be complete cunts to others with zero possibility of any real repercussions.
That is the draw.
Behaviours that would get you thrown out of a public space or banned from a group d&d session or punched in the face can be repeated again and again in online gaming.
The same people that like to troll spaces like this are the same people who only play multiplayer games to grief others.
It is an often repeated quote, to the point it has become trite but it is true:
Some people just want to watch the world burn
Anonymity + Audience = Assholes.
Yep. Penny arcade did a great comic on this almost 20 years ago.
The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Which was:
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
Normal Person - Consequences + Audience = Total Fuckwad
Which is a perfect explanation for Twitter both before and after EM took over.
Anyway, her suggestion looked like this:
Normal Person - Consequences + Audience = Total Fuckwad
which adjusts Anonymity toward its functional result. For some reason, and I don’t know why, the notion of subtraction, of negation, is much more optimistic that our construction because it implies that you can add something and change it. The underlying assertion is that we can fix this with technology, which, again, you know, engineers. Our conversations tend to be interesting.
Very cool when it’s put like that.
A while back I decided to stop playing competitive/pvp focused games due to the stress it would cause me. One of the biggest things I’ve noticed is just how much less toxicity there is.
Why are gaming communities for multiplayer games so often filled with toxicity? Why aren’t game developers doing more to stop this?
Have you read Lord of the Flies?
like every community has these “brain dead”, patronizing, or out right toxic elements that are just nasty
Which is extremely unfortunate. WoW forum threads could be a cesspool in a matter of seconds.
Anyway, as others pointed out, the main problem is competition. The more competitive a game is, the more invested some people get. The more invested you get, the more likely you are to rage at losses and behave like a monkey against a losing opponent. Hell, you don’t even need to be a player to feel invested, just look at people that worship their sports team.
For online games, companies just shrug and point to their automations for trying to control toxicity (Riot Games probably being the “best” in the area), because it’s much easier to automate than to come up with a solution.
My main recommendation is to avoid super competitive games. If you want to play those, then you’re probably better off trying to find small groups of colleagues for that. In ye olde days of games coming with the server-side executable, these groups were called clans. Quake, Unreal and Jedi Outcast had lots of them.
Dota 2 has an ability score and a bunch of report mechanics. I think they’ve finally got it tuned really well. I haven’t experienced toxicity in a while tbh. It definitely still exists and it’s got to be a very hard system to balance. They’ve iterated on it a lot!
if you get angry at people in a video game I think it’s time to step away from the game. While I think action should be taken against hate speech and racism a little trash talk in competitive games is par for the course. Personally I think tea-bagging is hilarious even when done against me. I also usually mute anyone not in my group so I don’t hear annoying people screaming which can be done in any modern game.
What you’re describing is usually called “looking the other way” and bullies thank you for the support
You’re playing competitive games with primarily teenagers and young adults. They are always gonna be toxic and very few companies are willing to dedicate a ton of resources towards content moderation. There are big games that do, like Overwatch, so if it’s a problem for you then you should either only play those games, or play games that don’t attract the young toxic crowds as much.
And honestly asking for a feature to hide your delicate eyes from teabagging in an FPS is a bit much.
Having personally played Rocket League, (1800 hours), Valorant (500? hours), CSGO (2000 hours), League of Legends (2000? hours) and a variety of coop multiplayer games, I can tell you that the most toxic communities tend to be the competitive ones. Something about competitive games draws out the most hardcore crowd and that crowd tends to be a lot less friendly. Maybe it’s because people who play ranked games care about their ladder MMR, and the ones who are able to keep playing must have some kind of ego - you have to understand that a lot of people get fun out of winning, not from just participating in the game.
Regardless, the mechanism that rewards players is skill. And in these games, being polite, being nice to your teammates, none of it really matters if you aren’t skilled. Inherently there is a pecking order because higher ranked players are better than lower ranked players. Most games don’t reward direct toxicity of higher ranked players towards lower ranked players, but they don’t forbid it. Smurfing, for instance, allows a player to assert their superiority over lower skilled players. A carry on a team can be significantly more toxic towards their teammates since their teammates want the MMR from a win and will be willing to put up with being bullied or harassed. Just like another commenter mentioned, players compete against each other, and you will not really be friendly with your opponents in most ranked settings. But additionally, players also rely on their teammates. I think this is where a lot of the toxicity comes from.
When your friend dies to the enemy and gets t-bagged, your teammates aren’t pitying your friend for getting t-bagged. They’re mentally rolling their eyes that your friend was outplayed by their opponent and that’s why when you post on a forum the result is usually “git gud” and not “we should be more friendly”. I don’t think being toxic is positive to the health of a game. I could go into detail, but this post is already pretty long. But I want to point out, if the setting is a competitive game, merit is usually the driving factor regardless of toxicity or kindness. If you don’t gain that dopamine hit out of outsmarting or beating your opponents but rather simply from playing the game or socializing with other players, you probably should not bother touching these games - you aren’t the core audience for these games and you’ll find more enjoyment in other settings.
For the record, if you get t-bagged in a competitive game, the recourse is to either not look at the kill cam (CS:GO lets you turn it off), or try to improve so you don’t get t-bagged as often. Ragequitting, or going to complain that it should be turned off will get you nowhere. BMing your opponent is a popular thing in most competitive games, and it’s part of the reward for outplaying them. In many eyes, it’s not really all that different from a giant defeat screen when you lose. If you’re sensitive to this kind of stuff, I think you should find more friendly communities. Coop games generally tend to be better, as do more casual games, or FFXIV if you’re looking for an MMO. I would say most players (me included) consider the option to t-bag a feature and not a bug, because really the thing that upsets me the most is not getting t-bagged; it’s getting outplayed by my opponent so they’re able to do it in the first place.
In a surprise to absolutely nobody, payday 3 is a bag of shit!
