(Partial rant) Why are gaming communities for multiplayer games so often filled with toxicity? Why aren't game developers doing more to stop this?
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:
Still, I find it hard to believe that's the majority. I remember days when it wasn't as bad as it's gotten. Like is it so many people that it would truly hurt profits that much vs what it could bring (there was a point where my friends and I almost entirely stopped playing online games because these people were just making it an annoying experience instead of a fun one; I can't imagine I'm in the only group of friends that experienced that/had folks that had to take a break).
I'd really love it if someone who works for one of these bigger studios (even anonymously) said why seemingly no time is spent on really trying to just expel toxic players like would be done in real life (in the various examples you gave).
Edit: My true pipedream would be that there's some next level person (senior dev, staff software engineer, product owner) at one of these studios lurking that goes "you know what you have a point" and actually does something about this 😅
1: The angry cunts drive away the players that just want to have fun, so they can soon dominate a space and turn a game toxic is a short time.
2: People remember the bad interactions. It you play ten games in a session and only one is filled with toxic arseholes...Guess which game you will remember the next day.
3: Once the toxic shitheads find a game that is allowing their behaviour to continue and not dropping the ban hammer on them, they will keep coming back and invite their toxic mates to join the fun.
I'm not sure I even regard this as a developer studios responsibility.
What has the game to do with how it's players behave? Your teebagging example is great for this: You seek a technical solution for a behavioural problem of the player base? That's a bit too far.
I'm pretty sure I know the players you describe. I've played against them, I've played with them and talked to them. I've let them get to me and ragequit. They are clearly cunts and bullies. Not much you can do about them.
Change what is in your control:
Play in a good state of mind where this stuff does not get to you (not when you're tired after work). Turn off voice comms. Don't let it get to you. Worst thing you can do to a troll is ignore them.
Bro, gaming communities are a reflection of internet communities at large.
The only common thing gaming strangers have is the game. The rest? They could be just about anybody you see on the streets. And the streets ia filled with assholes.
For a while now, I've been asking one simple question with a way I think could help reduce, if not eliminate, toxicity from players:
How do you gamify good sportsmanship?
If you can actually gamify and incentivize good sportsmanship in a tangible, meaningful way, it could do a lot to help with the crap commonly seen/heard in video game chats and forums.
It's not impossible, it's just not profitable. In most online games cosmetics are quite important. And you can easily make it that the only way to get them is by having a high community score or whatever you wanna call it. And even make it so that if your score drops, you lose access to them. There will still be assholes using the default model, sure, but I'm pretty sure most people will be going out of their way to be nice if there's something in it for them. And after a while of forcing yourself to do something it becomes habit. And that may be a way to teach players to be nice. Dunno, just a thought
You can still profit and coax people into behaving better at the same time. Most stuff you pay for; but have some exclusive things for getting enough good sport points. And to keep up their good behaviour, they will lose points for bad behavior and can have those items taken away from them if they fall below the points needed to have them in the first place.
Or hell; even lose your paid for items. Like taking away a child's toy if they misbehave. This is basically what a ban is anyway.
My only issue with this is that the only current and reliable way to get these points on your record would be to take the word of other players making reports. You could always get enough friends to circle jerk each other for good guy points, the same way you can bully players now with bad behavior reports.
I think that's a very interesting question! I don't have a good answer. In real life, this onus is on coaches, organizers, etc... so it's always seemed like something that moderators should just need to actually do.
What bothers me about this with video games is that I know as a programmer, programmers are capable of just shutting people down when they do obviously disrespectful things like t-bagging, and in games that have explicit taunts... they're perfectly capable of just giving players an option to disable taunts... but they don't.
It's kind of like chat filters, we don't have to sanitize it for everybody, but there should be an option.
Taunting animations and t-bagging are pretty mild and I've always considered them in the realm of playful trash talk in the vein of things like "you're going down, bro!" If they're also talking massive shit while doing it, that's a different story.
if youre really interested in the idea of gaminfying good sportsmanship, I think the Deep Rock Galactic community would be the best place to start. it's not devoid of toxicity, but it has arguably the least amount of it out of any other online game. I think the devs mentioned they think a lot of it has to do with things like having a solute/celebrate button (hence why all DRG fans will communicate via yelling "ROCK AND STONE!"), although being a co-op non-vs game helps I'm sure.
Programmers of AAA titles are subject to the decision of managers.
But more to your point: player upvoting/downvoting would maybe help solve this issue. The assholes will still be in the game rooms, but then you can avoid them. Like when you see a lemmy comment with -10, you just skip it.
That will never happen. How do you gamify YouTube comments?
I think a rating system would work better - sort of upvotes, but for gamers or game match rooms.
"Should I join this game? Oy, -7 points. Nope. What about this one? 4 points. Hm, maybe. Let's see the list of players. There are three with less than -5. Those are cunts. Nope. And this one? 57 points! Players above 2 points. Let's go!"
Lately I've been thinking about how you'd design a racing sim that rewards and gamifies clean racing but the basic answer is that you'd have to set it in world so different from our autoracing history and technology that you'd lose 75% of your player base who are mostly interested in real cars (the same way FIFA games appeal to people who want the real players, and don't actually care about the game design of football).
On PS5 there's platform native 'Accolades' where you can rate the people you've played with, but Bruce I never play the kinds of games that they're designed for I have no idea if they're used or how they even work. The point being though even Sony were trying to approach this topic at an OS/ecosystem level.
The toughest thing is getting reliable feedback. Steam and CSGO both have a system where you can give accolades to other players, which is a good base. But it's not ideal, imo, because it can be abused just like reporting bad behavior can. Personally I can't think of any way to automate giving rewards for good behaviour, because other than AI and with dubious privacy issues, there isn't a good way to gauge good behavior, since most of it is simply how people talk to each other, and not necessarily how they play the game.
One obvious solution is to do what competitive sports do: hire a referee. I could imagine hardcore players paying a little extra per match to hire a referee and essentially guarantee fair play. Some players might want to make a little extra cash while still being involved in a game they enjoy.
Might be a tough proposition though, since it would be hard to scale to large online communities. Maybe with good enough tools, refs could manage multiple matches at a time.
The cheaper solution that some games already do is allow players to report toxic behavior and then a moderator will play back the logs and see if the report is legitimate.
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.
Please.. Please just let it be toxic. I get that it can get pretty bad but I'm exhausted of having to police my language to the utmost degree because a dev thinks "night" is a racial slur because of the first three letters. The systems suck, it makes normal communication a chore, and the few wholesome moments often get ruined by it. Censorship in games and online to avoid toxicity is becoming a stranglehold and I can't take it.
It doesn't need to be all or nothing. We can do it in moderation. Remove slurs, don't over reach by going after every curse word, every bad phrase, every impolite slight. We don't need an internet with training wheels or water wings. Most of us are adults and I'd like to feel like one when I log on.
You're welcome to be toxic with others who want that, but I hate that this behavior, defines the competitive gaming experience. There should be other options.
I'm not talking about "safe spaces", I'm talking about giving people options to say "fuck that" without having to just avoid the game (something that's totally possible).
You don't need banned for doing stuff like this, but you also don't need to be shoving it down people's throats that just want to play the game on skill and strategy alone without this cringe "mind game" idea and blatant disrespect for other players.
Sure but the only way games can actually solve it isn't by policing chat but by giving you control over what chat you see. Mute options and features like in League of Legends, a full chat 'off' button. Additionally Incentives for sportsmanlike behavior which grant relevant rewards seem to serve as good positive reinforcement.
A lot of people just get emotionally invested in games. It's not always a mind game or strategy, it's often times just someone who is more invested in the outcome than maybe you are. Hell, sometimes it feels good to make your opponent rage.
I just don't want to leave it up to game deva because they almost always over correct:
I get what you're saying. When I was a kid playing some Red Alert or C&C game with a friend we'd be censored when saying "cum?" - which means "how?" in our language. I thought that was stupid as shit. I still do now for the most part. It's hard to have a conversation when everyday words are censored (and I was too young to know the meaning in english).
A more relatable example: If a group of friends of a particular minority want to play with each other and call each other names (that would be offensive otherwise) that may be in good fun and censoring that would be stupid and ruin the fun.
BUT
If somebody is being harassed and targeted for being black or asian or a girl or whatever, that's way different. I think we've all seen it happen quite often and it sucks and it often goes on for quite a lot - some of these games can last for up to 90 minutes AND they punish you if you leave early! So having to endure all that abuse certainly sucks and that sort of behavior should be punishable so that people don't become punching bags for others to vent their frustration. In a lot of cases these folks are kids or young adults.
I think companies could deal with that but they choose not to out of convenience (having to implement some sort of moderation could get expensive and to do it properly you need to get some human eyes involved to decide on the matter), and fear that they might lose a paying customer (in case they ban an abusive player for example).
Online sportsmanship is dead. There's zero consequence for being a direct cunt online. And reporting systems rarely report back if any action is taken against a player you reported.
Doing a mythic+3 in WoW? Get kicked over your spec because it's not the best one, even though the two friends you're bringing cleared all +15s.
Lost a clutch game? "Ggez" from the enemy team
Ruining it for the other team is part of the game and I think that's horrible.
I'd there's no "society"/community to give consequences to your actions, there's no incentive to get them to stop
It's a direct consequence of matchmaking (and in League of Legends specifically also of terrible game design). If you were to play with the same, smaller set of people every time this behavior wouldn't happen as often because people would simply start telling you you're a dick. In matchmaking there are no consequences as the chance you'll ever play the same opponent again before they forgot about you is minimal.
I found game communities on reeedit to be fairly annoying for similar reasons. Even for games where the community at large is fairly positive, there was a lot of random downvoting of topics and comments for no reason but bitterness or disapproval. A sizable and vocal minority seemed to come to the subs just to complain about the game, like "game is dead!" or "this update sucks!" or "they're going to close the servers, nobody plays!". There was one person who started really annoying me with their constant doom and bitterness in every single thread every day - like, we LIKE this game, stop trying to make us feel bad about it - so I googled their name. Like, do they play other games? Stream on Twitch? I found their public Steam profile with the same distinctive name as the reddit account. According to the achievements they hadn't even played the game they complained about every day long enough to get the most basic achievments (reach level 20...). I pointed that out on the sub and someone told me I was "STALKING". Yeah, one google search and looking at a public Steam profile... that's stalking.
Matchmaking systems basically make players anonymous. There's basically no incentive not to be an ass, because after a match players may never see each other again, or if they do they won't recognise each other.
While toxicity has always been an issue, it was less of a problem when multiplayer was more community-driven. I remember playing TF2 in local servers, and the thing that kept the worst toxicity in check was that people recognised each other. Regulars gained reputation with other regulars, which held value. And if someone was particularly toxic, they'd get banned.
The simple answer is that community moderation takes a human labor force, the cost of which is substantial and conflicts with the profit motive of the companies involved. There's just no financial incentive to clean things up beyond a threshold that would result in lawsuits or reputational damage. Because this kind of "toxic" behavior is becoming more normalized, and typically doesn't rise to a liability, you're not going to see most companies address it. This is why it has become customary for online gamers to have fucked your mother last night.
It's also hard to draw a line between blunt and rude, toxic and a honest, negative opinion. Once you start moderating, people expect some fairness and transparency. Or pretend so. They will complain about the moderation, play the system, troll. A company might easily get more shit for trying than for doing nothing, which is the norm.
Yeah, there is no perfect solution to this kind of behavior, but I'm familiar with this kind of toeing the line, too. Crying censorship to try to stir the pot despite the social contract is already in tatters...
I think it is important for a community to have a "We reserve the right to refuse service for any reason" to lean on in this case. Sometimes you need to be able to say "Well, your behavior has not crossed the line of any rules, but you've been such an asshole since your first strike that we're showing you the door anyway"
Maybe try a different game? Some communities are just way more toxic than others.
Battle bits is a good example of what a mostly non toxic community is like.
Bf2042 isn't toxic because you can no longer communicate with the other team, so no one even talks in chat at all.
Squad and Arma are filled with mature gamers and practically no toxicity.
Or you can just mute everyone at the start like I do in Apex. They never use the mic for communication, only to bitch and moan after they die doing something stupid. So it's no loss.
Or you can get friends, hook up on discord or similar and ignore everyone else
Yeah, this is basically what I've done. Hunt I've been pretty happy with. Destiny is the one that triggered this post, and the one that keeps catching me off guard.
I mostly play PvE stuff with friends and feel at peace with the game and how Bungie presents themselves ... then I get total culture shock when I engage outside of my friends group.
Appreciate you looking out for my mental health though 😅
I also recommend Deep Rock Galactic, that community is mostly amazing. And you can usually spot the assholes just by the way they name their server.
Also, another amazing community that I wholy recommend giving a try - Neverwinter Nights EE. The largest RP servers are so much fun, and the people there are really amazing to interact with, assuming you respect and play by the rules.
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.
"If someone pushes your buttons repeatedly to try and tick you off, and it does or you just generally don't like it, you're the problem ... it's just a video game"
I don't buy this argument... and characteristically that's the exact argument you're making. If it didn't work other people wouldn't be in here defending it as a "mind game."
This has been sorted out in other competitive spaces, there's no reason gaming has to be this way.
You can mute everyone from every game made in the last 20 years. If tea-bagging pushes your buttons so much the only solution you find is to ask the dev to remove crouching; then yes, you need to look within and work on your anger problems. Should probably step away from the game as well.
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.
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.
For a long time I asked myself the same question. Never found a very satisfying answer. In the meantime I stopped playing Dota 2 (which often has griefers) and Battlefield (which often has cheaters) so I'm not so troubled by this issue anymore.
I think devs just don't care and leave dealing with these kinda folks up to the players just because it's the status quo and nobody pushes them to do anything about it.
A big point could be that those toxic cunts are the players that are the most engaged with the game and maybe spend the most money. Nobody needs to pay for skins more than one time in League, except for people with smurfs for example.
Serious competitive multiplayer games have this problem IMO because they foster a us v them competitive mindset and take no steps to dissuade players taking it to seriously. Players act like crabs in a proverbial MMR bucket.
the BM is entirely the reason why multiplayer games stay popular. getting rid of stuff that tilts people would absolutely change the balance of almost every multiplayer game, and I don't think many people want that as the mind games add a lot to the depths of play style.
to put it simply the psychological warfare is part of the game , counterstrike for example if you get yourself.into the head of your opponents early you can basically walk all over them for the rest of the march, and besides the toxicity leads to increased levels of competition
As someone with a competitive sports background (swimming), yeah, no. This shit would get you disqualified and, if repeated, banned from competition for life in most sports. It's not a necessary part of any competition.
kinda creaxy cuz from a hockey background this shit is expected, snowing goalies, bodying the weaker players, hell they've even added penalties to pro rules that aren't suspension for unsportsmanlike
I've only heard this take from cringe twitch streamers... and suffice to say I don't think it's a good one.
I don't want someone to lose because they're too mad to aim... it's a game. We should all just be playing to have fun, not treating it like some psyop.
Edit: Also plenty of what I'm talking about here is outside of an actual match as well/forum behavior.
That why I usually try to avoid matchmaking as much as possible, and stick to a smaller communities within the game.
For example, when I was spending some time few years ago in the WoW roleplay community, which was one of the most fun I ever had with that game, I've found out that if I do pugs with people from within it, be it just picking up people on the main realm's Discord or from one of the RP guilds I've met, I've never had issues with toxicity. Even if I eventually stopped RPing, I still have a friendlist full of people I know I can pug with without problems, or I can just hop onto the Discord again and pick up a pug there. Also - I've never had as much fun progressing through raids as when it was with a group full of hardcore RPers from our RP guild, who we've managed to convince to give raiding a try, even though they mostly just use WoW as a platform for playing DnD. Most of them weren't really good, it was slow and painful progress, but we still had a lot of fun.
And I have the same experience with Sea of Thieves, where I found a smaller local Discord server that used to host game nights, and it was also a nice experience. Sure, I had to make the effort to get to know the people, instead of relying on anonymous matchmaking - but that's what multiplayer should be about. And still, in general, even if I play with random people I don't know from within the smaller community, it's generally a lot better experience - because assholes and toxic people generally don't last long there.
And if I do play a MP game with random people, I just mute people at the first sign of toxicity, and just add them to my ignore list.
Online games for the most part, are inherently competitive. When you combine competitiveness with anonymity it's pretty easy for it to go toxic. I don't think you can remove the toxicity from competitive online games anymore than you can remove bar fights out of sports bars. In my experience games that aren't competitive but are still online do not have this problem. Save for the occasional troll who gets off on being a stinker.
Competitive games never foster a friendly community, as players, by design, compete against one another, rather than working together. Trying to force a spirit of sportsmanship onto those communities is bound to fail.
I mean, I think you can definitely be competitive without being a dick.
I never played sports in school (but I've gone to sporting events and watched my little brother play games as he grew up). They didn't allow the crap video games allow to go on. Adults had rules, you have to high five after the game, you'll get benched or penalized if you're being unsportsmanlike, etc...
Those common sense rules aren't mirrored in games at all, even when they could be automated (or the "taunt" features could simply be -- optionally -- disabled).
They do when the games are played face to face, with referees and coaches. I don't know many people who played real sports growing up that don't understand good sportsmanship; but it's such a common thing in video gaming to be a poor sport both winning and losing. And I don't think it's a coincidence that video games also attract a lot of people who never played sports.
The thing to do would be to "shadowban" the worst offenders and make it so they only get matched with other shadowbanned users. I think there's a game that already does this. At that point, they can just enjoy playing "to put it simply the psychological warfare is part of the game " against each other. Now, my theory is that this "psychological warfare" is only fun when you're the only one doing it and other people are trying to be reasonable. When it's 10 people screaming constantly over voice chat, griefing and generally being terrible, I suspect the "psychological warfare" becomes way less fun.
I just want to play games with nice normal people, is that really so much to ask?
Yes, actually, this is a very large ask.
You should probably come to terms with the reality that "nice normal people" don't really exist. There are nice people, and there are normal people, and the overlap on that Venn diagram is a tiny sliver. Also, everybody has bad days where their stress gets the better of them, and you never know when you're just seeing someone at their worst because their car broke down, they're late on the rent, their mom is in the hospital and their kid's teacher wants to have a meeting about in-class behavior for the third time this month.
People use video games as a place to relieve stress, and the general lack of consequences in the rest of their life enables that. I'm not saying its right, but I am saying that other people deserve your patience and understanding more than your judgementalism.
As for why game developers don't do more about what you consider bad behavior, the simple fact is that you can't solve social problems with technology.
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.
I love outplaying people ... I typically don't find AI enemies challenging/creative enough ... I just don't care for the childish "mind game" (which seriously whoever started claiming they're "mind games" is ... well I'll let you finish this sentence with your own choice of creative words 🙂)
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!