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?
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.
I got a laugh out of this one, thank you 😂
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”