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?
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.
You're right that it's messy and imperfect and false positives can be really frustrating.
But the alternative - no efforts to maintain a safe space - is that vulnerable people are typically the target. Toxicity typically punches down.
I'll happily trade some clunky inconvenience so that those people can safely participate
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
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.
I'd like to feel like it too. Adults shouldn't act like children.
Ya fair enough. I'd put my "razor" at behaviour that targets vulnerable / minorities, which is probably broader / vaguer than just slurs, but it's going to be a spectrum of opinions and preferences
We agree there then, protected groups is where it should start and stop. Slurs I think would cover the majority of that kind of behavior but the problem is the more you try to crack down on bad actors the more false positives you get. There's a term for it but it's escaping me.
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:
Those "turn X off" buttons are fine; they're great actually, that's exactly what I'm advocating for (at least in the in game portion of things). There should be more of that, and they should be standard options.
e.g. it took Quake Champions years before they finally decided to add a mute chat button ... and when I suggested it almost a year before they implemented it, the discord chat lit into me "get tougher skin", "lolololol", etc kind of comments.
Every time it's brought up people take it personally like it's their right to be a dick in the game you both paid for... just because developers didn't implement an option to allow people to shut them up. Even here there are some pretty obnoxious takes (I'm not talking about yours) insisting I just need to get over it because "it's just a game."
I'm not saying anybody should be prevented from having a competitive rage baiting game where they trash talk left and right ... but some people do not enjoy trash talk regardless of whether or not they can "handle it" and I am one of those people.
Edit: For forums, I think non-constructive criticism/disrespectful comments/personal attacks should be "punished" by disabling forum/comment access though. There's no benefit to "mind games" or "trash talk" there... if you don't have anything constructive to say... I don't think you should be on, e.g., a suggestion forum. It's not helping the poster or the developers, it's just outright spam.
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).