Why does the gaming community (among others) have to be so destructive and toxic?

I know this is human nature and this is nothing new. It’s absolutely impossible to make something that everyone is happy with, but what’s the need to be so destructive?

I recently finished The Callisto Protocol and in my opinion it’s a great game but I remember people saying that “The game was so bad that they (Krafton) had to give it away (PS Plus) for someone to play it”.

Oddly enough I probably like to contradict most people because another game I’m interested in playing is Immortals of Aveum and when I read one or another review people say that “It’s just another generic dead game, like those generic trash Netflix series”, I mean, is it really necessary to be so destructive? And I want to clarify, I don’t give a shit what people say, if I like a game and I enjoy it I don’t mind paying full price for it, and if I don’t like it, I just don’t do destructive reviews.

What I least understand about the gaming community and what I find most toxic is when they criticize others for playing something they like, like the phenomenon of criticizing Genshin Impact players or in the past the same with Minecraft. Do I commit a sin by playing something I like?

yesman,

Gaming culture is more toxic. It’s because of GamerGate.

GamerGate was an online harassment campaign, conspiracy theory, and lie that the entire gaming industry was trying to ruin games by pandering to “SJWs”. Women, queer people, minorities, and the disabled were being shoehorned into games as “forced diversity” in order to brainwash gamers into leftest politics. Worst of all, white cis hetero men were being forced out of the gaming space that always belonged to them.

Obviously, the solution to this dastardly plot was to dox, harass, and swat people declared, on the flimsiest evidence, to be behind this plot. Anyway, this was very successful and the tactics, bigotry, and mentality has so infiltrated online gaming spaces, most of the people being toxic today learned that behavior second or third hand from those who actually participated in Gamergate.

IDK if this was coordinated, or spontaneous, but the “alt-right” was very active a this time trying to meme Trump into the white house. Even skeptic spaces that are left wing about almost everything else became cesspits of Islamophobia.

TORFdot0,

Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t mean they’re toxic, but for whatever reason people take differences in tastes or opinion as personal attacks and discussions often turn toxic.

I think part of it is a lot of discussions on games are between literal children or man-children who don’t have a lot of emotional maturity yet, and so it leads to a lot a fanboyism and flame wars.

I’d love to give you my opinion on Callisto protocol but my back log is so big I might never get to it.

Transcendant,

You see it across all kinds of media; whether it’s a song you like, or a game, or a film, or a TV show… If you dare to say online you’re a fan, someone will swiftly be along to inform you that your opinion is wrong, your show is bad, your taste is bad, and you should feel bad

I’ve started to give way less of a fuck about comments like that. Some people are very sad / small, and can only make themselves feel less so for a brief moment by trying to ruin the enjoyment of others. It’s OK not to like things, there’s plenty of things I don’t like 😁 but it’s fine to me if other people like those things, different strokes for different folks.

Lophostemon,

Fat incel 40+ yo basement dwellers are unlikely to be positive people.

ThrowawayPermanente,

This is the real answer. A lot of heavy gamers are losers and are mad about spending their entire lives at the bottom of the hierarchy.

surewhynotlem,

That’s a weird way to say undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, and put the blame squarely on the person struggling with it.

ThrowawayPermanente,

Right, of course, somehow I forgot that everything is a disease now and nobody is ever responsible for their decisions. I appreciate the correction!

surewhynotlem,

Reasons are not justifications or excuses. But they do let you have a bit more empathy and understanding.

Or you can be a Tough Guy hard-ass type. That might work for you. It’s not my thing though.

fugacity,

As an add-on to OP, is it just my confirmation bias or are competitive games a trove for alt-righters? Never seen so many Trump supporters except in CSGO and rocket league...

WalrusDragonOnABike,

Celeste speedruns are fairly competitive from my understanding. I have not watched the top players, but in general the Celeste community seems pretty good from the little indirect interactions I've had with them. But it's solo play and leader boards, not real-time matches (although those probably exist too, but you still don't interact with the other players).

Curious if that direct combativeness is part of difference. Of course another important difference is the Celeste community is fairly unique given its trans game status. But I don't think that's necessary to build a good community: smw kaizo isn't inherently trans, but the community decided years ago that it wasn't going to tolerate transphobia, for example. But its extremely non-competitive imo.

Pirky,
@Pirky@lemmy.world avatar

Celeste isn’t the best example because it was made by a trans person. The story is literally about the dev overcoming their own internal issues with, and accepting, who they are. By default, most alt-righters aren’t going to touch that game.

Good game by the way. Would recommend.

WalrusDragonOnABike,

The SMW kaizo community has several prominent trans contributors and notable members (Shoujo and shovda being probably two of the more public ones, both participating in the relay race at SGDQ 2022, which also had at least two trans creators). I'd include Maddy among the notable member, but that's a relatively recent thing with her release of Super Sonic Saves the World World and Sure Shot (a level of which was in the SGDQ race and was co-created with another amazing member of the community). Unfortunately it wasn't always that way apparently (the SGDQ 2019 relay race did include someone who was later shunned by the community for platforming transphobes apparently).

Also, the kaizo community and Celeste community have a lot of overlap given they're both tough platforming games for lots of community-made content.

Its also just small enough that everyone can know most other people who are part of it.

T156, (edited )

They’re probably some of the more vocal ones, so get noticed most.

If someone is off playing Candy Crush, they’re usually not waiting and chatting in a multilayer lobby, so you don’t notice them. Same for the people who only use game chat as necessarily, rather than for average conversations.

OnlyTakesLs,

Right wings sre more into self improvement and competition than left wingers, generally speaking.

There was a study on it a while back, cant be bothered to find it right now.

mrnotoriousman,

Yeah all those maga gravy seals sure are all about self improvement

OnlyTakesLs,

Dont act like not almost everyone is fat nowadays.

mrnotoriousman,

Go ahead, do elaborate on what areas of "self improvement" a group of people tying their identity to one of the most vile people in our country they are working on? We established you don't want to factor in physical health. Certainly it's not by watching Fox News as we know that people who watch that are less informed than people who watch no news at all.

DessertStorms,
DessertStorms avatar

competition? Sure..
"self improvement", on the other hand? Not a snowball's chance in hell, unless that's what they call bigotry.. 🤦‍♀️🤣🤣

ThunderingJerboa,
ThunderingJerboa avatar

I haven't read the study but I'm assuming their point is they like to see number/medal go up in these games because that is where they have power in their life. So they are more willing to hit the trenches and just go deep into a game trying to get to grandmaster or diamond or some shit. I think that is what they mean about "self improvement".

Kraivo,

Competitive nature is rarely appropriate

lurch, (edited )

So I enjoy playing Spiral Knights. Since right after the game launched in 2011 there were always a significant amount of players around, claiming it was “dead” without further specifying what that meant.

Spiral Knights still gets new players every day and even though it’s free to play, some people even spend large sums on it to gample for cosmetics or buy rare items from other players.

I have come to the conclusion that some people just have an insane definition of “alive”

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I don’t understand sometimes the definition of “dead game” because as I mentioned Immortals of Aveum is a 100% offline game, what does it matter if it has 5 or 1000 active players on Steam?

Carighan, (edited )
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I recently finished The Callisto Protocol and in my opinion it’s a great game but I remember people saying that “The game was so bad that they (Krafton) had to give it away (PS Plus) for someone to play it”.

It’s important to keep in mind that the internet is big.

Before the internet, we could not hear the opinions of people except the ones closest around us plus whatever got exposed through the news. Which in turn is vetted and filtered, partially to remove extreme choice of words and professionalize it.

However now everyone is on the internet, and there’s a whole lot of humans around ([citation needed], obvs 😅). It’s not difficult to find a handful that would review Callisto Protocol in a toxic manner. It’s not difficult to find an ex-president that condones an insurrection while trying to steal federal secret documents, either. Given enough people to look at, you will always be able to find a few that do X or think Y. Now if you then again filter your view down to a myopic but selective enough choice, you will be able to include those people, making the context seem very extreme.

Ask yourself this: Of the people in your immediate IRL surroundings, how many have strong negative feelings about Callisto Protocol? (I bet most don’t have any opinion, and most don’t even game?) But if you select just people who played it, who had opinions on it, and then strong enough ones to write a review, of course you’ll find a lot of toxic opinions.

(edit)
And of course in this case it adds that the Callisto Protocol is genuinely bad, and just about everyone agrees. That doesn’t mean people won’t enjoy it (as you do), but anyone already negatively inclined will feel far more able to post aggressive words about it, fearing retaliation less.

BetaDoggo_,

Most of what you’re describing is just review bias. Reviews are usually only left by people who either had a very positive or a very negative experience. Strong opinions are also more memorable and tend to get more attention.

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

But what about when people give a bad opinion about something just because others do it? That’s where my frustration comes from, when people praise or criticize something just because others in the community do it, but unfoundedly.

RedditWanderer, (edited )

I’m a game dev and have been a gamer for all of my 35 years on this earth.

The real issue is anonymity. People are not themselves online, especially not in game (not that I advocate for less anonymity). It’s completely out of your control and best not to expect too much of it. Have your own fun.

Like that idiot who ripped out the Banksy stop sign an hour after it was revealed. We just can’t have nice things, it’s always been this way and always will. Poverty, injustice, discrimination, group dynamics, mental health etc… all contribute to the mix.

I highly recommend a documentarish thing on YouTube from Dan Olson called : Why it’s rude to suck at Warcraft. Very relevant to your question I think.

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Does the video have anything to do with the way of playing MMORPGs (I mean, you need to play with unknown people to advance in the game)? I can’t see it right now, but I’ve played enough FFXIV to notice that people who have anonymity behave very differently.

Mango,

No. People are not themselves when confronted by a controlling threat. Anonymity enables honesty.

xkforce,

In my experience, its the competitive games that are the most toxic. Coop games require people to work together which inherantly punishes toxic behavior. And this carries over to the community that forms around the game. i.e the people that tend to remain interested in a game enough to be part of the general community are going to be more accepting of the social environment of the game. Toxicity in the game drives away players that arent toxic or at least accepting of it. So less goxic players tend to have less of an influence in those gaming communities. And toxic players like that tend to be louder and are easier to notice in the broader gaming community

Lunar, (edited )

The Callisto Protocol that you played now is not how it originally released. It was patched and tweaked a lot.

Also the gameplay is flawed. See the combat system with more than one enemy and it gets wonky. One of the changes was exactly to make enemies less aggressive as before they would often gang up on you and lead to frustrating deaths.

I like The Callisto Protocol a great deal as well, but it is a game flawed in what matters most: the gameplay.

ThunderingJerboa,
ThunderingJerboa avatar

I mean even from a core concept, melee with big animations just seems like an odd way to go for that style of game as you point out with multiple enemies. Also its brain dead simple unless they have changed it where you just go left, right, left, right. So difficulty setting basically just goes down to how tanky is this enemy (which is a pretty common way to artificially inflate a game's difficulty).

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I completely agree, it was funny to see that when an enemy attacked me the others stayed behind watching, I mean, dodging an attack is easy but if they all attacked me together they would massacre me.

foggy,

Pro tip:

Don’t immerse yourself in any community because you love the thing.

Love the community. Love the thing. Love them separately.

I LOVE melodic death metal and progressive death metal. I don’t wanna meet other metal fans. At all. I want to meet people who like what I like but not because what we both like belongs to some more amorphous superset.

You can love Tupac and hate hip hop. You can love Opeth, and hate Opeth, and still love Mikael akerfeldt, and still kinda hate him. You can love snowboarding, and think the culture is cringe.

Don’t let the people who love the things you love make you feel differently about the things you love, unless it’s those people you love or something? Idk. Crowds of people are dumb as fuck. Ignore them.

ABCDE,

Opeth were great when I saw them live for a DVD filming in London, but I don’t want to talk to you about it. Totally agree.

VikingHippie,

I don’t wanna meet other metal fans. At all.

You’re missing out big time. Metal fans form some of the greatest fun-loving and mutually protective communities there are.

paddirn,

For some people it gives them a sense of superiority to be able to look down on something that somebody else likes. Or everyone just has different opinions and you’re just more likely to read opinions from the people that felt something negative about the game. If somebody thought it was ok or they mildly liked it, they’re probably not going to care enough to say anything about it. As a Star Wars fan, you’ll see nothing but people ripping apart every new Star Wars series, and it’s the fans that are tearing if down the most (to be fair though, Disney makes it easy by being so lazy).

scrubbles,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Don’t forget about the bandwagon. It gives us a sense of comradery when we jump in on a bunch of people trashing something. It ends up not even being about the thing anymore, just everyone wants to be heard saying how terrible the thing is.

ThunderingJerboa,
ThunderingJerboa avatar

In some ways I agree, people love to tear each other down but one of their examples is around "Genshin Impact players", Like cool you can enjoy those games but god damn them getting popular is fucking scary to me as a gamer since it means Gatcha gaming is coming to the west and I'm sorry to all you Genshin impact player but those mechanics are some of the most cancerous things in modern gaming. The huge gambling aspects, paying for power, just the constant daily grinds, etc. The same is said for sports titles and other things. So people use it as a "Har har I feel I'm better than you" but I think there is a fear of such monetization catching on. We as gamers should be fighting against these things because we are becoming nothing but a god damn piggy bank for these large gaming corporations, who are trying to make us gamblers. Its honestly the reason why I try to stick with the PC market and indie games since the biggest problem area is the AAA scene since they are trying to extract the most amount of wealth. I want a developer to succeed and I think there is a fair place for monetization in the gaming scene but right now a ton of devs (realistically publishers) don't respect players and their money.

scrubbles,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Unfortunately this is on par with “what is the meaning of life?”

Dozens of reasons I’m sure, but for me I’ve just noticed people in general have become much more cynical combined with needing instant perfect satisfaction.

A game cannot be simply “okay” anymore. It’s either masterpiece or garbage. If a game can’t beat RDR2 then it’s immediately worthless.

One I keep getting downvoted to hell here about is Starfield. Constantly downvoted because I had the gall to say it’s an okay game, that it’s perfectly fine, that it runs okay, and I had fun playing it. I never said it was a great game, never said it was without flaws, but just the fact that I didn’t throw it in the trash made commenters come out of the wordwork and rip my comments to shreds.

I don’t know where this came from. Gamers have always been negative, but the last 5-10 years it’s just gotten so much worse. Frankly I’m surprised developers have any passion for it at all anymore. They release a project they spent 5 years on, put their time, effort, and energy into, and there’s about a 1% chance that people will like it and a 99% chance that they’re going to be doxxed.

In the end, I’ve stopped watching reviews. I’ve stopped listening to the internet for what they like. I choose my own way. I buy games that look fun and play them, and you know what? It’s been a blast.

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