Are gaming communities really as bad as some people make out?

There are bad apples for sure, and it playing out mostly on the internet in an anonymous way is a huge part of that. That said, i often find myself checking comments on a sports focused site, and in 80% - 90% of those comment sections people rage at eachother for unrelated petty shit. I feel like the gaming community hits a better average overall. At least the toxicity seems to revolve around the topic at hand and not just revolve around unrelated dramaqueen shit like 'refusing to take a club's name in their mouth because it makes them puke'. Will never understand why people who want to look tough, act like the mere mention of a rivals club name can upset their stomach in such a major way.

It also feels like gaming communities have a bit more reference for the site they post on. Or they felt that way at some point. Like there are plenty of people here that genuinely want to see GB do well and grow, whereas the more mainstream the site gets, it becomes just a default place to spew your toxicity in the void without any real allegiance to the site they get to do it on.

The gaming communities still have some huge issues obviously. Compared to a comment section of a music site i visit, the gaming community can be quite a hellhole.

@onemanarmyy: Yeah, your more mainline sports comments are just rife with some real pieces of shit. I remember before ESPN threw the comments out completely, it was just always some of the worst of the worst.

Wherever people congregate, there will be those that suck.

I don't have a problem with the things people say or type in online games because that can be easily ignored or disabled. In my experience the players who communicate act like jerks more often than not, but it's mostly just kids looking to get a rise out of someone. The toxicity that actually annoys me is the type that directly hinders the game for other players, like team killing, which thankfully I've found to be a rarer occurrence. I don't think gaming communities are any worse than any other online social activities, their just one of the biggest so they get the most attention.

@stonyman65: I hate to really use this phrase but "Banter" when the term isn't used as an excuse to be racist or something similar as well as more "light-hearted" trash talking is something I think a majority of players don't have any real issue over. If I'm in a game and another player says "dude you need to git gud scrub" I probably won't be too happy about my gaming skillz being dissed but on the whole it won't be a huge issue and mostly forgotten after the match has ended.

The tricky part is at what imaginary cut-off point does what people say go from standard trash talking to an actual problem of toxicity and that cut-off point will arguably be different for different people. A little off topic but I recently saw a video from someone playing Overwatch and discussing this issue of toxicity and Blizzard's response video titled "play nice, play fair". The general gist was that in their opinion Blizzard was being overly sensitive and that they were treating the community as children that need looking after.

Arguably there is a little bit of merit in that when regarding to how Blizzard react to immediate outcrys from the community such as with some of the stuff going off in the OW league but the main thing for me was before he made his points he used an example of a previous game he played about the toxicity in Overwatch where 3 other players insta-locked DPS and were complaining when he changed to another DPS because they weren't being effective. He choose to refer to the players as autistic in the derogatory sense that I'm sure some of you will be familiar with as one of those insults that you just see on the internet sometimes. I'm 90% confident the guy doesn't actually have any bad feeling for people that actually have autism but obviously he seemed pretty comfortable with using the word as a way to put down his teammates in the game.

This is why I think games like Rainbow Six Siege as well as Overwatch have shifted to a more zero-tolerance attitude to any kind of chat that has the potential to really negatively affect other players. When you try to have a "You can do trash talking but don't go too far" stance then people will inevitable see how far they can push the boundaries and everyone's boundaries for what does and doesn't upset them will vary. Maybe the autism thing is something some people don't consider that offensive but personally for me I found it in very poor taste and not something I want to see in game.

Are they that bad? Absolutely. As several have mentioned, awfulness sure isn't limited to video game communities (just read the comments section on virtually anything), but as this is a domain us here certainly spend time in, it's one we need to start helping to police a bit.

I take some issue with the apathy of the "eh, there will always be assholes in a group of people" perspective. While there's certainly some truth to that, it also really only takes one vitriolic prick to negatively affect someone else's day (or more). Attacks that go so far as to try to single out someone for who they are as a person are beyond fucked up. Unchecked, it's a tacit acceptance of the behavior from those on the periphery of it. At minimum, we should all be reporting this sort of thing when we hear it.

It shouldn't be excused for youth, ignorance, competitiveness, whatever. Hate speech is never okay and shouldn't be tolerated, even from a passive inaction standpoint. I'm so sick of everyone being ugly to each other, and the idea of something as silly as a video game providing the basis for it is as dumb as it is sad. I don't personally find myself as a target for much of this very often, but I still try not to just look the other way on it, either.

I think any popular online game will have its share of toxic users. I remember playing Halo 2 on xbox live and i met some pretty cool people. I also met a fair share of cheats, hackers and screaming kids on Xbox Live. Most congregate outside of forums for the particular games though as they are not in it for discussion or civil discourse. My best memories were reading through bungie.net and posting with the community and i did not see this subgroup affect the overrall experience.

So yea in conclusion --- PSN, XBOX LIVE ( Higher Probability of meeting racists and abusive trolls)

l don't play multiplayer games in general, but did play some WoW back in the day. I had plenty of negative experiences though. It was not the main reason I stopped playing WoW, but it was a contributing factor.

Even if the multiplayer gaming communities were more friendly or nice, I would still stick to single-player gaming.

The worst gaming community to me though, is the new racing game "community" which has sprung up following Assetto Corsa's and Dirt Rally's prominence. It has a attracted a large number of younger gamers with truly lousy and childish attitudes to the racing game forums I used to visit.

I think the toxic attitutes are a reflection of our media's change in language, how they talk about games today, especially the "non-professional" media channels on YouTube. Younger gamers have been taught that it's OK to talk about games, developers and publishers in a really insulting way, and the step towards using the same language against fellow gamers is not far away.

Honestly it depends, depends on what type of community you're looking for. Generally I think they're all truth, but mostly a little exaggerated.

YES!

I personally don't think gamers should make out.

There is definitely something to the gamers are jerks argument, anyone whose played Halo or Call of Duty on xbox live will have a story about a guy shouting, calling women slurs, calling everyone racial slurs, or saying inflammatory things.

To the OP's point, a lot of online games that require more focused team play do not tolerate new people, when I started Starcraft these people were called NOOBS and it was seen as the other N word. A lot of kids would freak out being called noobs on starcraft and even longtime players being called or asserted that they were making noob mistakes was seen as a very aggressive thing to say. It's not necessarily that bad a thing to be called a noob in my opinion, everyone is new at some point to everything. Thing is, as someone who has played these games and has some experience with them, should bring in new people - or even be civil to randos - and work with them to get good, which some people try to argue getting good is a toxic idea. A learning and difficulty curve is a natural part of the world, let alone video games, and to act like everyone walks into everything the best player ever is disingenuous. I'm not fond of the way a lot of games dumb down difficulty and handhold players through things, I'd rather be thrown to the wolves and have to figure things out myself or go look up what other people are trying here, on a reddit, or on Gamefaqs.

I recently played some rainbow six siege and I felt like I was overwhelmed. I'd never played it before and it was not just the same as every other FPS, I saw players throwing up barricades and blowing holes in other walls with their grenades. Tactics that I normally use like putting my back to a wall, that ended catastrophically bad. Once a guy shot me through a door with some kind of heat vision deal. These are all things that going forward, I have an idea on how to deal with.

I find a lot of younger players I talk to are not willing to do that "work" of looking at message boards like a gamefaqs or subreddit. Occasionally, I'll see some spoiler or somebody saying nasty mean things, I just keep moving. I ain't got time for nonsense. And to be honest, I rarely engage with forums. I've been making an active effort to pop into Giant Bomb more, but I've found discord to be the best way to communicate with people.

There's a way to be more welcoming and understand that someone is new to a game without being a big old jerk and swarming somebody calling them names, there's a way to trash talk without yelling racial, homophobic, or sexist slurs, and the best advice I can give is to grow that thicker skin. I imagine a lot of people are shocked by voice chats, not just the guy playing loud music or the little kid playing a violent video game, all the yelling and anger that some players seem to have, especially pointed towards team mates not doing what they're supposed to. I was yelled at by my rainbow six team throughout the five games we played, but that didn't stop me. I spoke up and explained I was new, how can I be the least amount of a burden, and I asked questions. Them throwing grenades blowing holes in walls seemed so alien to me, but they were trying to get viewing angles. That heat vision thing I could've stopped by standing still. Now I know better, they toned down their hatred for my bad play, and we had a much better time.

So just like a Danswers (RIP danswers) better communication is the key to better relationships, but don't be stingy muting and reporting people who are just being asses.

A great amount of people say and do things just to get a reaction out of people, it's best to ignore them, like advertising if you ignore a troll long enough they'll die.

It's usually more toxic in competitive games because trash talking the competition is part of winning.