Gaming Communities

[Epidemiix]

As the title suggests I fell like that I need to rant a little about some gaming communities. so here we go. (quick and fast now)

Now I know that there are good communities out there (I don't have much first hand experience but I take people's word for it) and that these kinds of communities might be in the minority, I am going to speak first hand about some of the people in the communities that I have seen in the past couple of months.

I refuse to use sweeping generalizations so I am only going to talk about the experience that I have seen while playing. I have been playing Dota 2 for awhile, (wait, wait ,wait I know that Dota is notorious for having a bad community but keep going) and it seems that a lot of the people that play this game are jerks to newer player or players that are not that good at the game. Doing something wrong in the game usually results in flaming from your team and then the enemies team. I can understand that emotions can be high in a game where everyone needs to be doing their part in order to win the game, but the amount of hate that some of the players say to the person doing something wrong is really unbelievable. Telling someone that they should quit or die just because of a small mistake that may or may not have the biggest effect on the game really gets to me.

Another thing that I see a lot of also is the amount of trash talk that goes around between he teams. Now some of the people that i play with usually tell me that "its part of the game" or that "its a part of gaming in general" (mostly "online gaming"). Sadly that seems to be almost accurate. Not because of gaming, but because of the people that have that mentality are often the ones that play many of these kind of games and are often the ones that make the loudest noise. (In Philly two people almost broke into a fist fight during a LAN Gears 3 match.... thought that might be relevant here...)

This is very much related to the topic I made before on Sportsmanship and the conclusion that most people came up with was that GIFT (Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) was the biggest factor into terrible player base.

TL;DR
Gaming communities have really terrible people that seem to be the loudest. Are there ways to fix it? How do you put up with these asses(NO! Bad!) these "malcontents" that are present in a lot of gaming communities?

 

[Jason Corner]

What i've generally found in the games i've played is a lot of people like to smack talk. It's almost part of most games, but some people take it too far. Whether it's your stereotypical CoD child screaming at you or the hideous trolls that like to hang out on the internet, just a few bad players can ruin the game for all involved.

Its a damn shame that all it takes is a few bad players to ruin an entire game, but that is the nature of the internet: anonymity. If you could be held responsible for the things you say and do online i think it would be a much more pleasant place to be.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think that's an inevitable consequence of the sort of demographic a title like that is targeted at. Historical realism mods, obscure indie RPGs, roguelikes, text adventures, etc. always strike me as having much friendlier communities.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If someone's talking smack, I just ignore them, or at most tell them to shut up and play, since if they're spending that much time typing or with their hand on the push to talk button, they can't be helping their team all that much. Especially on MOBA games, where it's text based, so it's really easy to ignore and really difficult to play while "talking." On FPSs, if they're really annoying me I'll make use of the mute button. Otherwise I'll keep 'em un-muted so I can laugh at the human equivalent of a poop flinging monkey. Seriously, it's not as common as you think it is, and if some random asshole on the internet is bothering you like that, you really need to grow a thicker skin.

Also, dedicated servers help. You find great communities built around individual servers. You find terrible communities when the "community" is the entire playerbase being brought together through random matchmaking.

 

[LiberalSquirrel]

Gaming communities have really terrible people that seem to be the loudest. Are there ways to fix it? How do you put up with these asses(NO! Bad!) these "malcontents" that are present in a lot of gaming communities?

It's not just the gaming community, in my opinion. In any large group of people/"community," the people who raise their voices the loudest tend to be the malcontents, the extremists, and those who are not representative of the group as a whole.

Perhaps it's my pessimism talking, but it'll take a lot to change human nature.

 

[Epidemiix]

Gaming communities have really terrible people that seem to be the loudest. Are there ways to fix it? How do you put up with these asses(NO! Bad!) these "malcontents" that are present in a lot of gaming communities?

It's not just the gaming community, in my opinion. In any large group of people/"community," the people who raise their voices the loudest tend to be the malcontents, the extremists, and those who are not representative of the group as a whole.

Perhaps it's my pessimism talking, but it'll take a lot to change human nature.

Sadly, I do agree with you on that. But it does seem (at least to me.....might be wrong) that there are more of the "malcontents, extremists, etc" in these gaming communities especially online gaming ones. And it also seems like in these communities its not just the ones making the loudest noise that are.....jerk-ish. If I went on a Dota forum right now and asked a serious question I would be lucky if 45-63 percent of the forum posts in response to my question would have been either rude of jerk-ish kinds of posts.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

It's not gaming, it's competition. Think of any sporting event really, and things get much worse all the time. Just take some of the U.K. football community for example. Some of them will bottle you just for saying you support a different team.

 

[ResonanceSD]

I was just in a TF2 match, two people were yelling at each other. my response was to tell them to shut the hell up and play the damned game. and lo and behold, it worked.

 

[Corax_1990]

The mute button.

 

[Frostbite3789]

A little razzing smack talk isn't all that bad. Like in LoL if I'm absolutely tearing someone up, yeah I'll give them a bit of hell. Nothing I wouldn't do in real life. Like last night (me and my friend have found Kat/Panth is a deadly lane combo), me and a friend destroyed a solo top Renekton, and he was a good dude about the hell we gave him in chat, and complimented us post game, saying how he never thought that lane combo would dominate as hard as it does.

Like there's a line, but unfortunately most people tend to cross and act like total jackasses.

 

[Epidemiix]

A little razzing smack talk isn't all that bad. Like in LoL if I'm absolutely tearing someone up, yeah I'll give them a bit of hell. Nothing I wouldn't do in real life. Like last night (me and my friend have found Kat/Panth is a deadly lane combo), me and a friend destroyed a solo top Renekton, and he was a good dude about the hell we gave him in chat, and complimented us post game, saying how he never thought that lane combo would dominate as hard as it does.

Like there's a line, but unfortunately most people tend to cross and act like total jackasses.

The thing is though, most people when you "give them hell" will retaliate with anger/rage and led to more stuff being thrown around. Then that person is more likely to start fights with other people later on and it sort of spreads from there. That Renek was just a very good sport about everything, most people are not on online games.

It's not gaming, it's competition. Think of any sporting event really, and things get much worse all the time. Just take some of the U.K. football community for example. Some of them will bottle you just for saying you support a different team.

It does seem like that now doesn't it..... I wonder what had caused sportsmanship in general to have a decline in most modern day sports (not just from the fans but from the teams).

 

[Dandark]

I usaully try to be a good sport about things. I play LoL a lot and usaully try to be a good sport. By "good sport" I mean that I don't rage and swear like a child at everyone in the game, I also try not to jump down my teamates necks about mistakes, if they do make mistakes I won't comment on it most of the time since people don't usaully take it well but if they keep doing it then I may mention it. Although rather than say something like "OMG NOOBZORZ U OVRXTEND!1!1!" i'll instead just recommend that they let the enemy push since they are in danger there if the jungler comes. Some people just won't listen though.

I'd recommend trying to keep a good sport friendlyish attitude since I have found that can help, people don't always get as angry when there is someone on there team being friendly and saying "no big deal, we all have bad games".

Same with the enemies, I try to not be a dick to them in chat just because I am doing well, sometimes i'll even complement them if they manage to do some kind of impressive move. A lot of the gaming community is made up of as you put it "Malcontents"(I like this word) so it helps to find people you enjoy playing with and friend them.

If anyone play's LoL on the NA server and wants someone to play with who will try to not be a "malcontent" then feel free to add me.
Name is "Dandark6"