Yeah, they are thinking of 2000s xbox live chat. It’s been a while since then.
I still see calls for eliminating minorities in Steam forums, and not very subtle ones at that.
That’s one place normal people know to avoid and is not representative of the whole.
I haven’t used Steam Community Forums for a few years, but when I did, it really depended on the game (and I’m not the type to be playing the games where there those behaviours would become prominent). As someone who mostly plays indie games, I found the odd racist post where it was clear they were trying to find like-minded people and nobody would bite. Also, if I reported something for any reason, they typically took care of it within 24 hours at the most and I never had a case where I reported something get rejected.
Yeah abouz the forums…
The only reason you actually choose to go there is either for fixing a game bug or a mod.
You don’t go there to discuss the game.
The only other topics there are either horny or toxic.
Not really, I’m thinking of literal unapologetic nazis on Steam, gamergate chuds on Twitter, incels on Reddit, mykittens on Discord and so on and so forth. Competitive games suffer from bigotry the most, but there’s still plenty of casual “you aren’t a real gamer if all you play is Sims/Stardew/Animal Crossing” aimed primarily at women, too. And of course it’s currently the wave of nick fuentes type stains that freak out over anything even remotely “woke” that keeps the shitshow going, the GoW situation literally just took place.
However I do think that all of the above is strongly amplified by the outrage content farms, so I can believe when “The authors suggest that hostility might be driven by a vocal minority of players rather than the general gaming population. It is also possible that certain specific online communities reinforce exclusionary behavior, even if the average gamer holds progressive views.”
Also the trash tends to stink the most.
yah you don’t find a lot of lobbys like ‘good old’ xbox cod lobbys like that anymore. league of legends i believe currently still holds the crown for current day toxic lobbys
Maybe in ranked queues, but I play a ton of the more casual game modes (ARAM mayhem and Arena) and the toxicity isn’t super common to see. Like, it does happen but it’s much rarer than it was a decade ago now that Riot actually moderates things.
It was a choir of angels compared to comment sections on ifunny or 4chan.
Metal heads and punks are also really inclusive despite society viewing them otherwise.
Punks yes, Metal heads not until somewhat recentlyish… ;)
and despite a tiny but vocal minority of them being bigoted assholes (for metalheads at least, don’t know enough about punks)
“Nazi punks fuck off”
The Skinhead movement was originally Nazi punks. As The Dead Kennedys said, they can fuck off.
Might be just muyanecdotal experience but taht seems to be the case for basically any group of people.
Maybe it depends on the subgenre of metal. Every time I discover a new black metal band, I have to research if they are Nazis or not.
Agreed. Most people, generally, tend to be good individually. We recognize we’re all humans. We all get hungry, we all love, we all struggle.
It’s the vocal minority that are bigoted and utilize DARVO just like rapists and billionaires 🤷♂️. They very well may be on a sociopathic spectrum and/or have devolved by losing empathy, which humans evolved to build society and community and thrive together.
Yeah, really good point. I’d say it’s a bit peculiar with metalheads, since it’s a culture that revolves around dark and violent themes, so it makes its bigoted members a bit more visibly harsh or extreme, than other musical (or not) cultures. But this is just me nitpicking, you hit right in the center.
Punks are always having to run off Nazis who want to come to their shows.
every group of humans has a subset of bigoted assholes. dont hold it against them unless they are tolerated by the majority.
If you aren’t going by online discourse.
All the people who complain about games being woke don’t play any games.
they probably play call of duty or similar…
Chasing that diamond in league.
Who am I kidding, they’re chasing silver.
Nah they couldn’t get to silver so now they play TFT.
You dont understand, I simply have GOT to buy and play the new FIFA/FC/Madden/NBA2K its simply so much better than last year’s! No, thats not all I play, of course not. I also play, like… Uh… GTA 5… Yeah, what a story, am I right? Especially when that guy goes “oh shit here we go again”? What a moment. Anyway, what’s your Valorant rank?
Direct link to the study: https://www.psycnet.org/doi/10.1037/ppm0000672
Unfortunately, its paywalled, but I’d be curious about the methodology and population.
If anyone ends up getting access, I would also be interested in the study.
If you ping me tomorrow, I’ll be happy to send it to you when I’m at my computer.
That’s super nice of you! Greatly appreciate it. Will do!
Hi! Just a ping about the article if that’s still on the table.
Well it was posted about by psypost which is dogshit and constantly spams headlines like this based off studies with n=25 chinese teenagers, online survey
But then psypost writes a 50 paragraph “blog” post about it like its gospel and never mentions these insane limitations, and almost everybody happily accepts these posts because the headline meets se confirmation bias if theirs, or an expected one at least, then sprints to the comments to blather on and on about it, never even reading the original crappy study
Its all really unscientific but masquerades as scientific fact
I despise psypost and think it should be banned
We cant even verify the methodology or sample size of this one but look at all the commenters in this thread who have seemingly accepted it as valid science
Maybe - hear me out here - engaging in stories tends to make you more empathetic? Movies, books, games, they all give you stories about other people. If you’re shown how to imagine what it’s like to be another person, you will probably end up being a better person.
Or whoa dude hear me out what if play and games has been around forever and is exactly an inclusive thing people do?
You literally cannot play a game without including someone
From what I’ve seen, a lot of the pushback against “woke” games revolves around whether they’re good or not. Almost no one cares about a good game being woke, stuff like BG3 was widely enjoyed by a lot of people despite having gay characters/etc.
However when a game is bad or mediocre, people are quick to blame any “woke” content in the game. There’s a mentality of “they were putting effort in pushing a political/social agenda I don’t agree with, while not putting in enough effort on the stuff that actually matters”.
Of course, now you have a lot of people assuming whether a game will be good or not based on how the perceive it. But if it comes out, and is actually a good game, that’s enough to quiet most all of the complaints it seems.
People were absolutely calling BG3 woke, it’s just that that narrative has died out because of how successful the game was. Can’t say “go woke go broke” when the game actually earns millions.
People don’t hesitate to criticism things just because they’re popular, usually people are quicker to hate on something because it’s popular.
I think it was just a good game, that legitimately appealed to a lot of people, and so any criticisms about woke content died out as people realized they liked it or respected it.
It’s just Asmeinkampf and his filth that give most of us a bad name being a loud minority.
Most gamers who play more than CoD and League tend to engage more with the medium and stories that are told, able to empathize with the characters and introspect upon our own lives, similar to any other form of art/media. Arguably, sometimes even on a deeper level given the interactive nature of the medium.
We couldn’t be further from someone like Marc Andreessan who believes he’s a genius and proudly states he has no introspection. Yet we’re the ones that take the brunt of criticism. Thanks Epstein for your fucking psyop in the gaming alt right sphere.
let me point you all in the right direction: people in general are more inclusive than the general public is led to believe
In almost 50 years of playing D&D I’ve found that gamers tend to be more accepting of just about anybody than the general public is. I think it’s partly because the gamer population itself gets more than its share of being spurned by that public.
Depends on the games they play. MMORPGs probably have more inclusive players than toxic kids in Overwatch.
Yeah man … I stopped playing Marvel Rivals due to the toxicity. League was a shit show of course.
I just recently stopped playing Rivals too, after playing since its launch. Its as toxic as Overwatch, maybe even more so… Never played League, but from what I heard its one of the worst too. Generally popular games with teammates has tendency of toxicity. To me they ruin the game as much as cheaters do.
Just don’t hang out with Madden or COD players and you’re probably fine :D
Also LoL players.
For such a dull community they sure bitch about toxicity the most.
Because gamers are younger and tend to be part of a naturally more inclusive generation?
I play a lot of multiplayer games and I find that gaming constantly teaches me that no matter what, it always comes down to the quality of the community.
Every other aspect of design is a comparatively merely a detail.
A well designed game plants the seeds for that. E.g. trying to avoid toxicity by removing chat vs supporting community hosted/moderated servers.
Removing chat is IMO one of the worst moces you can make.
It was bad for GTA 5 (coordination/deescalation)
It was less entertaining in Clash of Clans.Rocket League is a good example with the template chat but also allowing you to type individual words.
Voicechat on the other hand should be available but be able to
A: Mute completely
B: Easily able to mute (also silence the chat part) a specific individual.I still hold voip is the worse thing you can add to a game if your goal is to have a good community.
Its exclusively used to harass basically.
Have you played Arc Raiders? VoIP there is (generally) a pleasant experience.
From my quick read through of their methods it seems like they didn’t account very well for the types of games, platforms and demographics. The decade in question saw a massive explosion of gaming as a hobby into the mainstream and, importantly, a strong growth of women in the gaming population.
So as a whole you have games becoming more mainstream to younger (“woke”) audiences and more accessible while the inclusive-biased demographics also blew up. It’s not at all shocking that you’d find more inclusivity there.
A much more interesting study would be separating the gamers from the Gamers. Show me how people playing Splatoon and Animal Crossing compare to the neckbeards living in LoL and HoI4…
This is obviously just my experience but the younger generation is not inclusive at all, kind of the opposite. At least around the north east US where I have lived.
I work in a kitchen. I often have food runners, hosts and dishwashers who are under 18. They’re extremely uncool sometimes.
Not universally for sure, Gen-Z men are especially problematic. But the sweaty dudes have become a minority of gamers, and I would expect broad-stroke “gamer” world views to reflect the influx of other demographics.
That’s what I’d like to see more of in this research. Cut it by age cohort, gender, income, genres of game, years in the hobby, etc…
Yeah.
Kids are jerks. They’re naive. I certainly was; I think that’s always been a thing, though I can’t comment on how much worse or better it’s gotten.
That’s true I was a shithead
Yeah, I was a little shit too.
Or mobile games, which is the bulk of gamers now.
A much more interesting study would be separating the gamers from the Gamers.
That would require you to define a Real Gamer, which would be divisive by design.
It’s an exercise in nutpicking.
It’s hard to give an exact definition, but someone playing candy crush on their phone is meaningfully different than a LoL player. Not in elitism or whatever, but for example one is a game any person might play for a bit while bored, and one is a demanding competitive immersive game. I would say a good separation is the cozy / not competitive games with competitive games, since the competitive ones are the places most people think of Gamers not being accepting.
Exactly. A “gamer” is too broad of a definition to really mean anything if it just means “people who play games”. I watch TV/films, but that could mean anything. Reality? Horror? Non-fiction? They’re all different. I read books, but that could mean anything. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Biography? Poetry? They’re all different.
I do think competitive versus non-competitive is a good dividing point. I hesitate to use the word “cozy” because I don’t think Dark Souls players are playing a “cozy” game.
But even within competitive there are distinctions to make. Children playing the lastest FPS and screaming into their headsets, probably less inclusive. The speed running community, generally very inclusive.
Normally I would agree… But there is a seriously real difference between someone who plays csgo dota and hoi4 vs someone who plays animal crossing splatoon and peak.
Its fundamentally two entirely different demographics which no over lap. Both are gamers but only one set are “gamers”.
Anyone who’s been around long enough knows how fast the gap between the groups are.
Yeah I have no idea why you lumped first person shooter players, moba players, and 4x players in the same category. Talk about fundamentally different demographics.
Edit: by the way, I love the Endless series (Legends, Space 2) and love Animal Crossing. I also have 5000 hours in Tarkov. Peak is also fun.
there is a seriously real difference between someone who plays csgo dota and hoi4 vs someone who plays animal crossing splatoon and peak.
About ten years of age range, for the most part.
Its fundamentally two entirely different demographics which no over lap
Yeah, famously, people never get older
Which of these groups do you expect to be older, I honestly cannot tell. I swear, not bait.
Personally, I’d expect the nintendo group of these two to be the older one.
