Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach

[Mrbloodworth]

[In this in-depth article, Fulton discusses why "the online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales", referencing his social design on Microsoft's Shadowrun to explain how we can dissuade anonymous Internet gamers.

Warning: This article uses language inappropriate for a professional website. Unfortunately, the language used is far less offensive than what is commonly encountered in online gaming.]

Interesting read.

[Fabricated]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

[Mrbloodworth]

Thats in the article.

[Sky]

Good topic, I remember talking at LtM about accountability being the most important thing for the mmo genre and online gaming in general.

I don't play online shooters anymore because the fucktard level is so intolerably high. And I love online shooters.

[Murgos]

HAY GUYZ!!!  You know how we made that really juvenile game?  Well, it attracted a lot of really juvenile people!  Now, how do we keep juvenile people out of our juvenile games?  I know!!  Banzor them!

Brilliant.

[Prospero]

I like his solutions. I'm still a big fan of having "bartenders," a.k.a. admins, on the server to help police behavior. Once a server establishes a community random asshats are usually dealt with very effectively by the community itself.

Of course all my online play is PC games, which Im sure changes things dramatically. Do halo 3 servers ever have admins? I honestly have no clue.

[Morfiend]

I have to say that random Xbox Live are so of the worst shit ever. The crap people think is funny to spew over the mic is mind numbing. I ahve hear everything from insults to screaming to random jibberish to people talking in stupid voices. I love the online gaming on XBL, but only with people I know.

[Prospero]

Can you select your favorite server with XBox live or do you just say what game type you want and it finds a server for you?

[Morfiend]

Can you select your favorite server with XBox live or do you just say what game type you want and it finds a server for you?

The second one. Although you can chose to join the server your friend is playing on.

[Big Gulp]

The second one. Although you can chose to join the server your friend is playing on.

That's why I only play co-op shooter games over Xbox Live.  I've never really felt the competitive itch in shooters anyway, though, so it's not like I'm missing anything.

[Strazos]

I don't use a mic, and just ignore the people online. Arguing with them in a study in frustration.

Oddly enough, most of the time no one is talking when I am using XBL.

[Kail]

Interesting article, but I was a bit disappionted in it's lack of content.  Basically the author is saying "To increase sales, we can do things to make people behave less like assholes" Okay, fair enough, trouble is, what?  The only specific mechanics the author mentions are swear filters (which I must confess, I don't think are at all useful) and a few mechanisms used in Shadowrun.  Basing your argument around the line "If you use this mechanic we used in Shadowrun, more people will behave more maturely, which means your game will sell well" suggests one rather obvious counterexample.

[Lantyssa]

Touché.

[TripleDES]

I'm not bothered by fucktards online. Well-mannered players can suck horribly gameplay-wise too. If someone's talking shit all day, my mission becomes harassing the fuck out of him. Schadenfreude.

[Prospero]

Can you select your favorite server with XBox live or do you just say what game type you want and it finds a server for you?

The second one. Although you can chose to join the server your friend is playing on.

That's fucking nuts. I guess it makes sense with the business model, but no wonder XBox Live is such a social disaster. Maybe Nintendo isn't so crazy...

[LK]

I have to say that random Xbox Live are so of the worst shit ever. The crap people think is funny to spew over the mic is mind numbing. I ahve hear everything from insults to screaming to random jibberish to people talking in stupid voices. I love the online gaming on XBL, but only with people I know.

The worst part is that they don't give a shit about what they're saying and nothing you can ever do will stop them aside from muting.  It goes to show the level of stupidity and disrespect rampant amongst the player base, which seems to me to be reflective of society as a whole.

[Xanthippe]

The worst part is that they don't give a shit about what they're saying and nothing you can ever do will stop them aside from muting.  It goes to show the level of stupidity and disrespect rampant amongst the player base, which seems to me to be reflective of society as a whole.

I think it's getting worse, not better, not even staying the same, but markedly worse.  And it does have an effect, and it does lose customers.  The worse people behave in a mmo, the less likely I am to log in to the game or let my kids play it. 

Why do people tolerate it?  A complaint on a general chat about the behavior will often elicit more of the miscreant behavior.

Lately I've been restricting my kid's access to youtube because of the community.  I just don't want him exposed to the mockery, negativity and rotten comments - which serve no purpose than to be mean.  Now, granted, people ought to have a thick skin, but despite mine being quite thick, it has a deleterious effect - and I'm a grownup who expects this kind of behavior online.

I've stopped playing WoW several times lately because the general chat is so obnoxious - and on the verge of cancelling our household accounts.  The number of miscreants used to be in the minority - now it seems to be the majority view.  Is it because nobody but the miscreants have general chat channels turned on?  Do normal people still play, just without chat channels?

I know people have been complaining about lack of public civility for ages, but it has gotten so much worse - or so it seems to me.  People coming into games see what passes as normal chat and so they also behave that way.

(I like the profanity filters that replace swear words like "asshole" with "fluffy bunny" rather than a list of meaningless symbols #$%!!).

Aside from the tools listed in this article (profanity filter, ignore list, vote-kick) and responses (admins in the game) what can be done in a general sense to encourage people to not be fuckwads? 

[Merusk]

Yes, Xanth, the 'normal' folks turn-off /general in WoW and just hide in private or guild chat channels.  This leads to fewer non-idiots in the channel but ALSO to fewer bans for being an idiot in the global channel, because nobody's playing passive police-force with the /report tool.  As fewer bans happen, word gets around and more idiots flex their asshat muscle a few times, realize they aren't going to get a warning or a ban, and degenerate into full-on 'tard territory.

What to do about it?  Nothing much, I'm afraid. The 'internet generation' has grown-up expecting to be able to say what they want wherever they want.  You're the ass without a clue for trying to repress them and expecting civility of any sort while online.  You're also a Nazi for even thinking of it.   At least that's the vibe I get when these discussions come up.

[Ratman_tf]

Aside from the tools listed in this article (profanity filter, ignore list, vote-kick) and responses (admins in the game) what can be done in a general sense to encourage people to not be fuckwads? 

Make a couple of WoW servers that are the MMORPG equivalent of 4Chan. (No rules except for CP and linking to illegal shit.) Let them stink up the place and wallow in their own filth. Let it be a sinkhole for fucktardery while they chat about fucking Chuck Norris in the ass or whatever meme is "rad" and "hip" nowadays.

Humor: I'm on an RP server now, since that's where my guild is at. (I personally have no love for RP servers.) and the /trade channel is twice as fucked up as any standard server. Since /trade is apparently considered OOC... that's where all the douchebaggery goes now. 

[murdoc]

As long as there is anonymity, there will be fucktards.

I absolutely refuse to game online with XBL other than with people I know and I keep all chat channels in WoW turned off except for /g and /bg, and even then /bg comes dangerously close to be turned off too.

[Sky]

Thinking about it, EQ2 has been pretty damned mature lately. Not sure if it's the WoW/LCD effect...and I do keep what passes for General Chat turned off. EQ2 has server-wide chats set by tier: 1-9, 10-19, etc. I keep tier 5, 6 and 7 open (I'm t7). Seems t1 is awful, so I guess I go along with the general point Xanthippe is making.

I guess you make a sewer available to everyone, and then let players decide whether to put a lid on it or not. I don't hesitate to shut down annoying channels.

People are broken, and you can't fix that, only mitigate it. And as someone who works in a public place with computers, it's bleeding over into offline behaviour.

[Xanthippe]

People are broken, and you can't fix that, only mitigate it. And as someone who works in a public place with computers, it's bleeding over into offline behaviour.

Yes, it is.  Some jerk kicked my dog last weekend because she brushed against him.

[Nerf]

Wow, I hope your dog bit the asshole, who kicks a non agressive dog??

[Numtini]

The "psychological approach" strikes me as something that might have worked in 1998 during the UO beta. It's now institutionalized.

And I don't think it's as much anonymity as it is a complete and utter lack of consequences. Most companies will do nothing more than suspend an account for a day or even a few hours.

[DarkSign]

So will publishers recognize that there is value in stricter policing of servers that adults will pay for? I mean can they up quality of the GMs (people who actually play these games and live the culture - so they can make better decisions that enhances the experience by knowing when to bend the rules for the good of all) or work with guilds on community standards? Is all this asking too much for a game where people want to escape?

[Nebu]

Easiest way to avoid childish behavior in games would be by instituting premium (slight cost increase for improved policing) or mature servers (require age of 21+).  Unfortunately these types of things would only be feasible in games with the scale of WoW. 

The behavior that we're seeing in games is just an extension of the behavior you see in society at large.  Attitudes of entitlement combined with relative anonymity are making people more callous than ever.  The fact that kids are bombarded with stimulous where being an asshole is "cool" isn't helping either.   

[HaemishM]

Remember, it's not you being the asshole in games, it's that anonymous jackass who is just fucking up things for all the good decent people. 

[Sky]

Remember, it's not you being the asshole in games, it's that anonymous jackass who is just fucking up things for all the good decent people. 

Ah, yeah. I remember that one time that guy was going to get into an airplane before me in bf1942. I shot him, but he made it into the plane so I ran into it with a jeep LOL

Or the time me and my bff were grinding in bf2 and needed knife kills and revives, so we found some LAMER in the aircraft carrier and just knifed and revived him over and over, he musta been sooo pissed LOL

No, people are fucking broken. Fuck 'em, I'm done with online shooters. There is no fix.

[Prospero]

The fix is simple: play on servers with moderators. No magical technical feat is going to make humans behave; there is no way software alone can cover the full range of internet asshattery. You need an admin, or the threat of an admin, to keep the douche level to a minimum. The {212} brigade DoD servers are remarkable places to play because they routinely have at least 2 admins on each server, and they have a 0 tolerance policy for twats. Same goes for my current list of TF2 servers. And lord knows PC gaming isn't a bastion of mature gamers, just pick a random CS server to see that.

I'm not sure if there is a fix for XBox Live unless they are willing to employ moderators or make it so that communities can have their own servers that they control. It seems like XBox Live could provide some sort of real time moderation for their games. They're running the servers aren't they? If asshattery is really costing the industry, hiring a 100 college students per shift to act as admins has to be doable. They won't be able to stop everyone, but then at least there is a threat of being caught being an ass. Hell, they have a huge advantage over PC gaming in that they can kick you out of Live entirely as a punishment.