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This is pretty clear to anyone who has ever played a game of Counterstrike or whatever and a woman makes the mistake of using voice chat. You’ll get the whole gamut from misogynistic nonsense to the most awkward and creepy attempts to hit on them possible, pretty much every time.
I only ever really saw the clsssic toxic gamer behavior flourish once most games switched from having private dedicated servers ran by the players that almost always had an admin present to handle toxicity to unmoderated developer hosted servers no players have any bit of control over. Counter-Strike: Source vs CS:GO/CS2 is quite a leap in the general attitude of players you would encounter.
Wild how removing people who managed the player’s behavior makes the bad behavior intensify.
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I suspect the environment is different depending on the game. I never witnessed any of that in overwatch back when I used to play for instance. Though I pretty much never play multiplayer games without at least one friend so the numbers are skewed a bit by having at least 2 non-weirdos on the team
Alternatively, you had two guaranteed weirdos.
I agree that most competitive games tend to go that way. My ex and I played a lot of League of Legends in a small friend group together (where this did not happen, thank god), and if playing with “externals” it was unbelievable what bullshit she had to deal with. and although most of the time the creeps bit off more than they could chew, it must have felt pretty bad, regardless of what me and our friends did or said.
Anyone with experience in non-competitive game settings to share?
Folks in MMOs tend to be more chill in my experience. In such a large sample of people you’re going to find a few dickbags who think they’re hilarious or the kind who will DM sexual harassment, but the majority of people just do not care and are happy to play the game. Toxicity tends to crop up around entitlement to loot and perceived performance rather than gender.
Maybe in more current MMOs, because back in my WoW days (2013 and earlier), misogyny was rampant
That’s what I mean about the large sample size. It only takes the existence of a single asshole to ruin the experience for a target of harassment or casual phobic comment not even directed at them intentionally. Blizzard won’t ban these people, so they’re allowed to exist in the public chat channels, and they can say pretty much whatever the hell they want.
But what I mean is most people do not side with them. An asshole will drop a transphobic comment specifically because they know most people will take offense and argue with them. The general advice is to disable public communication and stick to organizing via guilds and Discord servers which are actually moderated. If the game were a democracy, those people would punished and/or removed.
But if you just treat them like normal you can make some good friends. I had a group of women I played CS with for quite a while after playing with them as a random and just treating them like regular people for once.
It takes absolutely nothing to just not act like you’re amazed at talking to a woman. They’re just people trying to have fun in the game, just like you and every other teammate you’ve had. Don’t treat them any differently.
Competitive gaming is a cesspool regardless of gender but I feel for women who have to deal with sexism on top of the default toxicity. Hopefully things will improve over time but i don’t have high hope for the near future sadly
This study has nothing to do with that. It only surveyed mobile gaming.
oh dang, women have been telling you for the past like 40 years that video games are an incredibly exclusionary space and turns out they weren’t just lying??? crazy, it’s almost like we should be listening to people when they have problems in a community. i mean jfc people actually needed a study to prove this? ask any woman who’s ever attempted to speak in game chat what happens, just ask.
Interesting study. Explicitly about mobile gaming, not PC gaming, though …
Dr Seán Roberts, who researches gaming at Cardiff University, said: “When I ask people if they play video games, women often say no. But if you ask about playing games on a mobile, many of them will suddenly say yes. It’s like they have an idea of what a real gamer is in their heads, and they feel like they don’t meet that ideal.”
TBF I don’t really consider myself a gamer anymore… even though I clock a few hours a week on the playstation. But like I used to play competitive FPS/MOBA/RTS 10+ hours a week.
How can you call yourself competitive when you didn’t even clock 40+ hours a week? Competitive gaming isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life… Poser.
//This comment was brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends! Play now!!!//
lmao.
40+??? That’s scrub level commitment. Get gud and you’ll be on the leaderboards playing 10+ a week. /s
… feel like they don’t meet that ideal.
Well, there’s your problem, idealizing the traditional “gamer” persona. I play computer games every day, for a long time, and I also don’t feel like a “gamer,” because I don’t want to be associated with people I would consider “gamers.”
That might be a side effect of my not wanting to be associated with anyone, but there you have it.
How much RGB do you have?
Valid question. 0.
Def not a gamer then.
i mean of course youre going to have a conclusion like that polling exclusively mobile game players. For example had they polled female MMO players (there are a lot), the results would likely be far different.
Given where this is coming from, im waiting for the drop where they blame the tranas community for this. Somehow.
Many men are emotionally unable to accept things like this. I think the reasoning goes like
- i’m a good person
- i like my hobby
- someone is saying bad things about my hobby
- this makes me feel bad, so it must be false
- furthermore, the person bringing it up is attacking me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
Facts don’t matter. There’s really nothing you can do if you’re not someone they like.
I also think about this comic a lot: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html - Some people are too cowardly to grow.
I also think it may be just… sexism… I know people who behave like this towards women, but not other men…
In other news: the sky generally appears blue.
Gotta have data to do anything with it. Important to actually be able to show and prove problems exist before trying to deal with them. (Need more data on causes)
Who play mobile games
So not proper gaming like on console or PC?
UK who play mobile games
So not gaming culture.
“ackshually mobile games don’t count as real games 🤓” - lemmy users
“women avoid me 🤓” - same lemmy users
“ackshually mobile games don’t count as real games 🤓”
Yeah, that is pretty much true. Or at least you should consider the difference between the types of gaming cultures.
Mobile games: There are several studies out about mobile games and the tactics used to keep you playing. This is a very significant difference, as many are pay to win or as a vehicle for ads, so they are designed to keep you playing rather than an end goal. They are convenient and easy to pick up and often used to “kill time”.
Studies have shown a correlation between frustration, loneliness, unsocial behaviours in both sexes for mobile games. In the article they said the women felt guilt and shame, but mobile gaming studies show they are not alone. Although many studies suggest that women play more of these types of games then men, which skews the results.
So I think it is a valid to question the title that uses the phrase “gaming culture” when there is very little “culture” in psychologically driven revenue generators.
Like this comment on hacker news: “…boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach.”
Just like gambling addiction, a constant dopamine machine will make people feel guilty, irritable, and depressed.
cool opinion, can you run it through one more time and ask for bullet points so I don’t have to read it?
Implying I used AI? I did not. You should know that, the grammar is not very good and I rambled a bit.
The only thing I did do was use duckduckgo to get the quote right if it wasnt as I remembered it.
So do you have anything to say or did you just want to whine about AI?
I couldn’t believe that someone would reply to my stupid comment with that many words so I didn’t read it.
You saw something about women and video games that you could not tolerate, so you constructed a chain of “logic” that:
- gatekept gaming and gaming culture
- tried to remove gender from the equation
- shifted the blame away from something you like (gaming culture)
- shifted the blame onto something you don’t like (mobile games)
- displayed your ignorance about mobile gaming
You’re so smart to realize that this is a simple phenomenon with a neat, tidy, and convenient explanation that doesn’t offend any gamers who don’t like women.
Typical Reddit playbook. I wish your comment was AI.
You didn’t read it. A couple of sentences. Wow. I wrote it for a reason.
Then you made up a bunch of things to claim I was doing, for who knows why.
So, ok you don’t read, you have some weird agenda to have a gotcha moment, you completely dont get why there is a huge difference in the psychology of mobile games then other games, and have no intellectual interest in understanding any of this.
Like you said it was a stupid comment, I guess. I was only hoping to address why that article could have had a lot more to say, and ended up missing the mark.
displayed your ignorance about mobile gaming
Ok enlighten me. I asked a couple of women to read what you wrote, and they find it funny, and disapointing. “what the fuck is he going on about”!
cool story bro
this research is about you
I don’t think you know what research means.
You are aggressively trying to project.
It’s not a culture. Don’t play online.
Can you elaborate?
I don’t play these types of games with randos on open mics anymore, but it definitely felt taboo when a girl was speaking. It’s too bad there weren’t just as many to normalize it then everyone would finally hopefully move past it… Maybe?
Do mobile games have voice chats? I’ve never seen one that did.
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