Yeah, they are thinking of 2000s xbox live chat. It’s been a while since then.
Also the trash tends to stink the most.
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.”
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.
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 about 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.Yep, was looking up a bug. Even if I hadn’t been, it’s still there.
I always got the impression the only people who use Steam forums for anything non-technical anymore are people who were teenagers when TF2 dropped and never grew up.
It was a choir of angels compared to comment sections on ifunny or 4chan.
This study isn’t saying that xbox live users today are better than xbox live users 20 years ago. They may actually be worse. All they say is that xbox live users today hold more inclusive beliefs than the general public today. The community could still be more toxic than the general public, despite those beliefs. And the general public could have become worse over the last 20 years.
I think games these days don’t select for anything in particular. It’s a giant space that caters to every taste. That gamers are more inclusive than the general public could have any of a million reasons, but I think it’s easier to look at non-gamers than try to find any commonalities among all gamers
All the people who complain about games being woke don’t play any games.
let me point you all in the right direction: people in general are more inclusive than the general public is led to believe
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
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.
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 criticize 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.
Well that’s the tactic: amplify bad games with woke content, downplay woke content in good games.
Unless that game is csgo
Source: I play csgo
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.
This guy skewed the data, pretty sure:
I think some of the more niche games/genres tend to make its community more open and inclusive, since it’s a bunch of people wanting more people to enjoy the things they do.
The moment you get competitive, shit goes downhill hard. From my anecdotal experience with World of Warcraft, a game that caters to both tryhards and casuals, the latter are much more likely to hang around and help you out, or ask for your help, while the former will actively try to make the game worse for everyone, especially those of the opposing faction, ganking low level players that cannot fight back “for the lulz”.
Also, anyone that has ever played in a LAN like setting, with your buddies literally within punching distance, knows that everyone behaves better and are less likely to go full apeshit
The scientists then looked specifically at players of shooter games, a genre often associated with military themes and violence. They found that shooter game players were also more likely to hold inclusive values regarding gender roles and equality compared to the general public. Their views on social tolerance were not significantly different from the average American.
Across every model tested, the authors found no evidence that playing video games broadly corresponds to an increase in exclusionary values. “The average person should take away from our findings that video game players are not some monolithic community,” Pauley told PsyPost. “While exclusionary and vocal segments of online gaming communities certainly exist, and we certainly do not want to downplay that, our findings suggest that on average, video game players hold slightly more inclusive values than the general population.”
So, the same problem that has plagued the internet since its inception: the loud idiots are too fucking loud
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.
Here’s my personal anecdote that supports this.
I live in Pennsylvania, which is considered a swing state, but it did vote for Trump both of the times he won. Pretty humiliating.
AGDQ this year was in Pittsburgh so I got to attend a couple days. It is by far the most inclusive crowd I’ve been in locally, where people can just let their true colors out without constant fear. I think it’s the only crowd where I’ve heard “trans rights” exclaimed and met with cheers. And it’s truly inclusive in both directions. I’m a big old bearded straight cis white guy and nothing made me feel out of place either.
Between gaming communities and FOSS/linux communities, I think it’s we nerds who are so inclusive!
This is much more obviously true in the table-top space, but I suspect the obvious expansion of diversity in gaming culture was exactly what all the awful reactionary gatekeeping crap was about, and why they continue to peddle the myth. I’ve seen similar arguments made that comic books are only for young white cishet men and that publishers are deluding themselves by not only catering to that market, despite the fact that the comics market in the US has pretty much collapsed while the more inclusive Euro and Japanese markets are doing very well thank-you-very-much.
makes sense,maybe the less inclusive/racism thing comes from your view not the video games you play.
Yeah, woah. What a surprise!
Because gamers are younger and tend to be part of a naturally more inclusive generation?
