Interesting article on gamers harassing developers

[smackababy]

Anonymity is a bit of a red herring. Didn't South Korea try to mandate real names online, with minimal impact on behavior? It seems that getting behind a keyboard or controller makes people feel like they can say things they'd never say person. That's a problem all over the internet for everyone.

It isn't really about anonymity as much as it is about even if you know who I am and where I live, you won't do anything. Show up at my house because I called you some names? Very doubtful.

Then the 'noob' thing. Well, two things. First if you're sitting at home playing online, you are part of the 'rec league'. No matter how good you are. So feel free to chill. But second lots of games do a piss-poor job of matching players of similar skill levels. It's no surprise people get annoyed, it makes for a bad game. Just because it's all some kind of recreational league doesn't mean there aren't tougher and easier basketball leagues that players sort themselves in to. This why I am a big fan of the Xbox One's new approach to managing bad behavior. What's the worst that happens, nothing? I can keep mute on 100% of the time if that's the case.

The games with the worst communities have the best ratings: Dota / LoL / HoN (especially HoN). They all use an ELO type system. After like 20-30 games, you're about where you belong and it is adjusting every game. So, the community of people who are pretty much the scum of the Earth, are matched up with people very similar in their skill, whether they want to admit it or not.

All this stuff really is bad for gaming though. It certainly shrinks the gaming community, which shrinks the market and the number of games made. Meanwhile politicians grandstand about violent games, and crazy-sounding gamer talk plays into their hands. And apparently it really is driving away some developers.

I agree the bad apples of the communities are what keeps the communities lacking from new members, or breeds just more crap. The FCG has struggled with that a lot. There is a lot of banter and mind games, but there is also a lot of elitism and discouragement towards new players. The newer players (kids these days, as it were) are also such pansies, they can't take it either. When I was young, going into an arcade and getting destroyed at Super Turbo then told I was awful and wasn't welcomed just made me want to beat that person even more. And after countless dollars, I finally got my rematch. I didn't even win, but I earned his respect and continued to improve.

 

[Rinaun]

The games with the worst communities have the best ratings: Dota / LoL / HoN (especially HoN). They all use an ELO type system. After like 20-30 games, you're about where you belong and it is adjusting every game.

After like 20-30 games, you're about where you belong and it is adjusting every game.

20 games? More like 100 before it feels like you at the correct bracket of skill. ELO only works (just like most of statistics) with a LARGE AMOUNT OF DATA. I don't know anyone in my recent history that played 20 games of LoL, DoTA, or CS:GO and were matched in the right skill ELO.

Example: my friend just started playing cs:go. During his 6th game (he won the first 5) he was placed with professionals who all had 500 hours + played. They all asked him why the game matched him to their game and he ended up leaving because it was obvious the ELO system screwed up. He waits 30, and the next game he gets matched up with is even more experienced players.

ELO is a formula, not something to live by. If it works good on the devs; most of the time with under 100 games played it doesn't. By then ELO is pretty useless sans removing the top 5% of players from pubstomps. cs 1.6 and scrimming avoided all that stuff, and it's why ELO will never beat humans for picking matches. Some if not all of the best even matches I've watched and played in were arranged by humans who understood the skill level of everyone playing. Games just need to find a way of calculating player skill and adding them to the (estimated) team skill level WITHOUT making the team's score the only value in the ELO formula (ex: someone winning a game of dota by carrying but teammates cause loss, making it an overall loss for the good player, or that one dude on your team not capping an objective but killing a ton of useless stuff).

 

[irishScott]

This is really no different from rec leagues. Most sports are going to require an hour or more of time investment. Some of those games can come down to 1 or 2 people making big mistakes or just playing badly in general throughout the course of the game. You can run into the ultra competitive jerk who bitches out his fellow players (more so at higher levels of rec play, ie. the ex-college players). The thing is they are a lot less common because people maintain a level of sanity and decency when face to face. There's that threat of reprisal - whether it be physical or a hit to your reputation among peers - that is lacking in online games.

Everyone likes winning. No one says "Hey guys, who wants to lose this game?" People just need to accept the fact they are not pro and therefore are going to play with/against people of varying skill levels. Deal with it. A game isn't just about the end result.

Yeah, but when I'm playing a pickup game I'm at least getting a decent workout out of it, even if I lose. If I lose a video game, no such extra value to make up for it.

And I'm not sure why you and some others in this thread are so adamant about "dealing with it". What's wrong with leagues? What's wrong with wanting to play with people of similar skill level with similar objectives (winning vs fucking around)? Hell even my college intramural league had tryouts and drafts. I may not be an Olympian, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to play with people who haven't even gone through the tutorial.

 

[Rinaun]

Yeah, but when I'm playing a pickup game I'm at least getting a decent workout out of it, even if I lose. If I lose a video game, no such extra value to make up for it.

And I'm not sure why you and some others in this thread are so adamant about "dealing with it". What's wrong with leagues? What's wrong with wanting to play with people of similar skill level with similar objectives (winning vs fucking around)? Hell even my college intramural league had tryouts and drafts. I may not be an Olympian, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to play with people who haven't even gone through the tutorial.

Exactly. I cannot state what this gentleman stated any better. Losing a game IRL? Not a big deal at all. I came to that event for FUN. Playing ONLINE, in a game where winning matters and affects me, and being paired with people who purposely do not want to make a team? If we win, one word I can use to describe the feeling I get in that scenario is "relieved". I'm over something that was akin to a bad bet placed and thankfully I lucked out and the bet either got called off, or I slightly won. Thats exactly the feeling I get when I win those type of games

Now, if we lose that game online? I think about how much time that one person just wasted me; I get paid 30 an hour, and at that rate that person not only made me NOT enjoy my game, but I was also locked into playing (cant leave or it affects ELO), and he cost me money.

THAT'S why the IRL vs online comparison is bull, so is "deal with it it's ELO" argument. IRL, I just pack my stuff up and go home. ELO system? I'm locked in, it never works, and when it does work people act like its "a great system" when anyone with a brain can take someones record of 100+ games and use a formula to ROUGHLY match them. Hint: it's been done for years in other games (WC3 anyone?).

 

[styrafoam]

I would bet money that professional sports refs and judges have been getting threatened pretty regularly since ummmmm, forever. Humanity sucks game devs, welcome to the human race. People take their obsessions seriously, and some of these obsessed people are willing to type out a sociopathic email when things don't go their way.

The one glaring similarity of most all of the examples in the article was the willingness of the publishers to alienate the built in fanbase of the games in question. On a case by case basis each one of them has bad idea written all over it. The anger over balance tweaks to COD was kind of silly, but that's how it is when people are so wrapped up in your product. It's unfair that the devs get to take the heat for decisions that probably come from much higher up the chain, but at the some point hopefully it comes to a stop. One would hope that they would gain the ability to temper the corporate vision with a small amount of common sense. Voting with your wallet is obviously the best response, but being young and easily excited about the next big release is a trait shared by the bulk of the gaming demographic. When you are young it's too easy to be optimistic and buy a game on release day, overlooking the fact that EA is probably going to screw the game up. Again.

As far as multiplayer attitudes go, no one likes to lose. As long as team based objectives are coupled with new players learning the game this won't stop either. It sucks that people treat each other badly and the anonymity of the internet makes them go crazy, but yet again, welcome to the human race. Rather than let them drag you down take the opportunity to have some fun when someone starts raging at you. Ask completely dumb questions and then repeat some strange variation of their answer back, throw the round in an entertaining way, do the opposite of what the rager asks and then blame them for their lame strategy, and so on. This happens sooooo often in WoW that it became a mini-game of sorts for me.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It isn't really about anonymity as much as it is about even if you know who I am and where I live, you won't do anything. Show up at my house because I called you some names? Very doubtful.


I agree the bad apples of the communities are what keeps the communities lacking from new members, or breeds just more crap. The FCG has struggled with that a lot. There is a lot of banter and mind games, but there is also a lot of elitism and discouragement towards new players. The newer players (kids these days, as it were) are also such pansies, they can't take it either. When I was young, going into an arcade and getting destroyed at Super Turbo then told I was awful and wasn't welcomed just made me want to beat that person even more. And after countless dollars, I finally got my rematch. I didn't even win, but I earned his respect and continued to improve.

Both if these paragraphs highlight how I feel. Some kid in Georgia cursing another guy in Oregon has no worries on the internet. That guy isn't going to go to his house and beat him up. In real life, seeing someone face to face, the outcome may be different. That kid might chicken out and say nothing. This is one reason I was attracted to martial arts. Everyone is welcoming to people of all skill levels. It is competitive but I have never in my 20years studying and teaching seen outright hostility toward people new to it. Occasionally you get someone who talks big like they know all this or that but it is obvious immediately that are full of it the first time they are asked to show a little something. Nobody says anything at that point. Anyone can learn and we want everyone to learn.

It goes both ways, you want to be welcoming but respect has to be earned. I think some of the community, especially the fighting game community, can so more to be welcoming though.

 

[BikeJunkie]

I agree that this isn't unique to gaming. It's just that gamers have a group toward which they can direct the manifests of their social dysfunction.

My wife has an aunt who routinely goes on wild political rants on Facebook. She'll say the most ignorant, ugly things you can imagine. I don't engage people politically on Facebook for obvious reasons. However whenever we're at family gatherings, I might bring up something she said on Facebook and offer a counter argument. She absolutely refuses to have the discussion. "I don't like talking politics. It makes me uncomfortable." It's actually a running joke in the family.

The takeaway is that the internet, for many people, is just a place to release pent up vitriol. They don't care that they don't make any sense. They don't think that they're actually threatening someone else. They go full retard when they open their browser and the brain doesn't come back on until they're face to face with someone again.

The internet gives them the illusion of an audience interested in what they have to say, and the illusion that what they say has a shred of merit. For in the real world, neither is the case for them.

 

[Tweak155]

To resolve the online issues, someone needs to create a hack that will tell you the person's real name and what city they live in. If you reply back with "OK Joe Blow from Detroit", they may just settle down a little :biggrin:

 

[Paul98]

I always want to play people who are better than me, or at least similar skill. It's the quickest way for me to get better. Or at least play with people who are better than me to see how they play.

 

[Remobz]

I always want to play people who are better than me, or at least similar skill. It's the quickest way for me to get better. Or at least play with people who are better than me to see how they play.

Good point. But man, people can be brutal during the in-game chats.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I think that if people feel its justified they should be angry and voice their disappointment and anger.

Most of the time the fans are deeply invested in the games, they're the guys who go out and spend money on limited editions, buy all the DLC, go to events, spread the word of the product by making fan art, cosplaying, all that cool stuff.

There's been a wave of mediocrity wash over the gaming industry over the last 8-10 years, more specifically over the span of the last gen consoles, it's taken the mentality of gamers making good games for other gamers into large corporations bleeding the sheeple for as much money as possible.

The fact that many gamers find games very much akin to art helps put this in perspective. Imagine the uproar if somoene came along and removed 1/4 of the mona lisa from the painting and anyone visiting the Louvre had to pay extra DLC money to see the rest of it...there would be an UPROAR, it would be in the news all over the world. Because this kind of art is respected and already well established.

But when EA bleed massive series like Mass effect and completely dick it over with mediocrity no one is allowed to take offense to that and rail on EA?

Nah sorry, not buying it, gamer fans actually care and the move from gaming being about good games to gaming being about making the most money is just destryoing a hobby that many people really deeply genuinely love, and if them people want to voice that, even if it makes them sound like assholes, then I think they have a right to do that and they OUGHT to do that.

Gamers weren't doing this in the prior generations of gaming to this degree, this is something new and it correlates with the decline in good games and much loved gaming franchises getting torn to pieces for the sake of a few more dollars.

 

[irishScott]

I think that if people feel its justified they should be angry and voice their disappointment and anger.

Most of the time the fans are deeply invested in the games, they're the guys who go out and spend money on limited editions, buy all the DLC, go to events, spread the word of the product by making fan art, cosplaying, all that cool stuff.

There's been a wave of mediocrity wash over the gaming industry over the last 8-10 years, more specifically over the span of the last gen consoles, it's taken the mentality of gamers making good games for other gamers into large corporations bleeding the sheeple for as much money as possible.

The fact that many gamers find games very much akin to art helps put this in perspective. Imagine the uproar if somoene came along and removed 1/4 of the mona lisa from the painting and anyone visiting the Louvre had to pay extra DLC money to see the rest of it...there would be an UPROAR, it would be in the news all over the world. Because this kind of art is respected and already well established.

But when EA bleed massive series like Mass effect and completely dick it over with mediocrity no one is allowed to take offense to that and rail on EA?

Nah sorry, not buying it, gamer fans actually care and the move from gaming being about good games to gaming being about making the most money is just destryoing a hobby that many people really deeply genuinely love, and if them people want to voice that, even if it makes them sound like assholes, then I think they have a right to do that and they OUGHT to do that.

Gamers weren't doing this in the prior generations of gaming to this degree, this is something new and it correlates with the decline in good games and much loved gaming franchises getting torn to pieces for the sake of a few more dollars.

I'd say we're actually seeing a renaissance though. Kickstarter and the indie market in general are more awesome than ever.

 

[StrangerGuy]

If you can't stand the heat then stay out of the kitchen. It's simple, really. If you don't want to deal with the worst of gamers especially from MOBA then don't make games for them in the first place.

 

[Zenoth]

I agree concerning the anonymity issue.

Some of you here may have been on the BioWare Social Network forums when Mass Effect 3 was still fresh, if not you should have seen some of the "comments" over there. There were threats against the devs and all they could do was to "warn" and then ban the user and that's it. Now of course you might think "well most of those threats are just out of pure anger and impulsion and wouldn't have been real"... but the thing is if I had to put myself just one moment in their (the dev's) shoes I wouldn't have taken the risk to let it boil out of the Internet and up to reality.

There's a clear difference between sending real Red, Green and Blue pancakes at the BioWare's office because you thought their RGB ending was stupid, and going on the forums and literally threatening their life (especially Mac Walters' and Casey Hudson's). I was frustrated to see that they (BioWare) couldn't do much about it other than basically saying "no no, that is a bad attitude you have little fella, please refrain from threatening our lives, thank you and have a good day!".

That was just... ugh, seriously, give them the tools to find their ISP, address, identity info and send local police their way or something.