There are plenty of multiplayer games I adore. However, it seems like every community has these “brain dead”, patronizing, or out right toxic elements that are just nasty. I’d rather debate politics than make suggestions in some gaming communities because the responses are just so … annoying.
As an example, I once dared to suggest that a game developer implement a mode to prevent crouched status from rendering on death cams so that players that are bothered by t-bagging could avoid it (after a match where a friend rage quit because someone just kept head shotting him – possibly with cheats – and then t-bagging). This post got tons of hate, and like -50 upvotes on reddit because of course someone should be forced to watch someone t-bag them.
Another example on a official game forum… I made a forum post suggesting Bungie use Mastodon (or really just something else being my intent)… The response I got was some positivity but mostly just “lol nobody uses that sweetie” and other patronizing comments.
Meanwhile studios themselves often seem to be filled with developers that understand this stuff is a problem, and the lack of sportsmanship (or generally civilized attitudes) does push away players. It just doesn’t make sense to me that no studio is saying “get lost” to these elements or implementing anti-toxicity features. I just want to play games with nice normal people, is that really so much to ask?
Yes, actually, this is a very large ask.
You should probably come to terms with the reality that “nice normal people” don’t really exist. There are nice people, and there are normal people, and the overlap on that Venn diagram is a tiny sliver. Also, everybody has bad days where their stress gets the better of them, and you never know when you’re just seeing someone at their worst because their car broke down, they’re late on the rent, their mom is in the hospital and their kid’s teacher wants to have a meeting about in-class behavior for the third time this month.
People use video games as a place to relieve stress, and the general lack of consequences in the rest of their life enables that. I’m not saying its right, but I am saying that other people deserve your patience and understanding more than your judgementalism.
As for why game developers don’t do more about what you consider bad behavior, the simple fact is that you can’t solve social problems with technology.