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?
The toughest thing is getting reliable feedback. Steam and CSGO both have a system where you can give accolades to other players, which is a good base. But it’s not ideal, imo, because it can be abused just like reporting bad behavior can. Personally I can’t think of any way to automate giving rewards for good behaviour, because other than AI and with dubious privacy issues, there isn’t a good way to gauge good behavior, since most of it is simply how people talk to each other, and not necessarily how they play the game.
Now I recall League of Legends, which I quit playing a year ago or so. I think after each match, you were prompted to give a positive rating about another player. The player with the most approvals got highlighted in the post-match screen, and maybe there was like a special player border for the loading screen of the next match.
Maybe that’s a good idea; don’t focus on detecting bad behaviour, but give ways to reward good behaviour.
Not saying LoL’s approach is the way to go. It was mostly focused on game-relevant deeds, and only partially on social behaviour.
A lot of games have it. I’ve also at several occasions received harrasment through DMs for not giving someone the good behaviour reward.