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Thread: Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach

                  
   
  1. #1
    Won Hung Lo wraggster's Avatar
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    General games Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach

    A quite amusing article on online gaming

    Some gamers are ****wads
    Of all the ways I spend my free time, playing games online is the only one I would describe as "frequently barbaric". Insults of all kinds, including racist and homophobic slurs, are commonplace.

    The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female -- including voice communication -- in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention.

    And that's just how players are intentionally insulting -- what some people do while playing online can also be aggravating.

    Cheating, team-killing, entering a game but not playing, quitting before the game is over, and more, are all relatively common. Common enough that it was deemed worthy of a Penny Arcade comic, speculating about why normal people become ****wads online.

    So what?
    Why do I care? Some gamers might be thinking "If he's so thin-skinned that he can't take the online banter, maybe he shouldn’t play online." Unfortunately, many people do just that -- they stop playing online.

    Even more gamers go online a few times and then never play again. This isn't just my personal speculation; I have seen convincing data from two different sources that the biggest problem with online gaming is the behavior of others. The biggest problem isn't the cost; it isn't connectivity issues, or even the quality of the games -- it is how people are ****wads online.

    To make this concrete, here's a thought experiment for you: imagine you go to a new restaurant, and decide to try the meatloaf. A big guy at the next table overhears you, looks at you, and yells: "Meatloaf? What kinda newb are you? Hey everybody, this r-tard just ordered the meatloaf!

    God, I'm glad you're not at my table." Laughter breaks out at the tables around you, as they crane their heads to look at the newb. The restaurant staff is nowhere to be found, and you're not entirely certain they'd do anything anyway -- you can tell this is normal behavior at this place. How good or cheap would the food have to be to get you to go back there? Who would you bring there? The vast majority of the world population wouldn't go back there, and would warn everyone they knew to avoid it.

    So again, why do I care? Because the online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales, and continues to stunt the growth of our industry. Non-gamers simply don’t love games enough to put up with the crap they get online. The reason they would consider playing online is to have fun with other people -- and right now, playing games online with strangers rarely delivers that for anyone outside the hardcore demographic.

    Are these problems even solvable?
    Short answer: yes. Social environments and culture can be designed. Just like good game design creates fun gameplay, good social design creates fun social experiences. Unfortunately, online games seem to have allocated very few resources to designing the social environment.

    But honestly, I don't believe that resource constraints are the source of the problem -- I think that most people don’t believe that social problems can be solved. A common belief that I’ve heard used as justification for not addressing the social environment of games is that "jerks will be jerks". Essentially, many people believe that:

    1. Behavior is determined by personality, and

    2. You can’t change people’s personality

    While I (mostly) agree with the second point, it is moot because the first point has been consistently contradicted by 60 years of social psychological research. Human behavior is complex and determined by many factors.

    Personality is certainly one factor, but it is a surprisingly small factor. The largest determinant of behavior is the perceived social environment. This is the good news, because both the social environment and the perception of it can be controlled.

    But me just saying that I disagree with a belief isn’t an argument; some proof is in order. Evidence about the effect of the social environment on behavior comes from two main sources: real-world observation and academic studies from social psychology.

    (Although perhaps I should add "cartoonists" to those two sources. The Penny Arcade comic showing a normal person becoming a total ****wad when in multiplayer gaming situation -- anonymous, with an audience -- was pretty accurate, if a bit simplified

    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur..._idiocy_a_.php

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    I'm a Halo 3 Online Multiplayer addict so I am very familiar with the stuff in this article.

    What's nice about Halo 3 is that when you actually get a group of people that are serious about playing and winning you can party up with them instead of being tossed in with some new random people who may just be goofing off.

    And girls do have it bad but often them not taking part in the colorful social commentary and ignoring it makes them more focused on the game and better players.

    Its also sad and pathetic that if a girl has any indication in her gamertag that she is in fact a girl, there will be a slew of "friend requests" from random guys/boys that are all in a frenzy because they've finally had some sort of interaction with a girl. Albeit just an online matchmaking game.

    A lot of people need to get a life but sadly there are tons of people that are social rejects and they look to the anonymity of the internet and online gaming to get a fix of what they can't in real life.

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    Well heres a few things I can glean from my 10+ years of playing games online (PC and more recently consoles).

    People all wear the mask. What do I mean by this? We are different "people" when around different groups. Thats all that really needs to be said about, because no matter the personality, how said person was raised, etc, they will act different around different people.

    Sometimes people are subtle about, other times, they are not. But we all do it.

    Secondly, although games have become more mainstream in recent years, especially online games, the greater majority of online gamers are socially inept, under-achievers. Lets face it, if half the hardcore gamers out there were social butterflies, they'd have no reason to play games in the first place, let alone online games.

    Playing games online gives socially inept individuals the ability to freely express themselves, in ways otherwise impossible in real life.

    Thirdly, given the psychological nature of these individuals, they are now pitted with a new social venture of which they CAN control the outcome: being a good player comes with it many social rewards. Other players look up to you, other players want to be part of your posse or clan, they want game with you, etc. These individuals NOW have friends and admirers, something they lack in real life.

    Fourthly, talking big. This is the biggest problem with playing online games, people who insult others and make the game not fun. Why do they do it? Because if they talked like that in school, they'd get their ass handed to them. Now they have a place to be the BULLY and if they are any good at the game, they have ability to back up those words.

    Truth be told, I guarantee that the vast majority of these ****wads, aren't actually like that in real life. They just act like it because they have been presented with a social situation of which they can control and can come out on top of, because they have been denied it in the real world.

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    DCEmu Rookie thefanaticgamer's Avatar
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    Honestly I would have to disagree with almost your entire argument.

    I think that this is less of a problem with online games and more of a benefit. One of the largest appeals of Online gaming is that an indvidual can become someone else. They can log on create a new identity obtain almost pure anonymity and the be free of societis strict rules. It gives people a place where they can enjoy themselves and vent somtime at others loss but it is done in an environment where it really doesnt matter.

    If you get angered at someone for calling you a noob you have the oppurtunity to play and become better than him then call him a noob. If you never see him to get revenge then who cares? and if you never can get to his level then just tell yourself he has abolsolutely no life and is wasting his time online so he can feel some sense of superiority and accomplishment somwhere.

    If you take online play as super serious then you probably shouldnt be playing. Its somthing that should be taken lightly, and as fun. If we start saying that everyone has to practice common decency and take everything seriously online than it will only be a matter of time before the ethics and principles of the internet match real life.... and in that case who would really want to play online at all?

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    counterstrike is the worst

    i disable mic and text chat in that game completely, it's the only way to actually enjoy it

    plus everyone cheats on it

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    I agree with the article, except I don't believe "entering the game but not playing" or "quitting before the game is over" is a clear-cut behavior problem.
    I try to stick around for the entire round even if I'm losing horribly. If I leave before a round is over, it'll usually be very early after joining the server once I find out I don't like the server or the players, or in some cases I'd leave when a friend comes on and wants to play something else or when real life calls, but even then I try to complete the round. If I need to go AFK for a few minutes in the middle of a round I either leave the server and come back later or become a spectator. I never leave while I'm still alive unless it's for something important that demands my attention instantly.
    There are also times, very rarely, when I might be interrupted as I'm joining a server and I don't get around to playing for a minute, but I never spawn in those situations if it can be prevented since spawned AFKers just hold things up and drive people crazy. Most of the time I think it's just people being utterly careless, like they need to go to the bathroom while they're still alive and they need to go NOW.

    As for cheaters and TKers, I just wish they could be given their own fun-killing medicine. Unfortunately I can't think of any legitimate way it can be done aside from banning them if at all possible.
    I stopped playing my favorite DS game, Metroid Prime Hunters, because of the ever-increasing hackers and glitchers. The ratio of cheaters to good players became more than I've ever seen in any other multiplayer game.

    When it comes to the extremely popular insulting/swearing smack-talkers, I usually keep my opinions to myself and just play the game, otherwise I would probably make myself look like a fool in front of all the other smack-talkers and my focus would shift from the game to the argument which would then take the fun out of everything.

    I don't think of the internet as a way to be completely anonymous. Sure, I avoid telling online people any of my personal information such as my real name, but I don't think that's the same mask as F9zDark said. I've been using this same nickname since I started playing online 9 years ago and it's a very unique name, so in that respect my internet life is separate from my real life and almost equally anonymous. Because of the way I keep myself out in the open like that online, I naturally stay at my best behavior because of how easy it is to make enemies and how hard it can be to lose them when I always have the same name everywhere I go.
    My behavior for the most part stays the same between various groups of people. Generally the more I know people and become comfortable with their personality, the more I talk with them. The more I consider someone a friend, the more I act like my real self when talking with them, which basically means I talk a lot more. Personally I avoid insulting or swearing no matter who I'm with and I prefer to hang out with people who do the same; I've made some great friends that way.

    There's a lot of "I" here, but I thought it would be better to describe my own behavior than to talk about what I think other people are like.

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    Good points Pilot_51, you're right with many of them. I have used F9zDark for around the same time (for a while I was also General Zex; which is still my AIM SN, but I adopted F9zDark for gaming when I started my clan Force NINE ages ago).

    I have been to many forums, many online services, that anyone who's been online for the last decade could possibly recognize me; which is partly why I maintain a level of maturity with my gaming behavior.

    To thefanaticgamer:

    There is a clear cut difference from "harmless" smack talk, and full on insulting, discriminative, prejudiced behavior.

    In fact, I am so tired of all the immature players out there, that I simply disable all voice communications within the games themselves. After 5 minutes of using the headset with Rainbow 6 Vegas for PS3, I had already muted a user and after that, I decided to hell with my headset.

    Maybe I am alone on this one, but whats the point of allowing headsets for gaming if the majority of players will use it to speak of their lackluster sexual relations with their "hot-ass gf" or some 12 year old boy pretending to be Borat?

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    I Tried playing online years ago (command and conquer win95), but every player I played against cheated openly.
    This soured me so much on online playing that I have never played an online game since, and I am not likely to ever do so.

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