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Lets figure this out: How can we improve the community?
LadyEuphei
Member UncommonPosts: 223
So, there has been a large amount of talk about the gaming community being toxic. It is fine and well to dwell in the negative, but how can we fix it? We are all smart people here, so lets put our brains together and maybe we can accomplish something. What do you think we can do?
Example 1:
I know as a female gamer I have seen several "support" groups/communities for female gamers open up over the years. They emphasize girl gamers being normal players and deserve the same respect of any male gamer. Do you think a anti-being-an-a-hat community would work to fix our problem?
Example 2:
League of legends has started banning pro gamers that are toxic to show that they will not take it and that it is not ok on any level of skill. They have also implemented the honor system to try and make people think about the positive and not only the negative (reporting). I personally think it has worked wonders on the community and given it a fighting chance at maybe recovering from its a-hat infection.
We get blamed for alot of violence and problems. Maybe it is true since our community is so mean, racist, sexist, and generally evil (except for a few) If we were to try to activally pursue change and growth of our community out of being 4-6 year olds into being 21/25+ people maybe we could lose a bit of the media heat that we get. So, think. Think hard and lets come together and figure out how we can make a better community!
tl;dr
How do you think we can fix the gaming community?
Comments
This community is damaged internally and bleeding from every orifice. You would need nothing short of a miracle to turn the gaming/internet community into something that could even be considered civil.
Anonymity will always bring out the worst in people because nobody cares enough when it takes a few minutes to create a new user account.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Well yes, I understand that. The point is that we have heard the negative. I am looking for a solution. What can we as a community come up with to fix this problem. I am think some kind of a anti-a**-hat community or maybe a gamer approved community or something where if you are a a** hat you get reported and taken off the list or something. I do not know guys that is why I though together we could come up with something great!
Harrasment is a punishable and eventually bannable offense in most MMO's I have played.
People just need to report it to GM's and show them the logs and the person will be punished. Other than that people can continue to be helpful to others, as many MMO players are.
I don't play free to play MMO's I imagine it is worse there with how much easier it is to create a new account, but I'd hope they would IP ban in that case.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
Every time an antagonist acts out and the players in contact get all huffy about it, the players are rewarding the antagonist for inappropriate behavior. As I see it, all this does is encourage further antagonistic activity.
The solution I'd find appropriate is to establish a general rule among players to black-list antagonists on detection, but not respond. If this is practical, I don't know, but I sort of doubt it.
One possible game mechanic that could assist would be an up / down ranking of a player's reputation (not just the character, but rather all characters on the account). Have the up / down ranking weighted to the ranking player's own reputation so that their ranking of others is diminished (or even ignored) if they have poor reputation. From there create a configuration option "auto ignore players with ranking below this threshold (with a numeric pulldown)".
In theory this would cage asshats by community ranking, and discourage anti-social behavior.
I think some games get more bad people than others, never liked the community of WoW, a lot of nasty topics in city/barrens chat, clueless and Impatient ppl, in the end the dungeon finder tool pretty much killed the social aspect of the game, ppl just joining guilds to get there bonuses!
However in guild wars 2 I've not met any AHoles !!
I think because there no sharing loot system so everyone gets loot for attacking same mobs in or out of groups, also the dynamic events you sometimes need someone to help, but you don't need to group with them so you meet ppl without the unessary mess of grouping and leavers.
I joined a really nice guild today, haven't found a guild like this since the original vanilla guild wars or the earlier years of starwar galaxies.
As for Skype I don't use it, it's not a secure programme, I'd only Skype ppl u know in real life, least ya know there not gonna hax u :-p
Most gamers are young. But all hide behind a screen and the internet.
If you want the community to change. Ignore and report bad behavior when available. Maintain you OWN self in an upstanding manner. Really just "Treat others as you would be treated."
Remember a large part of the bad behavior is designed to garner attention. Stop giving it to them, their behavior will change.
The realy toxic players eventually get weeded out. In EQ2 they eventually move from one server to another until they run out of space to hide.
The real problem is some folks hide behind their keyboard and act like punks/punk-ets. Nobody seems to check them. I don't know how you fix that. Other than to call them on it,a nd report them.
However I find getting one person banned, there is just another punk/punket to show up in that persons place.
Not sure whow we fix this situation, all one has to do is look at that other thread and see how things have devolved in it to see how fractured the community realy is.
It's not the gaming community, but it's the Internet as a whole. You can find all negativity through out social media platforms from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blog and everything that let people post comment. Being bad on the Internet does not give those people danger in real life, as long as they can be anonymous. So it is open for them to stir the hive just for the sake of their amusement. This remind me of one comment from EVE Online player:
"I belong to a group of people who, if you’ll excuse my language, like to **** other people over. We scam people. Steal their money. You trick people into giving you their money. It’s fun. After being in EVE I have considered doing a lot of different kinds of scams in real life but EVE for me is an alter ego. It’s really nice to do these things in the game that you wouldn’t do normally. I’m not going to walk into a store and steal something but if it is in EVE then why not do it if you can get away with it?" - http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/eve-online-offline-photos
This is why having to use real name in online community such as the original plan for Real ID cause quite a stir. With the real name being out in the open, it's expose the way that their real life reputation can be damage. That, of course, would help reduce the trolls out from the web, but there also side effect from identity theif, stalking, and other madness from having your info exposes to all the people you have not actually met in real life.
The media heat toward gaming, IMO, is because of the misunderstanding between people who grew up without video games, and the people who grew up with it. Gaming is a strange world to them, and they believe in what other people tell them instead of experience it themselves. It is easier to put blame on something they does not understand, than actually accept the fact that constitute a serious attack on human dignity, and degradation of human being. This problem likely to be reduce down as more people who grew up with gaming are increase and become the norm of society.
Sorry, I could not come up with a solution, but I can only offer some thought on the topic.
That depends on what you mean by "community". If you are refering to the general internet, short of the ultimate dream of every authoritarian government in the world, of making *everyone* register before they can use it, I'd say not much can be done. (even that would only have limited success).
If you are refering to specific communities within specific games, I'd say that those responsible for the games are the key. If they become convinced that dealing with trolls, nut cases and other such is good for their *bottom line*, then its possible to achieve this.
No matter what PR fluff is spread around about such things, if they aren't convinced that not doing it will cost them enough money to be annoying (or even painful), nothing of substance is going to change.
The trick would be in organizing enough players to focus on one specific game (to start). Something like the flash mobs, that have been appearing over the last few years.
I am seeing alot of ignore or report, that is not the point of this thread. I am looking to build a mechanic that will promote good behavior, that will make players be nice. XAPGames is on the right track with his suggestion. Some kind of a ranking system to "bury" bad players. The only problem is that guilds could exploit this to silence people they do not like.
Pluzoid makes a good point with that maybe it is the game that is the problem. Having a game where everything is shared and no one is competeing unless they want to, leads to a more civil community. I have noticed and commented on this before in terms of GW2 like you also said. Since no one is fight eachother every one is happy to see another player since it just makes their life easier. They lose no loot, they dont lose resource nodes, and their is no hassle. They just play together and have fun.
True you are correct this is a problem with the internet as a whole. I just feel that gamers are a close community and that it would be easier to fix just them then the internet as a whole. I also feel gamers feel prosecuted because of the a-hats and thus get a bad image. I was hoping that would mean that there is enough of a soul in the gaming community for us to ban together and make a change!
To many to quote, but it seems as if now we are pulling towards game design. It is possible that they way that games are fundementally constructed is what makes us negative and mean to eachother. So possibly there can be some kind of a guide line or something to imporve how a game is constructed to promote a good community?
P.S. I am going to start streaming soon so I might dip out of the convo for a bit, but I will be back!
The problem with rating systems for good behavior is that they can be abused. Look at typical forums or other social media outlets where people can upvote and downvote things. A lot of times people will downvote something simply because the person disagrees with them, even when they write it out thoughtfully and in a nice manner. It's also possible to get smaller communities (such as guilds) to intentionally downvote or report someone. Heck, we even see this in matches in LOL where someone will urge their team to report someone regardless of them not violating the TOS or Summoner's Code or whatever you want to call it.
I think the best example of a rating system is the LOL Tribunal system which is fairly anonymous vote source, but I've also heard accounts of people getting banned for it for seemingly no reason. A guildie for example got reported and posted a log on our forums where he didn't do anything wrong, didn't speak at all in chat other than Team and got reported by an opposing player except for a GG at the end (no, it wasn't anything like GG, noob either). So even that system isn't perfect and has it's problems as I think there are a number of people posting false reports because they are angry at getting beaten and a number of people just hitting yes on the Tribunal to any reports without reading through them first.
LOL! Omg you guard you son from being an ass hat...I could not stop laugh after that line! You might be the father of the year sir, better get your speech ready I am voting for you!
I do believe you are coming to a very good point. It could be that culturally we are not being taught how to act on the internet. Our parents were "internet noobs" and thus had no idea how to guide us with it. Now that it is a part of everyones lives it should be taught to not be an a**hat on it. That is a possible solution. Teaching the youth to be respectable in reality and when virtual.
Keep the ideas coming I love brain storming!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Well I'm stumped. I game with nice, patient people. Do you have a good group? If not, maybe start one. There are still good people out there believe it or not!
You can't change the world, but you can change who you game with.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
There's a good point here about Guild Wars 2 being build toward more of co-op gameplay rather play against each other about loot stealing and such. However, the community still getting attack by the non-players who simply find the game is not suitable to their playstyle and want it to be burn.
As there is no subscription fee, they can still be in game and grief people emotionally, as the game already been brought. Thankfully, there is not many way to machanically grief people in the game. Occationally, there still bad chat which is turn up from time to time. People on the forum got flame because they like the game, and they doesn't.
I think it is come down to how the game design their gameplay to reward good behavior, and punish player for being bad. But then imagine all the flame the game will get from PvP player, or player who like to grief/bully and think it is fine because it is just a game.
+1 this. Where are the parent!
Maybe some of the moderators for this site should start looking through the posting history of some of it's older members and see who may make good member-moderators for the site. One's that post frequently with the least biased and trollish demenor (Most site/topic perdinent posting history. Members dedictaed to such a goal of ridding the garbage) and let them start erasing inflamatory posts, issuing warnings, and if a couple warnings are given let them be able to bump the issue up to the actual site moderators for possible banning. Take some of the weight off the website mods and put a tighter grip on the a-hats.
Of course yes, this could be abused...but that's why they really look at who they give such responsibility. Better than their current lack of moderatoin on a reasonable scale.
And yes....and honor system would be good. Maybe through that if the member is issued 3 warnings they get banned instantly for a given time, if not permenantly. I'm not sure how web access works myself...but would it be possible to ban an IP?
What can we do? When I find myself in a bad neighborhood, I get out. I don't want to fix the "a**hats" because there is WAY more of them than I have time to deal with them.
I LOVED Ultima Online. I was a member of the Burning Heart guild on Great Lakes. I loved the role-playing with guild mates and other RP guilds. I loved the many different things there were to do in the world. Of course, once BH disbanded, I realized I was actually in a bad neighborhood surrounded by a bunch of a**hats. So I left the game to 'em and never looked back.
A non-a**hat guild doesn't sound very effective. I prefer "self-segregating" populations.
Start with a small group of people in an MMO, and expand outwards?
+10. I know I played with my son since he was only 11. In Evequest1 no less. I dont mind that kids play. Some are very mature.
Im an old fart at gaming. I usally dont get involved in area chat or trade chats. I keep to my guild and we have fun. I DO report something or someone when they get way out of line.
When you ignore the hate, racism, sexist, homophobic remarks your life is much easier. By ignore I mean just report it and move on.