Put the average Gamer in a chat lobby and, yeah, you’re gonna have some slurs.
But people generally seem a lot less monstrous when they are “by themselves” weirdly enough.
Games like Journey and even Death Stranding demonstrate this. Same with achievement statistics for Good/Hero vs Bad/Asshole decisions (although that tends to get tainted by the former having better rewards. Looking at you Bioshock…). But what I find the most fascinating are the “single player MMOs” like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14 (?). Let’s focus on GW2 since the latter tend to be insufferable if you dare besmirch The Greatest Online Community Ever™:
In normal overland gameplay, basically NOBODY talks to each other and… it is delightful. People will hop off their mounts to help fight off a strong enemy or to res someone and then move along, even if they already 100%ed that map. Same with jumping puzzles where it is very common to wait for someone to help show them the next jump.
But as you get more and more human interaction, things go to shit. Chatting while waiting for a world event? The barbs come out. Completed said world event? A troll will 100% put down an interactive decoration to prevent people from getting the chest. And if you actually use LFG to party up for a dungeon or a (non-quickplay) fractal? You can bet people are going to criticize your build or complain you aren’t doing enough DPS. And I’ve noticed that with the various SP-MMOs I’ve played over the… decade.
I am sure someone who paid more attention to psychology than I can explain that it is based on the human need to perform for others. But I just always find it fascinating how often Gamers are LESS shitty “in the shadows” as it were.
Nelots@piefed.zip 6 days ago
If you grabbed the right community and threw them into the game it could probably work out. Some games end up with really positive communities. Hell, some of them end up so positive that they loop back around to being toxic to anyone who isn’t being positive. Problem is a game like this could never cultivate a positive community and is basically doomed to fail.