Companion article with links and footnotes: www.shamusyoun... I know this video will make some people angry. Please try to keep a cool head and be nice to each other in the comments.
"The botched launch of Fallout 76 didn't lead to Todd Howard burning police cars in the streets" I know if that happened, it would be a tragedy, but just imagining a crazy Todd Howard burning down police cars is so funny to me.
What's really taken me aback this past year or so is the instances of seemingly purposeful antagonizing of gamers for advertising purposes. Exploiting in-group versus out-group prejudices is old hat in marketing. To go out of your way to anger people not in your game's target demographic so _their_ antipathy angers those that are into buying your game out of spite, this sounds like supervillain madness. The only explanation I can come up with is they already made a decision that was going to piss everyone when they found out, so they at least tried to spin some angry fanboys out of it. This is probably why this method of PR has been the default method for Epic Game Store acquisitions, and one of the reasons why those newly-exclusive'd games have garnered so much hatred. I know I've written off about a dozen games I've been interested in after learning I would have to buy them from Epic. I don't want to be involved in such structural negativity. There are already too many other games to play to fret about the ones on EGS, anyway. "Toxic", as in a harmful foreign substance, is not the word I use for angry gamers in these situations. "Cancerous" fits much better. Tissue that would be otherwise healthy, perverted into disease. My descriptor for a game development company in these situations is "carcinogenic".
I can't wait for Mrbtongue to make "Slow Down The Violence: Part 3" as a response to this. Not because I'd agree with him; I'm with Shamus on this one. I just want Mrbtongue to upload a video already. P.S. "Toxic" is one of the most egregiously abused terms in public discourse and I'm beyond sick of it.
>Mrbtongue: "Slow Down The Violence" Why must you do this to others? That video, only watched the first, is immensely myopic, arrogant, and completely wrong. The entire premise, that the games industry has a violence problem, is wrong on the face. The rest of the video is built on a foundation that is incorrect. My god that was irritating.
@@CravenTHC85 Well, I'm not going to apologize for just bringing it up in a joke, if you were referring to me. I actually agree with you that the video was mistaken, though not necessarily wrong "on the face of it" (few things are). I could excuse the occasional heavy-handed, condescending sermon if he was still generally making great content like he used to. Sadly, he doesn't make _any_ videos any more. Personally, I'm much more irritated by the lack of good content on RU-vid than by the presence of content that I disagree with.
Oh, man. It's always nice to see a video like this. Just like "Okay, everybody. Let's all just take a deep breath and a step back, then have a real conversation." I love your work, Shamus.
@Forsaken Pumpkin He was once a programmer, and this video doesn't appear to he monetized at all. Bandwagoning? Maybe, but I don't think he's doing it for revenue.
Yeah I thiught this was a good a video and I agree with most things he said but just based off my own experience looking at forums, playing online (pc and xbox) with others, and talking to my friends who game, I feel like the being rude kind of toxic is more prevelent in the gamming community. I wont make any general claims like "most gamers are toxic," because I probably havent even interacted with 1% of the entire gaming community. But I will say that even though being rude on the internet is not exclusive to gamming, it certainly is more prevelent. Most likely because the entire premise of a gaming community is based off of being online. Making Anonymously flexing on people and being rude more possible. But this is more of an argument as to why the internet sucks so yeah I can undersatnd his point. Otherwise i feel like tgese are the conversations be should be having 100%
basically the plot of Fire emblem 3 houses: Edelguard and Reha preparing the troops Dimitri: this could all be prevented by a simple conversation Claude: yea but you know that conversation wont actually happen
Nearly 30 years in online gaming, dating back to the first so-called MMO, and sitting through tedious RTs at GDC on how to deal with griefers has taught me this. First, most toxic behavior in online games is due to poor social design. Engineers did not go into engineering because they were enamored with human behavior. Second, anti-social behavior is disproportionately...memorable. This has been true since online games were played on CompuServe, GEnie, and AOL and the patterns have not changed since the Internet became the computer network of choice.
I'm going to reference CCP Grey's "This Video Will Make You Angry", and speculate that the issue is that rage is contagious and that due to the very low transmission costs of the Internet, tends to spread extremely quickly in any group that's highly online. Gaming, because it was one of the early cultures to go online, experienced this early, but it is a function of the rapidity of communication and the virulent nature of rage that was the root cause. Recall not that long ago the online knitting community exploded into a ragefest of bans, pattern erasure, and general nastiness, which are concepts that one would not normally associate with knitting, at all. An analogy would be the early towns. They were engines of creation but were also plague factories, that consitenly has a net population loss until sanitation was actually figured out and implemented. Until we figure out how to manage rage plagues, we are all going to have to deal with periodic bouts of really poisonous behavior, and do what we can to not feed the beast.
Yeah... I think the word "vile" would be best to describe the small to tiny minority of gamers who are incredibly negative and seemingly naturally adverse to normal online and/or in real life conversations. There are RU-vid videos out there that show these same vile gamers losing their cool at playing video games. They go on a up to highly destructive temper tantrum. They only generally stop when they realize that they have to spend up to thousands of dollars to repair and/or replace their broken electronics. These people will never change for the better.
@Quantum Passport I was under the impression that we were trying to mainstream the concept that SOME gamers are assholes. A rear-end is a rear-end whether he or she plays video games or not.
I've said it once, I'll say it again: "It's not the fandom, it's the decade." Take any subculture and there's always a subsection of rabid aggression over one particular aspect. Apply that to a larger subculture and the notion seems magnified by sheer bulk of the same mindset - thus, more prevalent fandoms (eg. Star Wars) have much more pronounced "toxicity."
Exactly. "Gamers" aren't toxic. Humans are. There are always dumb people that are surprisingly easy to find in every community, fandom, etc. Always people who will be dumb, rude, mean, or just take things to the extreme. Instead of singling out a particular group we should just acknowledge that people are dumb.
I can't even say in words how much Twitter hates gamers. In all respects, tlou 2 wasn't a masterpiece. It didn't have the best combat, graphics, gameplay, etc. And it definitely didn't have a masterpiece story. It was a 7/10. When people pointed this out on Twitter, other people started posting pictures like - a mind of a gamer. His only thought is "why is the protagonist gay" - Like what the fuck people we are not worried that the protagonist is gay. I think if you took a 1000 people who played the game, only 5 would be angry that ellie is gay. We are worried about the fucking story. The media paints us gamers as a non inclusive racist, sexist group of men playing in their parents basement. But it's not. Sorry about the rant. Sometimes I think half of the people who liked tlou2 did it cuz they saw the reviews and didn't want to hate the game as it would make them feel stupid like they didn't understand the game. Cut us some slack, media. Go pick on someone else for a while.
it's not the fandom or the decade, it's the people. There's plenty of evidence that toxic assholes existed in no small number several decades ago as fans of works.
As Richard Garriott realised while working on Ultima Online, toxic behavior is a game design issue, not social one. But industry failed to heed his words, and keeps blaming users for what should be developers responsibility. And, trying to solve the problem, they keep taking away tools community had to resolve conflicts and self-police, making issue even worse. Welcome to control freak death spiral, there are no escape.
One of the biggest issues to me is how matchmaking works. You used to have servers where likeminded people could play. A server for casual fun, a server for tryhards, a server for whatever niche you wanted. With server mods who dictated what was allowed on that server or not. Now instead of that what happens is everybody is lumped together and sorted by skill level. That means one guy wanting to relax and have fun is gonna get matched with a person trying their hardest to improve at the game. No more moderators either, now everybody is subject to the same rules regardless of how they want to play the game.
I feel like while your statements are true, however i also feel it's more of a combination of both game design and the kinds of people who may end up playing it. I don't mean to be vague, so lets just say that some people (probably a small sub-set, but may vary depending on genre and it's features/mechanics and relevance in gaming culture) truly are just incomprehensively chaotic in their interactions with other players. An example i have was an experience being a part of a stand alone mil-sim mod for Battlefield 2 called "Project:Reality". In that game, a large portion of the modification does its best to simulate a more team focused game where communication between squads and squadmates plus the cameraderie and cooperation formed through these people are what make people win matches, not lone wolves or trolls. Time before respawn was long, and if your squad leader doesnt deploy a rally point or FOB, you're going to spawn all the way back at main base (in a 4km by 4km map). And un-warranted team killing was frowned upon (in the rare ocassion it was used to forcibly stop any trolls that did manage to somehow stick around from continuing their spree until a mod would spot and warn/kick/ban said troll) A couple years back, on a co-op server (humans vs ai) i had the misfortune of entering a squad where one guy spent his entire time plotting to teamkill people during certain situations to try to excuse that fact (i.e. using rocket launchers on people whenever an enemy vehicle is around) and would flatly say he "didnt mean to do it" and that he was joking in a supposedly lighthearted (but very trolly) manner. Bear in mind the co-op servers are commonly used by people new to the game who want to get used to the mechanics for the first time, but with live team mates to coordinate with and with slightly scaled down mechanics in order to facilitate having them familliarized. Despite all this, the guy continued to be a jerk and insulted everyone on the server as being mentally retarded before being kicked out by an admin who filed a toxicity report on his account. One final thing i want to point out is that Project:Reality was built by modders who had a distinctly niche interest (a military simulator that wasn't as clunky as ARMA or quick as the typical shooter in order for people to execute plans on the fly). It main infantry controls were simple and easy ti get around, but the rest require a bit of time to practice before getting good at it in a PVP environment. That is to say, The devs aren't going out of their way to appease Call of Duty or Battlefield fans, and the first match a person plays usually determines if someone would stay with the game or move on. And yet the guy still stayed despite this. The game/modifcation was made at the time for the community that wanted it. And still despite that i still managed to bump into a troll. It just happens, and to my knowledge at least you're more likely to encounter them in more mainstream games as there is more people for them to "prey on". That's my opinion in the matter and i'm very open to discourse!
This is exactly how it was when I was playing Starcraft: Brood War on Battle.Net years ago, @@DestroyedArkana, to a T! It was very difficult for me to find good players to play with. Turned out that the Final Fantasy maps were home to some of the most drop dead serious vile players out there. They would all loudly complain at me and call me alot of negative things for not knowing how to play any of the Final Fantasy maps. It got to the point where I saw a Final Fantasy map and I avoid it as though it would literally murder me in real life. I am not being a whiny thin skinned turd about this. Just that eventually such online abuses do get to you, especially when you are a noob to online gaming who is just looking to have a fun and good time with others. By the time I did find *one* friendly Starcraft Brood War player it was at a time when I was about to just stop online gaming altogether because all I could find were some of the most maleficent people imaginable. Trying to find that one guy again seemed impossible. Thankfully a miracle happened. The matchmaking AI began to put me with nicer SC players. Online gaming with Brood Wars was actually becoming less and less poisonous and quite enjoyable. Over time I acquired various Fastest and other fantastic fun maps to play on.
@@DestroyedArkana You bring up a great point, something that I have thought about lately. I went from being a PC gamer to a console gamer and I sorely miss my custom servers and the fun times I had with the regulars on that server. I game exclusively on consoles now and the multiplayer just isn't as fun, sure I do have fun when I am playing with friends but if my friends are not on I rarely jump in matchmaking. Modern Warfare's player base is pretty bad and I stopped playing multiplayer but the Warzone mode released I love. It is the most fun I have had, actually finding some competent teammates where we all know our goal is working together for a win.
Often when you hear the "gamers are toxic" crap it's always from someone talking about only the bad experiences they have had without acknowledging context. Having ran servers, lead guilds, founded gaming communities and a variety of social gaming like that. The amount of people we would ban from a server vs the amount that came in, played and either left or became a regular was measured in single digits percentage wise. The amount of people I had to either talk to or ask someone to talk to in guilds vs how many were sane whether I liked them or not fell again into small single digit percentage. Same thing with community websites. It is however much easier to remember every bad thing than it is to remember even some of the normal things, because normal is a pattern and our brains simplify patterns to compress memories.
No look, ok say you ban 5% of people for repeat harassment. During a single half-hour match, you interact with 11 other people, is that about reasonable? What are the odds that there is a bannable person, a harasser, in that match? It's over 50%. How do you like getting harassed once an hour? And then people, normal people, just get desensitised to this shit and start ignoring it, which is worse than harassment per se, because that's the point where it's no longer "well here's a shit individual" and instead "gamers are toxic". This is why i never play online, and when i do, i'll NEVER EVER have my microphone turned on ever again.
@@SianaGearz Perhaps the reason you experience so much harassment is that you stick out as an easy target. A sensitive, whiny baby. Competitive arenas are confluences for aggression. Did you expect a support group? Brushing off rude or inflammatory comments is part of life. Allowing the dregs to rule your decision-making is foolish.
@@Runescaper1357 Maybe little shits the likes of you haven't been taught the concept of SPORTSMANSHIP. Competition is as much about achieving external goals such as victory as it is about achieving internal ones, self-improvement, maintaining respect and courteousness towards your co-players and competitors, in spite of it being perhaps somewhat difficult at times. In the context of say Olympic games, rude language would lead to instant disqualification. I come from the Soviet Union, and if a kid were to get rude during school sports, you know what would happen, the parents of the rude kid would be forced to stand in shame and apologise in front of all the other parents, and then they would come home and beat the vocabulary out of the kid for good. Today it tends suffice to be a woman or stand out in any distinguishable way to experience abuse in online play. Have you thought of that? Either that, or people trying to hit on you and THEN getting rude when you politely tell them off. I don't know why i should brush off inflammatory comments. If someone said something i have an issue with IRL, i wouldn't hesitate to slap them right wide across the face, and i haven't had to do so in many years, it's excessively rare, because everyone is a pussy when you can just hit them. Why should it be daily in online games specifically? Why should i subject myself to it when i could be doing a million more pleasant things instead?
@@SianaGearz Lower your expectations. Sportsmanship in online gaming is practically non-existent. Unlike real sports, relative anonymity and lack of immediate consequence lead to poor behavior. A Soviet advocates beatings for minor infractions of social code. No further comment. Woman enters male-dominated space; incredulous at gendered mistreatment. You should brush off inflammatory comments because currently they cause essay-length tirades of righteous indignation. Why subject yourself to it, indeed. Glad you learned your lesson, though. Cheers.
I had an issue of gamers treating me badly in a guild that I honestly think was handled terribly. I played WoW for more than 3 years at this point. I had been the only raid leader to a guild and one of their first 30 members. By the time this happened, our guild had more than 300 people and I was their strategist, main raid leader, as well as trainer for other raid leaders, and scheduler for weekly raids. I played at least 40 hours/week. My ex was a second to another officer and mostly spent time playing on his secondary char as a healer. With that out of the way, I'll try to make the rest aa short as possible. He beat me. I was in the hospital and tried to press charges. He got them lowered to basically a slap on tthe wrist and started to harass me. So I filed for a restraining order (1st temp, then permanent), which the judge granted - after hearing us both tell what happened. The day I got the permanent order, he tried to have my kid taken by social services (which I showed them the restraining order along with my home and they put down a note to require more info for any future calls and closed it). Then he came an hour after with police escort to get any stuff from my home (he was not living with me nor was he in any way related to my child). My kid and I were forced to stay on one side of the house while he got the pc he used from my gaming room (we had been dating 9 months by that time and since I had introduced him to the guild, we decided he could keep a pc in my house to spend extra time together while playing). During this, he took my modem. Our town did not have a lot of options for hardware so I had to order a new one. During those 2 days, whatever he said to the guild made them kick me and take his side. Most blocked me even. I did ask one officer if they knew he had beaten me up and they said no. I asked if they knew about the restraining order and they said yes. Honestly, it felt like being beaten and then stabbed in the back by the people I spent so much time with. It really hurt. I'd have been okay if they had kicked us both, but kicking only me (and then having most of the guild block me) was just super painful. It has basically ruined MMOs for me. I just dont get how people could decide that the person to side with was the one that would go to jail of they ever tried to talk to me again. It still floors me that they knew I was given a permanent restraining order (which the judge agreed that he would most likely hurt or even kill me without - and even ordered for a victim's advocate detective to coordinate a safety plan for the future with me) and yet they still took his side.
"There isn't a pre-existing narrative that Ford owners are crazy people" I dunno man, that one's arguable. On a more serious note, thank you for saying this, it really needs said more. Keep up the amazing content man!
Personally, I have developed a bigoted stereotype that BMW drivers tend to be speeding jerks who weave around traffic and don't follow the road rules properly. Don't know what it says about them, and what it says about me, but whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I dont know if people remember way back when, but there was a series of articles talking about a study that concluded that sexist (IE toxic) gamers are literally losers (in terms of gameplay). What those articles, and the study itself failed to mention, was over 90% of players whose behavior they recorded didn't communicate at all.
This makes perfect sense to me. Most Internet firestorms are essentially one tiny group of people arguing with another tiny group of people. The "political" controversies of the Internet are a lot more like office politics, i.e. petty personal squabbles, than they are like the political discussions of government. Also, people who get their kicks from harassing others lack the focus or the interest to actually get good at games, so I would expect them to do poorly. One of my biggest annoyances about the whole "gamer" thing is that commentators are bestowing the label on people who enjoy arguing more than playing games.
Readers get a lot more hate than you might think. Recreational readers, at least. And when you combine "readers" with "walkers", you get "people who read while they walk", and those people are a menace to traffic across the globe. I know because I am one.
Ok, but is there a point where the type of games one consumes starts to reflect attributes? If there weren't at least some correlations marketing wouldn't be a thing.
@@azertyQ The point is that the word "gamer", which properly refers to an enthusiast of _any_ type of video game, shouldn't be a term of abuse. I agree that liking only violent games where you inhabit the role of a psychopath says something about you as a person, but that's not what "gamer" means. There are games that cater to every kind of taste imaginable. Games aren't a genre any more than anime is, but in both cases people often make a lot of unpleasant assumptions about fans of the medium. If you wouldn't smear a person for watching television, why do it for games?
The term "gamer" as I understand it to be used by people who criticize the group is not analogous to "reader" or "walker". For example I would call myself a "writer" I am very passionate about writing (specifically film criticism and fiction but thats neither here nor there), and I spend a lot of my time thinking about writing, and actually writing. I would not place that label on most people who write. Nearly everyone writes to some extent in their daily lives, but I have chosen to integrate the activity into my identity; how I see myself and how I want to present to other people. Likewise "gamer" here refers to people who are very passionate about gaming, and spend a lot of time thinking about, playing, and generally engaging with videogames, and not just anyone who plays games to any extent. This is of course not seen, in and of itself, as a bad thing, and I want to reiterate Shamus' point that no intelligent informed person really thinks that "all gamers are toxic". Taking all of that into account I think the phrase "gamers are toxic" is intended to mean that there is a distressing trend of harrassment and aggression amongst the most passionate of people who play videogames. Now obviously we don't want to say that whole thing all the time so we shrink things down and some of the initial meaning is encoded, unfortunately how you decode that phrase depends on your own (equally valid) experiances and understanding.
i always 'love' when i sometimes get called toxic when generally all i do is answer questions and explain Game Mechanics. but i guess i'm 'toxic' because i didn't agree with those people or something. i wish people were more mature and better informed. ignorance will be the death of us all.
I don't think gamers are all toxic (and you describe very well how many different usages the words has these days), but I am disappointed in how many gamers these days are; - prone to always being negative and/or loving drama so much that they actively seek it - motivated to play multiplayer games just to ruin the experiences of others for their personal enjoyment - deliberate, proud assholes to others - aggressive while playing - willing to break the law and compromise other players security by DDoSing someone over a few in-game kills - incapable of thinking about the big picture, when blindly throwing their money to some greedy publishers pre-order/monetization But even after all that, I've made tons of friends through gaming who are downright *awesome* people. In the end, most of the things I dislike on that list aren't "gamer problems", they're people problems. There are plenty of people in the world who are intolerable assholes and these days, the assholes are very often more prevalent due to their online presence and therefor more visible and "louder" than reasonable people who often don't even bother writing any comment to some current shitstorm. ...and what venue more "connected" globally than gaming? So it might feel like a bigger percentage of gamers are assholes, because they're the types making all the noise, being made drama-loving videos on youtube and even often focused on by "game journalism" who also thrives off of - you guessed it - drama.
Thanks I got into games as an escape from real life toxicity as you define it (it rarely entered into physical bullying) and it did a number on my self confidence at the time and I felt horrible for not fitting their arbitrary rules and expectations(to be clear when I say their it's referring to fellow students , most adults were fantastic and helpful) so yeah thank you so much :')
the problem is exactly the distortion of language to mean more than it is intended for, just to make a point, gain advantage, gain power. These broad stroke slurr words are, what are "toxic".
I can see how it might seem that way, however I think its more likely that these "broad stroke slurr words" as you call them are less an attempt to gain power, but more of an attempt at linguistic efficency. Instead of explaining every concept exhaustively we encrypt the language into powerful, and effective words like saying a group is "toxic" instead of saying "there is a trend of harrassment and aggression within the group's most passionate members". The problem is introduced when the message is decrypted differently by an individual with differing (and equally valid) experiances and understanding. If a conversation gets heated after a such a decrypting error both parties share equal blame for the escalation and lack of understanding.
@@Gatorade69 I don't think he meant it as a point of advocacy. I think he just meant it as a point of fact. You can't be a centrist anymore in today's society. I don't say that because I think it's a good thing, or because I think that's the way things should be. I say that because that's the way things *are*. Believe me, I would like nothing less than to live in a world where middle ground solutions where commonly accepted. But they aren't. Centrists are despised, and without just cause. But it's easier to threaten the people who sympathize with your cause than it is to threaten the people who were already going to shoot at you anyway. Anti-centrists are cowards, and centrists are pacifists: it's a match made in Hell.
Back when Jack Thompson was on the loose, game journalism was on the gamers side. But since ca. 2012 they have been the ones attacking their own readers. They deserve the backlash they get. Gaming doesn't have a harassment, a sexism or a racism problem. It does however have a journalism problem.
@GiRayne Spare me your indignation. I have heard about gamer culture, but believing that there is a culture of game critique, is taking naval gazing to a whole new level.
There were definitely people pushing the idea that all or most gamers are toxic back in the "gamergate" days. On an unrelated note, Anita Sarkeesian is complaining about The Mandolorian's "boob armor" on twitter.
Man, you're a great commentator and I respect your tackling this issue. And I think your early-in-vid read on how imprecise language causes people to talk past each other is wonderfully articulated and very important. But respectfully, you just made a ten-minute video that boils down to "some people will always be assholes and gaming is no exception, so the word 'gamer' shouldn't be a negative label." Which is totally valid, but it doesn't really grapple with the material issues causing this toxicity conversation to happen in the first place. Are you kind of talking about GamerGate? Because I'm willing to bet that your friend being doxxed wasn't an isolated incident; a woman journalist being driven from the industry sounds like an incident caused by a *specific* movement of people whose actions led to a lot of abuse (often with sexist undertones/overtones) in recent years. You kind of conflate the harassment-based judgements the public has made on gamers recently with the Jack-Thompson-y violence-based judgement of a couple decades past, but they're radically different things and deserve to be disambiguated, imo. I think this is a super noble thing to take on and I trust that you're coming from a good place on it, but in the chance that you actually see this comment, I want to put forward that your friend deserves to have a conversation about the actual sub-culture that *forced her from her career,* and maybe a discussion of how deliberate, explicit statements are useful in making sure that sub-culture withers and dies.
Women journalists have gotten driven from the industry by the *anti*-Gamergate crowd. And the fact that you're so hung up on that nearly 5 years after the fact shows that you've got some serious ideological bias. Tell me something. You encourage this woman to come forward and talk about just who exactly "forced her from her career". If it should turn out that the culprits were, in fact, people from *your own side of the political aisle*, would you be willing to acknowledge the fact? Or would you cover your ears and sing "lalalalala she deserved it for being one of Them as opposed to one of Us"? Because if you're like the average anti-Gamergater than it is safe to assume you fall in the latter camp.
@@1337m4n If there's convincing evidence that a cultural group I belong to is forcing entire demographics out of an industry, I absolutely would take it as an opportunity for self-critique and/or scrutiny of groups I sympathize with. What are you referring to? How did people who disagreed with GamerGate drive women out of the industry? I'm also not "so hung up" on anything lol, this video is pretty directly pointing to the discourse that emerged from GG about "gamer culture" being toxic
Agh, we need more stuff out there like this. Very level-headed, controlled perspective. The part about what the other person hears in an argument... so good! Always love your videos, Shamus!
This is a complex debate. I don’t entirely disagree with your point that calling all gamers toxic is unfair to the large number of game communities that are positive and inclusive. However, one issue the “gamers are toxic” argument highlights is that common behaviors help build a culture that facilitates abuse and harassment. The infamous chat exchanges in multiplayer games is a good example. Even people who otherwise seem reasonable will start spewing abuse through that feature. That abuse normalizes the idea that this kind of treatment is acceptable and the targets of harassment should just get a thicker skin. I would also agree that sports has issues with harassment and abuse, but the typical coverage cuts too far in the other direction. The desire to paint the worst fans as completely separate from the overall culture hides the connection between the often mean sport culture and the negative results. I agree that we should do more to celebrate the good things in the gaming community. But we also need to acknowledge the toxic atmosphere that pervades many modern game communities, and be open to changes that facilitate more diversity.
Anonymity plays a big role, I can say whatever I want to anyone I want with basically no repercussions. Anyone who thinks gamers are somehow different clearly hasn't ever worked retail.
Oh brother, I am with you 100%. The abuse I have put up with working in grocery. Yet never once have I seen journalists write articles about how "grocery customers are toxic and we need to address this issue". I would trade places with Anita Sarkeesian any day of the week. Let us see how she handles cleaning literal poop off the sales floor while being yelled at because the mint chocolate ice cream you ran to the karen in the checkout line wasn't exactly the right brand.
In certain game's communities, toxic people make themselves loud enough to drown out the decent people. Combined a general apathy or inability to police this intolerable subgroup by the decent majority, toxicity overwhelms the experience from the perspective of an observer. Should decent gamers have the responsibility to confront these problem members? Often these toxic people go unchallenged within the community. This drives away decent people who care, leaving only decent people who are apathetic, and the toxic people themselves. Not only that, but the culture starts to change to accept the toxicity, and reject anyone who would dare call it out. If this toxicity were consistently met with resistance wherever it popped up, calling gamers in general "toxic" would be ridiculous. But seeing toxicity met with silence by the majority, and anyone who challenges the toxicity is met with fierce criticism... well, it's hard to disagree after seeing that. Not all gaming communities are like this though. Smaller and newer communities are often very positive. Adding in good moderation can help a lot. Community policing can do wonders - so long as you haven't already driven away most of the decent people who would care. The topic/genre of the game can also affect how much toxic players are drawn to the game. For example, you're not likely to see much toxicity in the puzzle game communities. Overall, I don't think calling gamers toxic is really a big driver towards toxicity. It doesn't seem to make much difference, although it will make some people vehemently argue with you. The big drivers towards toxicity are apathy and lack of policing tools. Some games and communities invest in these tools - others don't, and suffer for it. The two things you can do to help is tell game developers and community organizers to moderate their members, and call out toxic behavior as unacceptable when you see it. The first is easy - although I didn't see you mention it in your video essay. The second is hard, especially because it makes you a lightning rod for the toxic behavior.
All I want to say is... thank you for uploading "Bowling + Rollercoasters = Fun!" back in 2006. I remember watching that as a NINE year old child. Because of your video, you got me into RCT3, HEAVILY until I was about 14-15 years old, which is significant. I play it on occasion now because of the nostalgia, but you quite literally shaped my early teen years. I made a whole channel named "rct3fan00" that still exists because of you, and for that I thank you, I just wanted to thank you personally for a very nostalgic part of my childhood, and I'm happy to see your still doing well and still creating content almost 14 years later! I'm 22 now and just as much as an adult as anyone else haha, it's crazy how time flies. Take care!
@@DeoMachina Just fine I think. Going to school for Financing and work a full-time job as a Geek Squad Home Theater Installer on the side to pay for my car bills and school. Funny how life is honestly lol
Great video. I totally agree with your opinions on sport and violence there in. Sports gets a free pass on anything like all the pitches/arenas whatever are a land extention of international waters.
It didn't get a free pass once upon a time. The trouble is that the outrage of news media, which is usually a combination of legitimate anger and ratings-baiting, lacks focus and usually moves to a more tempting issue before public concern has led to any improvements in the issue they started with. People used to criticize "football hooligans" and their ilk quite severely for acts of violence and general depravity. The same was true for fans of heavy metal music, comic books, slasher movies, and a lot else. None of these things became less gross over time; if anything, they probably got worse after the public stopped paying attention to them. Video games are under the spotlight of shame right now, but I'll bet you they won't be in a decade.
"So now you’re wondering what word we should use to describe the toxic harassers? I don’t think it’s my place to say. Pick your own word." Shamus, you're missing something. The 'journalists' have already picked the word they want to represent "person who harasses someone (whom we like) in the games industry", it's "gamer". They've been using this word that way for over a decade already; you're really, really late to this party.
Remember when games journalists tried to get gamers to stop calling themselves gamers because they had decided that the term was tainted by the bad people that they had deemed the archetype species of gamer?
"Journalism" has long since lost any inherent worthiness of respect as a profession. I'm not just talking about game journalists, either. Hell, game journalists are generally more respectable than most. Personally, I hold the term "journalist" in the same level of regard as most people hold the terms "grifter" or "loan shark". The profession as a whole has long since abandoned any sense of honor or ethics. Bringing the truth to the people is second to making money and pushing political agendas. I would sooner trust someone working for the Mafia than I would someone working for CNN. At least the Mafia doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Yeah, this was another great video and kept to the argument without getting vitriolic or mired in the second step of this conversation. Also, I loved the contrast between Ledger's Joker and Romero's. Classic!
I'd like to think, when i rarely play League of Legends, that only a minority is toxic... But, unfortunately, nine out of ten games, tell me otherwise. Just one person (on either team) have a bad game, and that person is the scapegoat of hate for the rest of the game.
@John Syzlack LoL is kind of inherently frustrating, and the game mechanics are basically built to make everyone on the losing team loathe their worst player. If your losing team deathmatch in Halo, you can still have fun scoring your own kills. If you're losing in LoL, you can't even achieve your own little victories because your bad player(s) have fed the enemy so much that they steamroll you. Which frankly is not fair on the good players who have to suffer, or fair on the less skilled players who just wanted to have fun but get hated on by their team. That's why I don't play MOBAs.
@@TheSnowKingMEC How can you possibly offer a counterpoint like "counterpoint"? That's absurd! I agree with Pflasterstrips, when I also say "interaction in comment section." You're not absurd, though. You're cool. Good stuff.
You're a brave guy to even get near this subject, Shamus- and I appreciate that you did so with caution and a level head like usual. Some people will take this as an opportunity to soapbox or assume that you are part of The Enemy in the culture war, but from where I sit you're one of the good ones. That's why I'm PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE ALMIGHTY ALGORITHM WITH THIS COMMENT PRAISE PRAISE
@PixelLightShow We're not nearing a state of civil war. It's just another period of relatively mild civil unrest(in comparison to other time periods in U.S. history). The closest America has come to a civil war(I'm assuming you're also an American) since the actual civil war, was the Great Depression. People marched on D.C. in an attempt to throw the president out of office (President Hoover and the White House had to be defended from civilians by U.S. troops). Don't blow this out of proportion with arguably hard-right-leaning rhetoric and fear-mongering. Smoke some weed, take a deep breath, and just relax man.
What a great video. I never thought of things this way. I think the most important take away is that if we say "gamers are toxic" then we give a free pass to abusers in this community, because then the blame they should be bearing themselves gets distributed onto millions of people. it's not "Johnny swatted a journalist because he is a psychopath", it's "gamers swatted a journalist". And this is very dangerous because it allows people to do very bad things and then disappear into the anonymous crowd. It's a powerful tactic if you want to let a group of people do criminal things in a weaponized manner - which is why the gamer culture in the 2010's naturally spawned the alt right culture, which does exactly this, but instead of being clueless about it, is very, very aware of the rules of the game. I never understood the gamer-alt right connection. But bow I do. Your video was the missing key. Thank you for that insight.
+cheater00 I really don’t buy into the “gamer to alt-right” narrative, unless you mean how the gaming media crapped all over itself and pushed a bunch of people into examining more conservative positions and the actions far-left, postmodernist individuals in the gaming space. This, of course, takes “alt-right” to mean a white nationalist, white supremacist or other adherent of similar ideologies. The term is almost in mainstream news because of how liberally it gets used to tar individuals of stripes right of Marx. +PixelLightShow Hey, way to reinforce the mainstream narrative about how gamergate was an alt-right harassment campaign and super far right. ‘Look, there’s one of them right there!’
I've been watching since 5-6 years ago, and I loved the reset videos. I've now watched the new catalog of videos and I'm loving every second of it. It's such good content. Explained so well, really can't wait for more! ❤️
When I saw the black mesa thumbnail and was greeted with a thoughtful political discussion on culture surrounding gaming I was pleasantly surprised Subbed
"There just regular people trying to sell news papers." It seems to me, that like most things, we shouldn't mix capitalism with journalism. What's profitable doesn't line up with good journalism most of the time. It's kind of a catch 22 though. Journalism requires cash, and if not from enterprise where are you going to get it from? The government? It's in the best interest of most governments to have a healthy population, so might be able to trust them with health care, but news? That idea is bad beyond words. Solution = technology to make journalism cheaper. Thanks for listening to my ted talk.
I just learned loot ninja is a word and I love it. I think part of the problem is that the internet is so new. The closest we would have to online harrasers and toxic gamers are Trolls. Which, I think works but maybe we need something a bit more specific.
Fair points, I am inclined to agree. There ARE tons of areas within the gaming community that could be improved though, there's some genuine problems with the mentality of some groups and that should be the focus, the problem is the people arguing about toxic behavior don't really do anything about improving these groups.
Me looking at the title: well, it's gonna be fun! Also good job. It was a difficult subject and I commend you for doing an even-handed job (well, in my opinion)
If Ford released a crappy car that nobody wanted, it would be very strange if the CEO of Ford stepped down because of repeated death threats, or that a writer for Motor Trends get swatted because they covered some features they thought were interesting. I do not think there's anything in games in general that makes people behave this way. But there has to be some reason, and that's what people refer to when they say gamers are toxic.
You make a decent argument. I was going to say I've had to pick up the pieces of a few too many people that have been harassed in gaming communities. One sad trend I noticed, which even your own example anecdotally confirms, is the disproportionate level to which women are the targets of harrassment, either directly or indirectly. (indirect harrassment is things like vague insults, disparaging remarks, assumptions and the like which while not explicitly targeting an individual, would likely be at least mildly hurtful to anyone that identifies with that target group) Is this toxic? Eh. Sexist seems to be more accurate. And also with a tendency towards being exclusionary. Everything from frequent use of gendered slurs, to subtly implying women don't play games, aren't welcome, shouldn't or can't be catered to in any form (the whole games wuth female leads don't sell thing from a few years ago) to endless arguments about how 'inclusiveness is some kind of political agenda ruining our favourit hobbies'. Certainly not exclusive to gaming, but does seem disproportionately present in gaming communities. The idea of gaming being a boys club; a male exclusive hobby, still persists, and many act accordingly. Up to and including harrassment. And while this does seem somewhat prevalent throughout many 'nerdy' (or formerly nerdy) hobbies, it does seem disproportionate in gaming. Compare a star trek/sci-fi convention to a comic book convention to an anime/manga convention to a gaming one... (notwithstanding that many cover multiple such areas at once) and I feel reasonably confident the gaming one will seem most overtly hostile to women, all things considered. This is of course entirely relative. But such things always are. I for one am however tired of having to comfort girls who have been made to feel like the hobby and community would rather have them leave... can't think of any other community where I've seen that happen personally...
"the disproportionate level to which women are the targets of harrassment" That's actually false. Men get targeted for harassment far more often than women. You can confirm this yourself if you look up the actual stats. Women feel like the hobby doesn't want them, because pols with an agenda tell them the hobby doesn't want them. Every gaming group I've ever been a part of, and every gaming group I've ever looked at joining, has viewed gender as a complete non-issue. Women are there, and nobody comments on it one way or another. They are simply accepted. The dissonance occurs because a male developer can get a hundred "go kill yourself" tweets and nobody cares, but a female developer gets one such tweet and every journalist treats it like it's the apocalypse.
I agree with you, however I have encountered people that genuinely do mean "Gamers are abusive, sexist/misogynistic/bigoted, etc." when they say toxic. I agree with your nuanced view. Just saying that some people actually do mean what they gaming community hears.
I think both football fans and gamers have problems with harassment. Along with religions like Christianity, and Islam. Oh, and political parties, mostly the side that doesn’t want evidence in a trial. (Oh look, an angry mob) Also some groups of “feminists” who don’t share my understanding of the term.(there, now that second angry mob can fight the first) I really hope that the one reason we don’t have problems with bookworms or wood workers or dog walkers is not that those hobbies are currently less popular.
Feedback: I think you should change the intro sounds. It's not very pleasant and feels cheap. Please consider it. It's the first seconds of you videos.
What, like in general? There is a loud and visible contingent of us gamers that are super toxic. I can't really blame people from outside and inside the community to get this impression.
4:00 we can all agree being rude is not unique to gamers, but some games do atract those kinds of people more often. Mostly hero shooters/ fighting games. The comunity around for honor is also garbage. "We will gank you 4 v 1 then all message you about how your a pos who should kill themself.", level toxic. Thats happened to me like 7 times and i got a 7.0 kd ratio on that game. Thats not to mention that if you play 10 matches of 1 v 1 and win the first round each time, 7 out of 10 will quit before the final round. There is also the stupid, git gud, attitude. Which is just the worst. These same people couldn't do half as well if they where put in the same circumstance, however they claim their skill to be why they win. Fuck off gamers and acknowledge when you use cheap strategies to win that does not make you skilled. EDIT: sorry bout the rant. For honor is a great game that is unplayable because the people are aweful.
The thing is not all people think gamers are "toxic" and not all gamers are "toxic" but it I just the ones with the loudest voices that get noticed, just the bad and not the good. That's what most people focus on
I'm coming from the furry community here, (which by the way: if "Gamers are Toxic," then Furries are definitely "Toxic" in the same way.) And when a Furry says "Furries are toxic," it's usually meant as a very personal complaint. A complaint along the lines of "Lately, I have been running into crazy people into weird stuff that looks harmful, or who hold harmful beliefs, almost every time I try to meet other people in the fandom."
It's hard to believe that we live in an age where part of the population talks about theoretical ways to create a working teleporter while others are still learning what the word "bigotry" means. What the fuck, humanity?
I don't say gamers are toxic to mean "gamers are more toxic than average". I mean that the toxicity that gamers exhibit is a specific breed of toxicity. It shares elements of other subcultures, but is ultimately a unique form of toxicity / hostility / shittiness. And even if gamers were less toxic than average, it's still an issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not sure why we should tolerate any amount of toxicity if we're going to treat "gamer" like an identity label / community.
I don't tolerate it. I doubt Shamus tolerates it. What else are we supposed to do? Just because I happen to play video games doesn't make me responsible for other people who happen to play video games. Just pick any other hobby you have and try to apply the same logic. Sports is a great example because of how dangerous some sports fans' subcultures can be. If you like football and you personally don't tolerate football fans around you acting like shitheads, that's pretty much all you can do.
I mean, if those football fans made a video explaining how those people are outliers and it shouldn't count, (after all, all hobbies have toxic elements, just look at gamers) I don't think it would be well received.
@@FinetalPies There's no need for them to make such a video because they're isn't a massive push by the football media to paint all football fans as evil toxic misogynistic racist Nazis. So far as I know, gaming is the ONLY subculture whose journalists are hellbent on vilifying the people participating in that subculture. You would never, EVER see eight simultaneous articles from football journalist saying "football fans are evil and shouldn't be football's audience anymore.
Great video and excellent points. I would like to point out that you could replace the word gamers with gun owners and the video could remain the same. A handful of bad eggs taint the entire image of who gun owners are. This causes a general mistrust that forces ignorant politicians to enact laws they don't understand and won't fix the "problem".
Thing is most mass shooters aren't even law-abiding gun owners. They steal, or get their weapons from the black market. The "right-wing gun nuts" that leftists are so afraid of commit almost no murders. In fact, of all murderers that are registered with a political party, a majority are Democrats.
I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember. My first game was garbage Olympic sports game on my dad’s C64. I’ve had an NES, Genesis, CD-X, PS, X- Box, 360, X-bone, and PS4. I don’t describe myself as a “gamer” because in the current zeitgeist that term has come to mean a specific subset of people who share my hobby, but use it to define themselves in a way that lends itself to gross gatekeeping behaviors ranging from harassment to bickering over difficulty settings. Those are the people who drove your mate out. To ignore the linguistic shift doesn’t mean that it isn’t a thing that’s happened. Your good faith interpretation of a subset of people who like games plays into the hands of the bad faith actors who have (for the worse) co-opted the term “gamer”. And I’m happy to let them have it because my personality is about more that a particular type of media that I consume.
I think the argument that gamers are toxic stems form the fact if your immersed in a game chances are you'll be more "toxic" then in real life. A lot of people reading this have probably killed hookers and stolen cars in GTA but would never think of doing the same in the real world.
This use of the word exists only to muddy the waters. The same way chinese bundle together fare dodgers with political dissenters as "untrustworthy", and punish even those who would associate with them. I'd hoped you'd go deeper into the meaning and utility of the word, instead of placating those who refuse to speak clearly. Only a dullard or a liar needs an umbrella term for a teabagger and a swatter.
I feel like if the title was something more neutral like "gamers and toxicity" (just as an example) your message would reach others more easily. Right now I think most of us who clicked agreed before you spoke, and this is a rather fresh angle to this old conversation.
God I love this video, it's great how you really laid out everything regardless of political opinion. Lets fucking go, stop the fucking doxxing etc and let everyone just play fucking games damnit
Just stumbled into your channel and recognised your name but couldn't place it, which usually would mean another youtuber has spent some time detailing how all your takes are terrible - but it turns out it wasn't that at all, and I'd recognised your name from reading DM Of The Rings, and also Darths & Droids mentioned you a lot. A happy outcome!
That was an amazingly well worded video. Thank you for clearly framing the core issue surrounding this argument. You're absolutely right, it's people using the same words to describe different things resulting in a breakdown of communication.
Calling someone 'toxic' is just an inarticulate way of dehumanizing them. I mean, theoretically, if someone is toxic, you'd want them eliminated, right? All it would take is to designate them as such and to rile people up and we're off to repeating the worst aspects of history.
Fantastic video, I really like your breakdown of definitions (i.e. what they mean, hear, etc). I have actually found using similar methods in debates/conversations (asking someone to define the context/meaning behind their statements) to be a really useful tool.
When i hear toxic it usually means people that go out of their way to be assholes and ruin gaming for others, by doing things like: excessively trolling, griefing, spawn killing, killing you 50+ times for no reason in an open world game, team killing, and in general behaving like an elitist
I've learned to expect crass and dismissive gatekeeping and rationalizations from headlines like this, and I want you to know how pleasantly surprised I am that this video is nothing of the sort. I wish other people understood this like you do: it's not hard to admit, "It's wrong to threaten to murder someone over a review."
Gotta stop here at 3.23. Its not anyone's job to mindread. To state gamers are toxic is very clearly saying people who game are toxic. A reasonable listener may adjust to hear that in general gamers are toxic and respond in the same language: no they arent. Because guess what, people who play games in general are not toxic. End of story. Anything else beyond this is either stupidity or trolling on the part of the acuser. Ignorant people and trolls shouldnt be given attention its an uphill battle. All this doublespeak nonsense is ridiculous, what happened to being able to properly communicate your thoughts and your needs? Should we devolve into crying when we are upset like when we were babies?
