I know this is human nature and this is nothing new. It’s absolutely impossible to make something that everyone is happy with, but what’s the need to be so destructive?
I recently finished The Callisto Protocol and in my opinion it’s a great game but I remember people saying that “The game was so bad that they (Krafton) had to give it away (PS Plus) for someone to play it”.
Oddly enough I probably like to contradict most people because another game I’m interested in playing is Immortals of Aveum and when I read one or another review people say that “It’s just another generic dead game, like those generic trash Netflix series”, I mean, is it really necessary to be so destructive? And I want to clarify, I don’t give a shit what people say, if I like a game and I enjoy it I don’t mind paying full price for it, and if I don’t like it, I just don’t do destructive reviews.
What I least understand about the gaming community and what I find most toxic is when they criticize others for playing something they like, like the phenomenon of criticizing Genshin Impact players or in the past the same with Minecraft. Do I commit a sin by playing something I like?
Gaming culture is more toxic. It’s because of GamerGate.
GamerGate was an online harassment campaign, conspiracy theory, and lie that the entire gaming industry was trying to ruin games by pandering to “SJWs”. Women, queer people, minorities, and the disabled were being shoehorned into games as “forced diversity” in order to brainwash gamers into leftest politics. Worst of all, white cis hetero men were being forced out of the gaming space that always belonged to them.
Obviously, the solution to this dastardly plot was to dox, harass, and swat people declared, on the flimsiest evidence, to be behind this plot. Anyway, this was very successful and the tactics, bigotry, and mentality has so infiltrated online gaming spaces, most of the people being toxic today learned that behavior second or third hand from those who actually participated in Gamergate.
IDK if this was coordinated, or spontaneous, but the “alt-right” was very active a this time trying to meme Trump into the white house. Even skeptic spaces that are left wing about almost everything else became cesspits of Islamophobia.
Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t mean they’re toxic, but for whatever reason people take differences in tastes or opinion as personal attacks and discussions often turn toxic.
I think part of it is a lot of discussions on games are between literal children or man-children who don’t have a lot of emotional maturity yet, and so it leads to a lot a fanboyism and flame wars.
I’d love to give you my opinion on Callisto protocol but my back log is so big I might never get to it.
You see it across all kinds of media; whether it’s a song you like, or a game, or a film, or a TV show… If you dare to say online you’re a fan, someone will swiftly be along to inform you that your opinion is wrong, your show is bad, your taste is bad, and you should feel bad
I’ve started to give way less of a fuck about comments like that. Some people are very sad / small, and can only make themselves feel less so for a brief moment by trying to ruin the enjoyment of others. It’s OK not to like things, there’s plenty of things I don’t like 😁 but it’s fine to me if other people like those things, different strokes for different folks.
Fat incel 40+ yo basement dwellers are unlikely to be positive people.
This is the real answer. A lot of heavy gamers are losers and are mad about spending their entire lives at the bottom of the hierarchy.
That’s a weird way to say undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, and put the blame squarely on the person struggling with it.
Right, of course, somehow I forgot that everything is a disease now and nobody is ever responsible for their decisions. I appreciate the correction!
As an add-on to OP, is it just my confirmation bias or are competitive games a trove for alt-righters? Never seen so many Trump supporters except in CSGO and rocket league…
Celeste speedruns are fairly competitive from my understanding. I have not watched the top players, but in general the Celeste community seems pretty good from the little indirect interactions I’ve had with them. But it’s solo play and leader boards, not real-time matches (although those probably exist too, but you still don’t interact with the other players).
Curious if that direct combativeness is part of difference. Of course another important difference is the Celeste community is fairly unique given its trans game status. But I don’t think that’s necessary to build a good community: smw kaizo isn’t inherently trans, but the community decided years ago that it wasn’t going to tolerate transphobia, for example. But its extremely non-competitive imo.
Celeste isn’t the best example because it was made by a trans person. The story is literally about the dev overcoming their own internal issues with, and accepting, who they are. By default, most alt-righters aren’t going to touch that game.
Good game by the way. Would recommend.
The SMW kaizo community has several prominent trans contributors and notable members (Shoujo and shovda being probably two of the more public ones, both participating in the relay race at SGDQ 2022, which also had at least two trans creators). I’d include Maddy among the notable member, but that’s a relatively recent thing with her release of Super Sonic Saves the World World and Sure Shot (a level of which was in the SGDQ race and was co-created with another amazing member of the community). Unfortunately it wasn’t always that way apparently (the SGDQ 2019 relay race did include someone who was later shunned by the community for platforming transphobes apparently).
Also, the kaizo community and Celeste community have a lot of overlap given they’re both tough platforming games for lots of community-made content.
Its also just small enough that everyone can know most other people who are part of it.
They’re probably some of the more vocal ones, so get noticed most.
If someone is off playing Candy Crush, they’re usually not waiting and chatting in a multilayer lobby, so you don’t notice them. Same for the people who only use game chat as necessarily, rather than for average conversations.