Is the Gaming Community Toxic?
Note: I'm not asking if every single gamer is, I'm asking if the community as a whole tends to be. This means that vocal minorities are indeed relevant.
Yes, because...
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No, because...
Side Score: 10
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It exists solely so you can crush complete strangers, and it allows you to remain virtually anonymous while you do it, which combined results in extreme @hole behaviors. There is no such thing as sportsmanship. There is no such thing as consequences for your behavior, other than winning or losing. And if you lose you can just try to be an @hole to the next sucker instead. Yes, it is toxic. Side: Yes, because...
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But the majority of video games are single player (so not crushing others), yet toxicity between players and developers still flourishes. So I don't think you can chalk it all up to competition sans sportsmanship. As for the anonymity, a lack of anonymity on FaceBook still leads to toxic behavior, and anonymity on debate and news websites rarely leads to the level of toxicity that I am referring to. A good example: One of my old favorites when I was younger were the Baldurs Gate games. A developer (with some of the members of the old team) recently released a new version, and within that game, a non-player character was included who was not integral to the story line, nor prominently displayed. If the player chose to talk to this character, they'd greet you with their name, and give you a series of options of how to proceed with the conversation. One of the options was to ask about how unique their name was, which led them to tell you that they are basically transgendered. The inclusion of this transgendered character led to a massive PR backlash against the developer, to the point where the overwhelming majority of the reviews on Steam, the largest digital video game retail service (in case you aren't familiar with it) were negative, decrying "Feminazis", "SJWs", "social activist propaganda", etc. All because of a total of 5 lines of text from one side character that most players wouldn't end up finding in the first place. I use this example because even though it was a vocal minority, it was substantial enough within the community to drastically effect the sales of the product in a meaningful and negative way. This wasn't really because they were anonymous, or because of any competition going on, however. Side: No, because...
I just read about that, and it's a total shame that some people are so wound up in this nonsense that they can't just play the game, or stop playing the game, and they have to go at the person that added that characters back story. For the most part, NORMAL people don't care. But if you have a few people who are so freaking insane that they go after a real life person because of some pixels in a game.....well they have deep seeded issues that a therapist needs to sort out with them. Side: No, because...
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I am personally not in that world called Gaming if however after reading posts posted here is focusing on behavior by communities called Gaming community I would personally believe that gaming may be a contributing factor to the toxicity of how people relate to one another in or out of a Gaming community. It seems to me our desire as Americans to be free to do whatever we choose has led to a further moral decline in America. As it has been in the past so it is today (The Issue Is All about Me) The Ugly American Paperback – January 17, 1999 by Eugene Burdick (Author), William J. Lederer (Author) Today in society I have seen on the Internet where there are some men that have no problem slugging a woman the same as they would a man while they're in a diner, on the bus. Young ladies are engaging in fisticuffs no different than the men. Young teens are skateboarding over other people's property without a care in the world. Car drivers driving around now with concealed weapons, bats in their cars either looking for a fight or preparing to shell out some hostility. It just seems to me this is the sort of society we have chosen to embrace now for those of us who are old enough to see that this is a toxic environment just imagine what the next generation is going to be like once we get a little older. Side: Yes, because...
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I am not quite sure what you mean by your question. That is to say, whether you or inquiring about the effect on the gamer's mind from playing constant violent video games, or if you're speaking of the dynamics of the gamer social community among society. As a community? Meh, not that I have noticed. But then again I don't really see a gamer community per se around my personal environs. I have several friends who are gamers, of course, but I surely don't notice any sort of toxic cabal that they help comprise. Are you talking about a toxic community that, what? Acts obnoxious? Like, say, the skaterboi thing? Or CrossFit megalomaniacs? Again, not sure here what you mean. Now then....I DO believe that continual or obsessive playing of violent video games has a deleterious affect on young people. I DO think it somewhat "cheapens" the whole notion of life and of killing. I DO think that if a kid is already mentally unstable that persistent gaming where he relished killing hundreds of peoples on a daily basis can augment his mental imbalance. NOt of course for all kids. Normal well balanced kids by and large suffer no significant ill effects. It's like the whole death metal music thing and that Suicide Solution case on the Ozzy song many years ago. If a kid plays that song over and over and becomes obsessed that it is pretty safe to say that he was suffering from psych issues all along. Thus, the relationship is a corollary and not causal one. This mistake is made very very often in analyzing surveys and stats: confusing those two factors: corollary or causal. But I know enough about how the homo sapien mind works to know that you cannot indulge in, say, 30 hours a week of violent video gaming without having those games impart some new ways of thinking, and in turn affecting how your brain reacts--how the particular neurons fire--when you are exposed to real violence afterwards. There IS a sort of desensitizing going on here. Proof of this is in the fact that video games are used in treatment of some mental illnesses nowadays. And this usage has been shown to be beneficial in a significant number of cases. SS for the record, I have never been into video games. Not one iota. I prefer physical activity. The only games I ever did indulge in were some of those old arcade type games in bars, like Gattaca (sp?) and Pong and maybe pacman once or twice. As a combat veteran I have always felt the war games to be quite silly, and the province of posers or little kids. a 40 year old playing Tour of Duty or whatever the hell that popular game is (I truly am not sure) I think it's laughable. Sorry, but that's my opinion. ss Side: No, because...
I play multiple MMORPG's and the like and for the most part people tend to be pretty descent. It also completely depends on the game. Playing Ark Survival leads me to believe that we will become a society like Mad Max more than a society like Star Trek simply due to the amount of griefers and zero consequences for bad actions, not to mention the anonymity. But then you have some games like Guild Wars 2 where 98% of the people I've come across have been nothing but nice, fun and strange...but strange in a good way. I think it's really going to depend on the game, the area you are in and the community you are a part of. Side: No, because...
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