Comment by Nexxxeh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nexxxeh | Hacker News Reader

Really interesting read. I appreciate that it highlights the problems with the data and doesn't reach ridiculous conclusions based on junk data.

Anecdotally I've found a noticeable improvement since Endorsements, which this data missed.

Also the rise of Fortnite and more recently Apex Legends has led to a further decrease in toxicity that I've seen. A lot of toxic kids left for BR pastures.

That's on PC in the EU region on a high-silver current, low-gold peak SR account, casual QP-heavy play but some comp, pure flexing (as I prefer to fill rather than focus on maining one or two characters. Maining is arguably the best way to climb out to Plat).

I'm an almost ridiculously positive player with a gender neutral name and I've found being overtly positive vastly improves the experience.

It does prompt a couple of toxic responses ("kys", "fuck off" etc) but the majority is really positive. (I generally just report any toxicity.)

Playing without voice in Comp is sub-optimal, as winning is much easier with some kind of synergy. Even a basic PharMercy combo, or ultimate combos like a EMP+DVa Bomb can be highly effective.

I normally Solo Q, but playing paired with a friend in QP yesterday I had a surreal experience. One player on the enemy team insulted my friend (sexual but not specifically-gendered insult). She was playing with a non-gendered name, as Moira, and the toxic enemy player complained she was carrying us.

All the players on both teams turned on the toxic player, calling them out and highlighting why they were actually losing. I have not seen anything like it before but it was hilarious.

Stay As A Team is great in theory, but a team of 6 randomised will get rekt by a pre-made 6 stack on Discord with each other, and the matchmaker doesn't seem to take that into account.

I wonder what region author was playing on?

Overwatch remains one of the most toxic games I've ever played. I've put well over 1,000 hours into that game but haven't played for about 9 months now, and honestly its a breath of fresh air (to not deal with it anymore). There's something about the rank structure of the game (and others I've heard about like LoL and Dota) that encourages beratement.

Apex Legends conversely has been amazing in comparison. Maybe its because its new, the tagging system, that its a free game, or that there is no ranked structure (yet), but I've met nothing but cheery people and the occasional crude drunk. I've played with a couple shy women, but (anecdotally) have seen not one iota of what i've seen in Overwatch (aside from crude usernames that are prevalent everywhere).

>that its a free game

Wait... Shouldn't it be the opposite? Paying for the game should make you more reticent to being an ass because losing access to it means you've lost money.

Optimistically I believe humanity is generally good such that if you get a massive number of users the good overwhelms the bad. Contrast this with Overwatch who (IMO) has a shrinking userbase of increasingly hardcore/invested players, and the worst tends to shine through.

I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers or if this is anecdata.

> I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers

I can't prove this scientifically, but yes absolutely of course "hard core" gamers are more likely than casuals to be raging toxic asshats in any kind of competitive environment.

When I used to play games more the open source/free ones always had pretty decent communities and behavior, though it might have been an instance of finding servers that managed things appropriately and then ignoring the rest.

I believe men's cognitive biases predispose them to seeing the fact they've spent money as justifying some sort of entitlement. To such people, getting justice for perceived slights is worth burning everything down around them. If someone undeserving is on their team, they would rather lose than see that person win, like crabs in a bucket.

I have even seen people admit to doing this. That's why you can't appeal to reason by explaining that their behavior is contributing to the loss. Once someone begins to rage, they have already decided that justice is more important than victory.

When I played overwatch in a casual way a few years ago (never ranked) I definitely rarely encountered any sort of toxicity. It was much better than dota for sure.

Dota has gotten better as a game as years gone by.

This is something I've observed in general. If an old game is still being played, the community is generally good. I'm not sure if it's the removal of people chasing newer stuff, or perhaps because the remaining people playing are doing so because of friends they made.

>Dota has gotten better as a game as years gone by.

Not from my experience. I quit Dota around 2016 because the community was becoming too toxic. I think MMR ranking system they introduced was a big factor. For me the sweet spot was 2013 to 2014, the game felt a lot more fun and casual.

I was never much good at the game but I used to play a lot 3 hours+ a night every night for almost 4 years. I calibrated at 2k MMR when they introduced the system (which is very low) and over two years slowly grinded my rating to about 3.8k at peak. I found that higher I climbed worse the attitudes of people I was playing with became.

It got to the point where I was deliberately avoiding solo queue and only queuing in party with friends until I started logging in less and less and just stopped all together - one day I was sitting at my PC about to log in and just kind of had this epiphany 'Dota isn't fun anymore, why am I logging into this game where I know people are going to insult and belittle me.' I haven't played since. I still have a lot of good memories of early years of Dota but I kind of look at it with horror about what that community morphed into.

It's likely because there is no ranking structure. DotA 2 used to have nicer community, until rankings were implemented, at which point the number of people who explode at the slightest error very noticeably blew up. Once you add in rankings, not only do people get mad at any possible chance of losing rank points in ranked mode, unranked mode becomes seen as a playground where a certain contingency of people think it's okay not to try at all. As a result the game deteriorates in quality no matter which path you pick.

>DotA 2 used to have nicer community, until rankings were implemented, at which point the number of people who explode at the slightest error very noticeably blew up.

I disagree with the point that dota 2 had a nicer community. The game grew out of Dota 1 and many of the attitudes from that game carried over. It was standard practice for new players to be called noobs. Then there's the infamous "Welcome to dota. You suck."

Can't say I agree. I played Dota 2 during the earlier part of the beta, a little after the first International. I also played a good deal of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. At that invite-only stage it was almost certainly nowhere near as bad as either of those games by a fair margin. Players were in fact reasonably friendly and helpful oftentimes, where in the same situation HoN players would be non stop berating you and calling for a surrender at 20 (the classic action RTS experience). And while I slowly noticed more angry players over time, it never fully deteriorated to that HoN level until after rankings were introduced.

What part of "Welcome to DotA, you suck" is toxic? Its a funny quip that accentuates the difficulty of DotA for new players, or even moba players that are new to DotA. Understanding you are bad at the game is the first step to getting better.

>Overwatch remains one of the most toxic games I've ever played.

Try solo queue comp CS:GO. CYKA BLYAT, IDI NAHUI PIZDEC.

Off-topic, but how's cheating on CS:GO?

I wasn't a particularly good player, but as a 1.6 enthusiast, and a CS:S addict (on a brutally admin'd clan server), the rampant cheating in CS:GO was game-ruining for me.

I don't mind eating lead from a skilled player, but cheating just sucks the fun out.

Agreed on Apex Legends, which now that I think about it seems kind of odd. I think a game that builds tension like that, where games can last 20-30mins, where a teammates mistakes can easily cost you the game, is asking for toxicity, but I don't recall any at all in the ~20ish hours I've played so far. And that's with a lot of mic usage (both me and other players).

Because it's a new game and people haven't "figured out how to play" yet.

My first game of AL was great, and I was paired with a talkative and helpful teammate and one silent but cooperative one. After that it ranged between silence (Comms and text) to outright hostile. I like the tagging system and appreciate not everyone can voice Comms, but everyone can type hi. I went back to OW.

Not to say OW is without problems, obviously. Not related to OP is throwing and smurfing. I was in a Stay As Team group that got dumped into a large group of smurfs. They let us cap and win and didn't even contest, but would occasionally just mess with us to show off their mechanical skill. Most of them could have 1v6'd us. Most of our team reported them, but it was just really disappointing.

OW definitely has problems, I just find them less than other games.

What region were you playing in, and have you tried others? I get that ping might be an issue, speed of light being uncooperative and all, but I'd be curious to know your experience based on region and what times you play.

> I wonder what region author was playing on?

I think it's North America.

Every time I see a feminine name in a videogame I think the person is just fishing for attention. This is important because most players of both genders use neutral-looking names. The study doesn't account for this.

Honestly, I don't really see such behavior directed towards male names though. Stuff like LucasJones or MikeAtLarge or LordOfKilling doesn't get the same attention that SuzieHealsU or CuteLamb or PrincessHurtful might. If it was equal, I'd expect 'MrKickass' to be questioned and assumed to be grabbing attntion that 'MsKilljoy' gets... but in my experience this distinctly isn't the case.

I agree with you on this. What I meant to say is that people who use gendered names are going out of their way to show what their gender is; an overwhelming amount of people use completely neutral names. This is, regardless of the treatment you receive because of your gender.

I also am saying that I don't believe male gendered names get nearly the same attention as female gendered names. 'PrinceJake' doesn't get the same derision as 'PrincessEla' which is what the study is trying to explore.

This isn't true, because if you receive harassment for having a "feminine" name, but no harassment for a "masculine" name, then when you go create a new account for a new game, you might be discouraged from using the feminine name.

You really need to consider how to account for experimental variables that affect each other.

This isn't true in my experience, because in that case there would be many more players with masculine names than with feminine names, which is not the case; I'd say the amounts are similar, with an overwhelming majority of neutral names.

Important: this coming from my background, which is WoW, and not any of these modern games and communities. Maybe things have changed? The average WoW player is definitely older than the average Fortnite/OW/whatever player.

I have no idea what you consider a "neutral" name, but I'd caution you that if you only work based on your own personal perception instead of talking to others, then you are not going to see your own biased perceptions.

Certainly women play video games, and one only needs to talk to them and ask them why they choose one name over another to quickly accumulate first hand stories. If you do this with people you know in real life, you may find some clues as to what you aren't seeing first hand.

Edit: and, for what it's worth, you may forget that WoW has some unique rules on names compared to other games. No idea how that may affect things.

I don't know anyone in real life. I only know people online, from video gaming[0] or computery[1] circles; and, to me, male friends are like four-leaf clovers, but female friends are like unicorns.

No idea how that may affect things.

0: https://imgur.com/a/ICk20

1: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=61048

You're essentially making the case for GOTIS (Girl on the Internet Syndrome).

While the GOTIS principle is something that many female players actively apply (they try not to signal that they're female to avoid attention), it's a tragic thing to operate on or defend.

The only reason it's salient is because most users of a community are male, which is self-reinforcing. Female outliers get naturally highlighted in a highly male context, and, whether or not they use this to their advantage, they'll suffer its downsides. It's tragic that they should have to and that we're still so sexually partitioned, culturally.

The thing you are saying doesn't even make sense as a criticism of the study. You are complaining about something the study didn't even try to measure (the "why"). The study only tried to measure if there was a difference at all, and whether it was measurable.

As a side note, I recommend meditating on why seeing a female name on the internet upsets you, when you should be well aware that 50% of human beings are female. If players didn't get upset and force females to play under male/neutral names, maybe it wouldn't be as shocking to notice when they don't.

> This is important because most players of both genders use neutral-looking names. The study doesn't account for this.

Is this true broadly? I'd be curious to know if there's any data on that besides for anecdotal evidence.

also, a "neutral-looking" name can be really subjective, I would guess that there's a lot of player names that use adjectives that might be inadvertently related to a particular gender based on the cultural context.

I'd be curious to know what the names are in this case.

Why should a gendered name invite more attention in any way? People are often given gendered names at birth, after all.

The game is gender agnostic. Dragging your personal identity into a game is a factor. JulieSmiles, Dankweedgamer666, and BeatlesFan1974 are all going to be treated differently.

JulianSmiles gets treated different than JuliaSmiles, though. That's the whole point of this research.

"Dragging your personal identity in" only seems to apply when that identity is different than the assumed default (male), hmmm....

exactly, some biases are showing here.

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