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Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

At first I found it frustrtating, but I've grown to really appreciate Nintendo's approach to this problem. Their multiplayer games (like Splatoon) have no in-game chat or VOIP.

It definitely makes it harder to make friends in the games, but it also completely eliminates any and all potential for toxicity and other miscreant behavior. As a result, I'd have no problem letting my hypothetical children play these games online even at a young age.

This solution is obviously untenable for a cooperative and creative game like Minecraft, so it seems Microsoft is stuck in a real hard place here.

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no in-game chat or VOIP.

Have people found creative ways to communicate, or solicit/"bootstrap" further communications?

If you can send someone a bit, you have enough to send them your endpoint at another service to communicate. In a multiplayer game, where presumably you can see the decisions of other players, the prerequisites are met.

(I am by no means a gamer, but have witnessed how creative young humans can be at defeating the restraints imposed upon them --- and also how they can quickly learn such things from others.)

> Have people found creative ways to communicate, or solicit/"bootstrap" further communications?

Not so much bootstrap other communications... but I remember how many penis emblems I encountered on Mario Kart DS despite Nintendo banning them very rapidly.

Nintendo hasn't done a draw-your-own-emblem since, I don't think.

For stuff like this, I honestly wonder why it would be so bad for kids to see badly drawn penises painted on virtual racing cars. Statistically, half of them could just look into a mirror ...

People were able to set custom avatars with CFW Switches at some point, that was fun as these avatars also showed up in online games.

>Have people found creative ways to communicate, or solicit/"bootstrap" further communications?

In Splatoon you can "post" [1] which displays this image above your character in the lobby and the main hub of the game. Most of the time people will draw using the in-game interface and the touch screen/buttons on the switch, other times people use a well known exploit to recreate images from your computer in the game using a specific type of controller [2].

After the post is created, it typically gets published to some social media account you have linked to your Nintendo account.

These posts are usually jokes, memes, or some silly throwaway pop culture line or reference but more often than not you see individuals promoting their own discord servers, twitter accounts, twitch accounts, and other social media platforms. Unfortunately you also get a few individuals who will post about LGBT related stuff, often with a sexual angle to it. No issues posting that on Twitter but I feel it's inappropriate for what is essentially a game for children.

The good news is you can report these posts to Nintendo, the bad news is I have no idea if they are moderated or not.

[1] https://thenerdstash.com/how-to-draw-art-posts-in-splatoon-3...

[2] https://github.com/WyseNynja/Splatoon-2-Drawing/blob/master/...

It removes any and all reason to play online. Might as well play bots.

Rocket League has an option called quick-chat. It's only canned messages. And in QC mode you only see or reply QC messages. Make being real toxic difficult.

What a save!

It’s amazing how from the launch of the game that quick chat has pretty much only been used sarcastically.

Yes. However, you see it's limited. Can't use the "bad" words.

But intent matters far more than the actual words used.

Somebody that's tilted is going to be annoyed by a message that's mocking them regardless how innocuous the words are in the message.

TheCrew2 uses emoticons as a quick chat options, and some canned messages. Overall it’s a positive for games that attract trolls.

Dota 2 uses a very similar system (in parallel with several other ways to communicate). It works really well: "chat wheel" communication is significantly more efficient than typing, or even talking, and always on-topic. There are a lot of games where I'll immediately ignore/mute all players' text- and voice-capabilities and solely leave canned chat wheel pings for communication.

Right, and then you die and the guy who has it out for you immediately goes like

> Well played!

(There is a mandatory delay after sending two canned messages.)

In Magic the Gathering: Arena, player chat messages are limited to 5 predefined words. Of those five words, the only one that isn't considered toxic is "Hello". It turns out that banning words doesn't stop people being awful.

Interestingly, there was a period of time where spamming "Hello" in Hearthstone (using a very similar system) was considered particularly toxic, especially while running out your timer every turn.

Souls games have a templated message system, but nature finds a way ("try finger but hole", etc.).

You can still play with your friends and communicate over a side channel.

This is only true if the only value you see in playing video games online comes from talking to other people.

Some of us play video games online for the competition, and because human opponents are much more unpredictable and fun than programmed bots.

You've got it backwards. The value I see in other people is talking and communicating. I have zero doubt that a sufficiently advanced bot would pass a video-game opponent turing test long before the original turing test.

In League of Legends you can disable chat and still kinda strategize with your team using minimap pings. You can still communicate, but limited to bare essentials.

Are pings rate limited?

If you abuse pings too fast, you will get stopped after five seconds (which still allows for a good 20 pings to be sent, that all make sound and bleep on your minimap). But otherwise, you can just stay and do it slowly, and there's no limits.

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