What a pathetic place we've come to. Glad I don't game anymore. We are so obsessed with "protecting" people that we've arrived full stop at games we don't own, and servers we don't control.
Hats off to the AAA's. They won the war.
Because if you did so, then you'd find that handing over all control to multinational conglomerates has been a decided net improvement.
The only problem is toxicity and hate can still be found in real-life pubs and other establishments. Sure, much social interaction has moved online, where it can be sanitized by benevolent corporations, but not all. However, I am confident that as corporate chains replace locally-ran establishments, voice monitoring and a consistently enforced set of rules will stamp it out there as well, holding their patrons accountable for their words.
I get called gay/fag in games often (I'm queer and got a slight gay lisp), but it's not really bothering me. I'm much more bothered by disruptive gaming than bad coms. I can ignore bad coms by muting them.
Honestly, people need to toughen up; letting the lowest hanging fruit (ie slurs) get to them are equally weak-minded as people trying to wield them for offence. I mean, it just gaming shit talking at the end of the day? They'll probably forget about each other by the time the next match ends.
Disrupting/throwing/sabotaging a game is just... Defeating the purpose of a game, no? If they're not going to play, why be there? Better they go do a crossword puzzle, or something.
Profit-driven corporations "stamping out" any speech that's bad for business? You want this? You want voice monitoring everywhere because someone somewhere might be hateful at some point?
I don't think you have thought beyond the short-term on this one. It starts out, just like in corporations and other places in life, as a good thing. Get the racists out, get the sexists out, whatever. You could even argue $PLACE is better because of it. I think most people would.
The problem is that this isn't the community pushing people out. Meaning, the offender could clean up their act, go somewhere else, and start "fresh". The community can dispense a measured amount of justice (banning from a server/pub/etc) without irreparably damaging someone's life/money/fun. Maybe you just had a really shit day, or you're upset in general about something, and lose your cool online. Now you're banned from a game/pub/etc because The Rules (TM) prescribe a severe punishment for such an infraction. Community enforcement is local and corporation enforcement is global. There is a stark difference.
With a "benevolent" corporation policing speech you end up getting a chilling effect everywhere. It goes from just banning the bad guys to criticism of the company, the political party, the $X is now policed. Suddenly, no one wants to talk anymore. That is, unless they're all smiles for the camera. There are a few games I know of where the mods are so happy to ban people (for even criticizing the company or telling people not to play) that NO ONE talks. They form their own discords for their friends and that's it. Wow, how fun! People like me who have no interest in throwing around slurs anywhere will just go somewhere else. When people are suddenly saccharin due to fear it's even less fun than when someone is throwing a hissy-fit.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, certainly. Private establishments can police them how they want. That doesnt mean it's a good or that we should ignore a trend.
It was really nice when the game developer took action to get rid of that. I'm not sure I understand your view that this is a bad thing. There are still games with player run servers that can manage things on their own, but some games, like pubg, can't function that way.
Are you just an awful person that is mad you don't get to be awful any more?
Since you're being snarky and completely missed my point I'll join you. Are you fundamentally incapable of using a mute button?
Would you rather have no pimples, or get constant pimples and have to apply cream to heal them?
Would you rather encounter no people yelling racial slurs, or encounter it every time you game and have to endless mute offenders?
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I used to play League of Legends and enjoyed the social aspects of unranked play; it would be fun to meet people that would show me things about the world or vice versa, but there was the awful problem that it could take forever to queue because they'd often be people who insisted on playing one particular lane. I learned to jungle early on and to be flexible about roles so I'd be part of the solution instead of the problem.
When I got into ranked though it was just awful, people were always blaming me for the team not winning and for any real or imagined screw-up. I liked to play Sona who is mainly a healer but can sometimes trash the players on the other team really good. If I was being successful at this I'd get bitched out by my bottom because I was depriving them of XP that would help their character scale but, from the viewpoint of the team, if their bottom and support are getting trashed, they're getting trashed. If I was playing well people would bitch me out, if I was playing poorly people bitched me out.
I liked the idea of "finding my level" in ranked but I went back to unranked because I couldn't handle the negativity in ranked.
Eventually I got sick of a game that committed me to 30-50 minutes of paying attention to it and it would be unfair to to other players to bail out because my wife or my son or horse lessoners or the neighbors or someone on the phone needed my attention. But seriously, if you could adjust the dynamics of a game to cultivate positive social interactions that would be a very good thing.
You can't force people to be nice to you. Seeking to control other people is a pointless endeavor. Your problem is completely caused by a company handling censorship and not having community owned servers where bans are handed down near instantaneously. Further, in the defense of the person insulting you, they shouldn't be prevented from playing the game for being a jackass in chat. Chat ban? Sure. Full ban? I wonder how far you could take that in civil court to get your money back.
> Eventually I got sick of a game that committed me to 30-50 minutes of paying attention
This is your actual problem you just may not realize it. When someone is committing 50 minutes of their life to a stupid video game minor infractions like being a new player suddenly become a real problem. You are dragging down the team and you are ruining their experience. That's not your fault, really. Everyone starts out new and it sucks. It's also not their fault for being mean to you for legitimately ruining their game. It's a lot of time spent just to lose everything because one person doesn't know how to play. People aren't in the mindset of "help the noob" when an hours worth of progress gets flushed down the toilet for doing so. Call it the bystander effect, or whatever.
Riot would be better off making servers for more casual play. Most of the so-called "toxic" behavior I have seen in new games is because of long matches, wins and losses being strictly tied to progress, etc. The competitive aspect makes the game worse for everyone who doesn't want to compete.
It is 100% their fault. Whatever circumstances befall someone, it doesn't give them the right to act toxically and insult and degrade others. There's a difference between being angry (an emotion), and channeling that anger into a negative interaction. They're perfectly capable of controlling themselves and not throwing a tantrum like a child.
It's not about helping out the noob, it's about being civil.
even for your complaints about PUBG, i've played a hundred games of PUBG and others where nothing like that ever happened, and when it did we just mute the guy and move on. acually the majority of games i played with mic'd teammates we used it to coordinate and play better as a team.