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Toxicity in gaming takes many different forms and can affect people a lot, which is why I personally don’t tolerate it in any of the places I govern or am in.
At the beginning of the year, I created this whole hub post for this big year-long project: I’d write down thoughts on toxicity in the gaming community, do interviews, talk with scientists in the sphere and maybe even highlight possible solutions.
That said, back then, I didn’t realise how busy I’d get with university or how long it would take to find an apartment, so I only now got the chance to dot down some thoughts.
So, before I talk about ways and forms of how toxicity takes place in games, I wanted to talk about what toxicity is, as well as some other more general stuff.
This post is more of an opinion piece, sharing my thoughts, at the current point in time, maybe linking to an article or two. This is my opinion on why toxicity is such a big thing.
I wanna explain why I think it occurs – but I don’t plan on excusing it, by any means.
Rather, I think that by talking about the reasons as to why toxicity occurs or sharing our own experiences on the matter, we can possibly aid others in possibly changing themselves, improving, reforming, and healing in the process.
At least, I try to lead by example and be the best possible “me” in the spaces I frequent and it’d be nice if these posts could make a difference.
Feel free to share your opinions, experiences, thoughts, etc. on the matter, below this post. Would love to hear what others have to say!
I’d argue that “Toxicity” describes actions players in video games take to ruin someone else’s game or day. This includes verbal abuse, non-verbal abuse, harassment, hate speech, threats, as well as griefing, doxing, stalking or even swatting.
A toxic gamer would be someone who doesn’t see an issue with his abusive actions and who frequently abuses, insults, harasses and/or threatens others for a plethora of reasons.
I believe that a lot of toxicity stems from a sense of entitlement as well as a conflict in expectations.
There are many different types of people out there. Some people play video games more casually and just want to have fun whereas others try to play very well or, in the context of online games, need to “win” to have fun.
So, when someone plays to have fun and another person plays to win or rather needs to win to have fun, these people’s expectations can clash. A more casual player can find the seriousness of another person to be ruining their experience. A more hardcore gamer could find the inefficient or unskilled playstyle of a more relaxed approach to gaming frustrating.
Many people get frustrated because of outside factors as well, of course, but I’ve seen it a lot with former friends of mine that they’d do well IRL and then get incredibly frustrated when teammates became a liability to them and their enjoyment – or when enemies did something they deemed unfair or unskilled.
For instance, in MOBAs such as League of Legends or Dota 2, I see people getting upset over “camping”. When a second person keeps coming to the solo lane, turning a 1v1 into a 2v1 situation. In a team game, this is totally valid as a strategy and yet some people are tunnelling on this prospect of beating a person one on one.
Other times, some people get frustrated with teammates who are losing and who keep dying over and over. These people are a liability to them and because of that, they feel frustrated and see bad play as active sabotage.
And well, there are always cases of main character syndrome, too, where some people only find joy in games when they are the person that makes a difference – the trump card of the team, so to speak.
If these people aren’t able to “carry” their team, they often give up. They have to be the main character of their games and if they aren’t, they turn abusive towards others or even sabotage the game even though they’re winning.
Toxicity takes many different forms but I think it’s fair to say that all these forms can be grouped up under “abusive or harmful behaviours”.
To many people in online games, toxicity has become a normal sight.
According to a 2020 survey, 86% of gamers in the US experienced some form of harassment. This is worrying. (The article linked here summarises some of the numbers and talks about it quite well, so maybe give that a read!)
86% is a lot. 68% experienced more severe abuse, including physical threats, stalking and sustained harassment.
That said, a lot of this gets rationalized too much which is in my opinion one of the key contributors to toxic gamer/gaming culture.
By this, I mean that, when a person complains about toxicity, they’re often met with remarks such as “new to gaming?”, “it’s normal” or “Why do you play those games if you don’t like it?” – essentially normalizing the toxic element of gaming culture.
At the same time, toxic people will often justify their actions by claiming that others “deserve” it. People spout insults and hate speech by rationalizing the situation to a point where they are the good guys and the other party, the victim of their abuse, are the bad guys.
If you ended up murdering someone, you could probably come up with a lie and convince yourself that you were in the right to do so. You “felt threatened”, “they were a bad person” or you could even dehumanize them with words such as “scum”, “lowlife” or “subhuman”.
In Gaming it’s similar. I’d argue that a lot of toxic people know that it’s not good to be toxic but rather than trying to reduce their toxic behaviours, they rationalize it by finding reasons as to why they were toxic. They defend their actions by claiming that others deserve it or that others won’t learn any other way.
Similarly, many people do experience toxicity themselves and thus believe that their own toxic behaviours are justified because others are toxic themselves.
Kids, for instance, will often not think about the things they say or do. Rather, they see how others insult them and will just replicate it because they learn that it’s apparently accepted to do so.
And in many spaces, rather than muting others or reporting them, people do retaliate – often worse than before. “He started it!” is never a valid excuse, by the way.
There is always the option to walk away, even if it’s hard.
The number of people getting banned from online games, not for cheating or griefing but for verbal abuse, hate speech and toxicity, speaks volumes about the state of gaming.
The fact that toxicity, abuse and harassment are not just accepted as the norm in many cases but often glorified is worrying. The amount of vile insults, slurs, and physical threats uttered by humans is insane.
There are streamers and other content creators out there known for their violent outbursts, temper tantrums, and personas that are flat-out toxicity incarnate.
It’s a business venture that heralds a problematic and horrible side of gaming in the name of “entertainment”, leading more people to rationalize these deeds.
I’ve seen kids imitating content creators and copying toxic traits they’ve shown. More recently, there was a clip of controversial Kick streamer “Sneako” meeting incredibly young fans who would then spout transphobic and sexist phrases.
Big platforms like Twitch and YouTube need to stop the glorification of these behaviours. Twitch already forbids depictions of violent outbursts in their Terms of Service but whether this gets enforced is questionable.
Similarly, developers also need to provide tools to detect, report and deal with cases of toxicity. Most online games nowadays have tools to report others or mute them, but there are still cases where you just have to deal with toxic people or leave the game if you don’t want to deal with it.
And of course, we (as players) need to make use of these tools often.
I’ve played a bit of League of Legends with some friends in the past few weeks, and I made use of reporting tools in nearly every game I’ve played. It is just that common for people to harass, threaten or abuse others.
Rather than engaging with toxicity, we should learn to mute others, not let it affect us too much and find strength in walking away from the situation. This is not supposed to be an attempt to blame victims, btw, but rather an attempt at empowering those who do decide to not let words uttered in a video game bother them.
I know it’s difficult but muting and reporting others is just the way to deal with these situations, in my opinion. It’s easy to fall victim to the toxic mindset in gaming culture but rather than fighting fire with fire, it’s better to set a good example, praising others that play well or are fun to be around, and reporting those that do harm others.
We need to lead by example and with kindness to make a difference in a space so dear to us.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.
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