Things that bug you about the gaming community

[Crouton]

A lot of us here love games, and love gaming, but there's things in every community of people that will get on peoples nerves.

Also this isn't an attack on the general gaming community, all my friends are gamers, I talk to gamers online, I go to huge gaming conventions, live shows etc, and my experiences are 90% positive. I generally love this community of people. But I still think it will be interesting to discuss the parts that we don't like.

Also, in this case I'm talking about the gamers themselves, not issues with the devs or the publishers and or the indie game makers, but just the consumers of this industry (maybe that could be another thread).

1. Sexism. Pretty obvious that this would be one for me, and I don't really need to go into it as everyone knows where these issues lie within the gaming world.

2. PC Master Race. PC Elitists drive me crazy, and this is from someone who does almost half of my own gaming on PC and half on console. To buy a PC that will run all the latest games, and keep it updated enough to keep up with the latest games, you are talking about thousands and thousands of dollars. Not everyone can afford that! High end gaming PC's are expensive! Hell even my PC was extremely expensive and pretty high end when I got it, and now it can't run some of the latest games. Consoles are a cheaper and way more manageable gaming system for many people, so why give people shit for not being able to throw their life savings on a computer?

3. Online behavior. And with that I mean more than just your daily dose of sexism or bad name-calling, the online behaviour of some gamers has gotten so bad that it's hideously embarrassing. Doxxing people you don't like? Swatting people!?. I couldn't even believe it when I first heard that some gamers are sending SWAT teams to the homes of gamers they don't like. I love games but they are GAMES, there is never a reason to do something like doxxing or swatting. And the fact that people ARE doing it is just ridiculous and embarrassing. It's the type of thing that I hope my non-gamer friends and family never find out about since it makes the whole community look bad.

 

[Konshentz]

Yeah, the whole PC master race is silly. I always roll my eyes when I see those type of comments on gaming sites. Same thing with people bitching about which console is better. It's fun to argue about sometimes but some people take it way too seriously. Sure, PCs definitely have their advantages but they also have their disadvantages.

I also agree with online behavior. I play a lot of Call of Duty and some of the things said while playing is pretty disgusting. Lots of kids on there that shouldn't be, and their parents deserve a lot of the blame but I hear just as many adults screaming racist and homophobic things. Like you said, it's just a game. People are going to be better than you, if that causes you to lose your shit, find a different hobby.

I'll have to think of more, but yeah, those are my top two.

 

[Crouton]

I also agree with you on the console wars front. It's fine to talk about which consoles have their negatives and positives, which you like more, which exclusives you prefer etc, but some people take console wars too far and just attack the other console mercilessly.

 

[Stego]

This is a great thread.

I feel like I have better memories of gaming when you were just connected by controller wires, when the person had to be right there next to you. I'm talking Burger Time on NES days. I can remember full conversations had and life events while playing in the same room with friends on GTAIII. Their physical presence was required. If they got pissed off, they weren't able to just disconnect--they had to walk out of the room, see your face at least, or engage you and resolve. In many ways, I think that gaming online brings out both the best and worst in us because of the online disinhibition syndrome.

The thing that personally bothers me most is the tendency for impermanence of community within the gaming community. Great friendships are made but they can happen and then stop so quickly that it discourages bonding or trust. In many ways, the events and live shows are some of the best parts of the community--the actualization and physical manifestation of that temporal and imaginative wonderland of zeros and ones.

Second to that, impatience. When people get impatient playing a game--not waiting up on a raid, not giving someone a chance to heal up, not allowing a turn, not briefing, etc--I lose my mind.

All of my gaming is PC these days but that's just convenience for me because I do a lot with computers to begin with. The PC "Master Racists" are an awful bunch, I agree.

 

[Smelnick]

I tend to do a lot of forum reading about the games I enjoy reading. Mostly now adays, I just join the reddit so I can browse about the games, see neat clips etc. As a result, I see a ton of the community response to games. Unfortunately, the only people who take the time to make posts on reddit or wherever are people who want to complain about the game. Most of the time it's not even legitimate criticism, or legitimate reasons to complain. Something along the lines of 'Wow I died to this gun a couple times, its OP. fix your horrible game! lets all boycott till I do!'. Crap like that.

If I had to judge the game based on the shit people complained about online, you'd think it was a horrible game. Meanwhile I play the same game and never come across the same thing. (For frame of reference, I mostly play multiplayer FPS games lol.)

So yah I hate people who bitch about games instead of offering constructive criticism. Especially if they're just complaining about losing because they think they're so good, so losing must be the games fault.

The other thing I hate is people who don't play the game properly. Just because a game allows you to do something, doesn't mean you should. For example, people who play objective gamemodes in call of duty (capture the flag, domination etc) but then just run around amassing kills instead of going for the objective. They're easy to spot too, at the end of the match, they're the ones with a billion kills, hardly any deaths, and no captures or defends. Sure getting kills is integral to the strategy and map control, but I play to help my team win so I get a win, not to show off my skills.

 

[Major]

I think everything can be lumped together into something called immaturity. I don't know what the largest demographic of gamers is, but male teens are probably the most vocal, and some of the things they say are pretty disgusting. At that age, calling people fags or racial slurs or harassing females makes them look cool in their minds. That's just what most kids that age do. That's how they talk to their peers at school. It's definitely not unique to the gaming community. I can deal with them though. It's not hard to mute them.

What bugs me most about the gaming community, or more specifically online gaming (granted, the only game I've played extensively online is Halo), is cheating, or just the length that people will go to in order to improve their ranks.

 

[Konshentz]

Yeah, you can easily mute them. It just gets a little tiring when every time you get into a lobby you have to mute 75% of the players. And heaven forbid there is a female in the lobby and she speaks. It's chaos. I do notice that a lot of the older offenders seems to speak with a pretty heavy southern accent.

And it seems far worse in COD. I don't play a ton of multiplayer games... but I never had this problem in Last of Us or Evolve or Destiny.

 

[Merc]

Number one for me is the console war shit. I hated listening to all the kids cry about which console was better growing up. Myself and the plenty of other smart people knew it was basically "my mum could only afford one console so I'm going to defend it to the death no matter how stupid it sounds". It was basically the kid version of MSNBC vs. Fox.

Two is cheating. Absolutely bonkers to me, especially in competitive play. Single player? Have fun. But against other players? How is it even fun? Are you that unskilled that you can't be bothered to, you know ... get good? I do love watching them get banned and cry about it, but other than that, I have no qualms with cheaters being banned outright and removed from their game of choice permanently.

A distant third for me is sexism, but not in the sense most people would assume. I can't stand, for the life of me, people that use their gender to further themselves or validate themselves. There are countless cheeto-stained manlets who think there is no such thing as female gamers that aren't fat, hairy, and smelly (projecting much?). I also can't stand the flimsy little Barbies who like to wear low cut shirts and play popular games as a way of fishing for attention from people. There are legitimate female gamers who don't rely on their tits but sadly, you probably couldn't name them. Then come the goddamn white knights, the "nice guy" brigade, a bunch of moist n' meaty chuds who think they can trade politeness for blowjobs like a currency.

OMG IM SUCH A NICE GUY WHY WONT GURLZ SIT ON MY FACE.

I'd be perfectly happy not knowing the gender of anyone I'm playing with just to avoid all this media manufactured sexism shit in these past few years.

 

[Crouton]

I feel like I have better memories of gaming when you were just connected by controller wires, when the person had to be right there next to you. I'm talking Burger Time on NES days. I can remember full conversations had and life events while playing in the same room with friends on GTAIII. Their physical presence was required. If they got pissed off, they weren't able to just disconnect--they had to walk out of the room, see your face at least, or engage you and resolve. In many ways, I think that gaming online brings out both the best and worst in us because of the online disinhibition syndrome.

I agree with this as well. On one side, I love the ease of gaming with friends now. Time of day, different cities, hell, different countries and none of that matters. You can just jump on and play with your friends no matter what. On the contrast of that though, when I was young I used to invite the neighbourhood kids over and we'd push extra desks and tables into my room and all cram in there on different computers to play Warcraft 3 or Age of Empires on LAN.

To trade Pokemon we used to have to huddle together over our two gameboys connected by that small cable. To this day those are some of my best gaming memories. Sure it's easier in a way to connect to just about anybody and anywhere now, but I never get the same level of emotional connection that I did when I was in the same room as my friends.

Yeah, you can easily mute them. It just gets a little tiring when every time you get into a lobby you have to mute 75% of the players. And heaven forbid there is a female in the lobby and she speaks. It's chaos. I do notice that a lot of the older offenders seems to speak with a pretty heavy southern accent.

And it seems far worse in COD. I don't play a ton of multiplayer games... but I never had this problem in Last of Us or Evolve or Destiny.

I used to play Left for Dead online sometimes, and would use my mic and no matter what on that game I never had anyone lose their shit over hearing a female voice. It was one of the most mature online communities I've played in.

On the other hand, when I used to play a bit of the Uncharted multiplayer, the second I spoke guys used to lose their shit and completely change their attitude so I started muting during that game.

 

[Crouton]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/lizard-squad-member-admits-to-23-charges-of-harass/1100-6427536/

This article sums up exactly what I was talking about, when I spoke of swatting and doxxing etc.

"Canadian news outlet TC News reports prosecutor Michael Bauer described how he focused on young female gamers and their parents in British Colombia, Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Ohio, and California."

Of course this asswipe focused on young females, I don't care that he's only 17 they need to lock him up.

"The teen contacted online gamers, many of which were League of Legends players, by sending them friend requests. When they declined, he would shut down their Internet access, post their personal information online, and call them repeatedly late at night."

This pretty much sums up the "nice guy mentality" we were talking about in the other thread, whereas the second they are declined they turn into a complete monster in a second.

"He would also contact the police in his victim's area and tell them he was holding a family hostage, had weapons, or had killed someone in the house."

I mean WTF is this, every time I read stories about this I can hardly believe it. I'ts VIDEO GAMES. I love games but who the fuck takes game so seriously that they threaten to kill people and involve the police and shit like this. I hate that this behavior seems to be getting almost more common, with more people doing stuff like this over freaking games. They are embarrassing the whole community and making us look bad.