Is It Possible To Fix Gaming Toxicity?

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Draegnarrr wrote:

No, because gaming toxicity isn't a symptom of gaming, its a symptom of humanity (as you mentioned). We are a toxic species that variably do our best to not be.

You're not wrong, but you're not right either.

A lot of (read: most) people (and no, I'm not going to exclude myself here) do act toxic from time to time, and yes; it is in their nature. Even though things aren't meant to be toxic, they are interpreted toxic. But as a teacher, I will ALWAYS value "encouragement to do good" over "punishment for doing bad", be that kids or adults.

But online, gaming-related toxicity often comes from boredom, failed humor or frustration. And the latter is where the devs come in. There's a lot of frustration in the PoE community that can easily be avoided.

First; the way they choose to split the community and flow of communication between the official forums and Reddit, two totally different platforms - with two totally different approaches to rules and order. How they choose to engage more on a platform they don't control, is beyond me. How much respect are we supposed to have towards their ToS, when they choose a different platform?

Second, a better flow of communication. A better roadmap. A better presentation of their intentions and plans. More non-generic engagement. Uncertainty breeds toxicity through frustration. I like to believe that a gaming community always reflects the game/developers and its/their social platform.

Third, GOOD FREAKIN' SOCIAL SYSTEMS. In a game where 99% of in-game communications happens via third party sites/apps, rewarding anything is more or less impossible. The in-game trade system is bad, even though it does an important job to the game's progression. And don't get me started on the guild system... Please, don't. I think my arguments there would be interpreted as toxic.

We need a platform that encourages good behavior. We currently do not have one.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Draegnarrr wrote:

No, because gaming toxicity isn't a symptom of gaming, its a symptom of humanity (as you mentioned). We are a toxic species that variably do our best to not be.

You're not wrong, but you're not right either.

A lot of (read: most) people (and no, I'm not going to exclude myself here) do act toxic from time to time, and yes; it is in their nature. Even though things aren't meant to be toxic, they are interpreted toxic. But as a teacher, I will ALWAYS value "encouragement to do good" over "punishment for doing bad", be that kids or adults.

But online, gaming-related toxicity often comes from boredom, failed humor or frustration. And the latter is where the devs come in. There's a lot of frustration in the PoE community that can easily be avoided.

First; the way they choose to split the community and flow of communication between the official forums and Reddit, two totally different platforms - with two totally different approaches to rules and order. How they choose to engage more on a platform they don't control, is beyond me. How much respect are we supposed to have towards their ToS, when they choose a different platform?

Second, a better flow of communication. A better roadmap. A better presentation of their intentions and plans. More non-generic engagement. Uncertainty breeds toxicity through frustration. I like to believe that a gaming community always reflects the game/developers and its/their social platform.

Third, GOOD FREAKIN' SOCIAL SYSTEMS. In a game where 99% of in-game communications happens via third party sites/apps, rewarding anything is more or less impossible. The in-game trade system is bad, even though it does an important job to the game's progression. And don't get me started on the guild system... Please, don't. I think my arguments there would be interpreted as toxic.

We need a platform that encourages good behavior. We currently do not have one.

That was a bit wordy trying to explain away human nature.

This isn't even a difficult conversation. You cant eliminate it because we are human. Our emotions, our environment, situational stress, and a number other factors can cause us to lash out, deflect, project, ect...

Sure some 12 year old might do something toxic because he and his friends think it's funny, but that's not really what the OP is talking about.

Real Toxic Behavior is far different, and cant be "solved." Sure we can try and reduce it. Try and call it out when seen, or have mechanics in place to mitigate it. These are admirable steps, but in the end, largely futile.

Just as you won't ever eliminate hate/racism, or people doing bad things to each other, or kids bullying each other.

This isn't about "why is there toxicity in games?" it's more, "why are people the way they are?"

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jackof8lades wrote:

Only negative behaviour gets highlighted, i am willing to bet that the vast majority of interactions isn't toxic at all, especially in a non pvp game.
And having tyranical systems in place to root out this small fraction of interactions isn't gonna help anything as those systems only create enviroments of fear and stress.

Indeed, albeit tbf this is a much more widespread phenomenon that arises from our baseline psychology and affects a LOT of social phenomena, rather than gaming communities being the only or even especially determined by it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

Our inherent negativity bias explains a lot, and it would behoove us all to be mindful of it. For what it's worth, my anecdotal experience with people in this game and others has been largely either neutral or outright positive, with only a few bad experiences. This is likely fairly common, but we inflate those few bad experiences. Being aware of our cognitive biases is the first step to countering them. And not making the mistake of implementing policy as an overreaction to them, to everyone's detriment.

Who knows, maybe this issue isn't even as big as it's oft made out to be?...

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DarthSki44 wrote:

This isn't even a difficult conversation. You cant eliminate it because we are human. Our emotions, our environment, situational stress, and a number other factors can cause us to lash out, deflect, project, ect...

...That's why I didn't use the word "eliminate" once. Eliminating it is impossible. But can it be reduced? Of course. Can the 'PoE community' be a better place? Of course. And how 'we' reduce it, is not a simple conversation. It is an ongoing, decade-long conversation held in countless board meetings all over the world.

And I disagree, this isn't about "why are people the way there are". That question is way too big/complex for any gaming related debate/community to even take part in. This is a question of how we can encourage good behavior. And for that to be possible, certain systems need to be in place, system neglected for a long time.

And I didn't "explain away human behavior". I identified certain part(s) of human behavior that can be guided/reduced in this context.

This is the same question as

"Is it possible to fix bullying?"

No. There will always be bullying, and there will always be gaming toxicity. Adapt and move on.

League of legends tried everything in the book to counter toxicity. It ended up being that the best way to stop toxicity was to make everyone stfu and not say a single thing in chat at all. Even the guy in charge of punishing toxic players ended up being toxic himself irl. What a world we live in.

It's part of human nature, stop resisting. You'll never see most of these guys again anyway.

It's a result of anonymity. People can do or say whatever they want behind the veil of the internet. They take out their RL frustrations and petty gripes on total strangers. They don't (won't) do it face to face to the true objects of their frustrations.

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Phrazz wrote:

But online, gaming-related toxicity often comes from boredom, failed humor or frustration. And the latter is where the devs come in. There's a lot of frustration in the PoE community that can easily be avoided.

I wanted to reply to this part specifically but know that I did agree with the rest of your points and think they would be good additions.

Back to the quote though I think it comes from a lack of maturity and empathy, any perspective you can understand is generally easier to tolerate and maturity just comes from dealing with adversity over time.

If you are willing to work towards those consciously or not you probably aren't part of the problem, I read opinions all the time that I totally disagree with but I rarely want to roast the holder for sharing it whereas that is already the first hurdle many fail at.

Just look at poe reddit lmao, its an echo chamber of failure it perfectly represents what humans actually are if you enable them to be that way and the modern internet does that in spades. If peoples views are involved everyone gets bent out of shape with how wrong they are, or break their keyboard slamming the approve to maximize the volume of their particular echo.

The most well adjusted simply don't participate, plenty of people are mature and won't engage in that kind of behaviour but that in itself has a negative side effect because there is no positive reinforcement from an absence.

If toxicity is intended to be solved you have to go outside of gaming and work on it in early adulthood when people are most impressionable while independent. The modern internet does the opposite of this however, it is a toxicity amplifier, finding the worst people exploiting them to be worse not better and it is exploited as these people frequently don't realize that they are being turned into frothing loons in order to drive currency to a billionaires pocket.

Man I enjoyed that rant greatly! It got a bit conspiracy theory at the end but at least I was having fun with it. The only way to deal with toxicity in every game i've encountered is to turn chat off, I know others have mentioned that in this thread but if you leave chat on you are running the risk everytime you communicate that you found an asshole instead of a normal.

Developers could fix it, but it takes steps that severely impact business so in a way they can't fix it. In hypothetical terms If i ran a studio I would provide tools to players to moderate their own chat and aside from that i'd do nothing. That is hard to admit but it is realistic :p

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Phrazz wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

This isn't even a difficult conversation. You cant eliminate it because we are human. Our emotions, our environment, situational stress, and a number other factors can cause us to lash out, deflect, project, ect...

...That's why I didn't use the word "eliminate" once. Eliminating it is impossible. But can it be reduced? Of course. Can the 'PoE community' be a better place? Of course. And how 'we' reduce it, is not a simple conversation. It is an ongoing, decade-long conversation held in countless board meetings all over the world.

And I disagree, this isn't about "why are people the way there are". That question is way too big/complex for any gaming related debate/community to even take part in. This is a question of how we can encourage good behavior. And for that to be possible, certain systems need to be in place, system neglected for a long time.

And I didn't "explain away human behavior". I identified certain part(s) of human behavior that can be guided/reduced in this context.

Well you did indicate that draegnarrr wasnt right about this being a symptom of humanity in general, which I think it clearly is.

I'm glad we agree this isnt "fixable", as the OP originally said, and we agree again that steps to mitigate and reduce are possible.

For example, can we put steps in place to reduce the possibility of trade scam like the confirmation box? Yes. Can we prevent scamming from happening or being attempted? No.

That's just one example. Idk how we expect GGG (or any game developer) to police behavior effectively, Other than self policing reporting functions and futile game mechanics.

It's a losing battle most of the time, and players will always find ways to annoying, troll, bully, exploit, etc...

I'm not saying we should just toss our hands up, but let's be real about this. Its human behavior manifesting itself in these community spots, nothing more.

I like it when the toxic players get funneled into their own communications channels with similar people. There's eve places where folks who aren't so toxic hang out in poe but I'll never tell where.