Idiocy in Online Games

[Felix the Cat]

Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach (Gamasutra)

The author is Bill Fulton, a specialist consultant in game user experiences and an 11-year industry veteran.

I think he makes some very good points. Online gaming nowadays seems, in most cases, restricted to "hardcore" gamers. The environment in many online games is not welcoming to new players, and as a result the rate at which new players drop online gaming is very high.

At some point this is going to start hurting the industry - it limits the audience for high-value, non-casual games to a certain small percentage of the population, which of course limits revenue. Furthermore, as online gaming continues to become a revenue source in and of itself, rather than a feature, through subscription-based models, in-game advertising, and other media, companies will lose a large amount of potential revenue if the online social environments they develop encourage "fucktardism".

On the other hand, two of the games with the largest "fucktard factor" are Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft - two of the games with the largest active online player base. Does this mean that removing fucktardism is not necessary, or that it's not necessary at this point of time but will become a factor in the future, or is it irrelevant and the large player base explained by the two games' successful publicity campaigns or some other factor?

A lot of good suggestions for ways to remove fucktardism from online gaming are presented, both in the article itself and in the comments.

I am not the ideal person to comment on how this might apply to Spring, if it indeed does apply, so I'll leave that to others.

[Argh]

First off, I'd agree with Bill's point that WoW's team have actually done a lot to get rid of "fuckwad" behaviors, up to and including letting 'sploiters keep their stuff if they report how they gamed the system to get it.

This is one of many reasons why it's made giant piles of money. Blizzard's been very smart about dealing with serious griefers, imo. Blizzard realized that certain types of "fuckwad" are actually potential helpers in disguise- most serious griefers in a game like that are also experts at messing with the software- why ban them, when you can just find out what they're doing, and how, and then patch it?

Secondly, I liked the concept that they put into Shadowrun for "kill-stealing" and the "vote-kick" stuff. CS would almost certainly play differently, if kill-stealing wasn't as much of an issue for players. As it is, K:D is often such a focus that people totally neglect their team, or play "vulture"- waiting for everybody to die on their side before leaving a camping position, among other behaviors.

Thirdly, I am always in favor of language filters. People don't need to curse in order to express themselves, and it makes people angry. And there are no real benefits.

Fourthly, I think that in the case of Spring, the primary issues are that we need a game with a single-player trainer or campaign, a really good manual for the engine in general, and better support for games with special needs to communicate specifically to their players...

[SwiftSpear]

I don't think the problem is solvable completely...

A huge percentage of the gaming community is just fuckwads, and the reality is, there will always be a huge segment of the industry that targets those people as customers, just because they are such a big group. So the problem becomes, in the large scale, even if I want to make my game safe for new players, chances are they are going to try CS, WoW, or Halo first online, and see the reality of the situation long before they are even willing to try my game. In the end, the numbers I will lose to dicks avoiding me, will be greater than the numbers I gain from newbies seeing the potential of a different system.

That being said. I don't really give a damn about numbers when it comes to spring, I'm much more concerned about having a place where I don't have to put up with stupid retarded shit unless I want to, and I think other players feel the same way. I'm a huge proponent of social design in games... That's why I've always enacted moderation vs springer's who harass other users, and springers who intentionally ruin games, even when there has often been alot of resistance to moderating the goings on of private channels. But there is a point where it just builds a big faux wall around you... sort of like big brother of 1984.

There's a handful of things I'd like to do in spring lobby... but they would need some active support from a lobby developer to make happen realistically.

[Caydr]

Made a TLDR here, I'll just give it all to you in one (two(better make it three)) paragraph(s).

The answer, through much experience (ask for examples if you want), is in my opinion that you must not punish lack of skill and/or experience. Make finding players of equal skill easy. The angry players are usually the ones that aren't having fun, and they aren't having fun because everyone around them is a much better player.

One example that pops into my mind is Counterstrike. Play CS and you're almost certain to not have a good time until you've played for many, many hours. But if you log into CS and pick a GG server - Gungame or Reverse Gungame - you will probably have fun immediately and not turn into a retard, simply because it's so newbie friendly and doesn't take a lot of skill. Everyone is fighting with a gun they're uncomfortable with for the majority of the time. Not only does it build skill for the "real" game, but it places everyone on equal footing. Even a terrible player will probably get a kill every couple rounds.

I know this from experience, since I was terrible at CS, joined a GG game by accident, loved it, and it's about the only online shooter I play right now besides TF2. The other day I tried playing CS and I was actually doing PRETTY GOOD! I learned how the real game was played while having a good time. I learned what weapons were good for what. This is what most (all?) games are lacking, a way to learn to play while still having fun and not being called a newbie every 3 seconds. Not having to look at that 0-20 scoreboard every time you die, not be humiliated by someone running at you with a knife while you've got a rifle, and actually still dying. And then having obnoxious quakevoice-man say "HUMILIATION!!!" about as loud as a machine gun. Do not punish people for sucking.

Here's hoping this isn't paraphrasing the article, since I haven't read it and can't until later.

[Felix the Cat]

I don't think the problem is solvable completely...

A huge percentage of the gaming community is just fuckwads, and the reality is, there will always be a huge segment of the industry that targets those people as customers, just because they are such a big group.

I'm not so sure that's true.

What percentage of the population are "gamers"? Perhaps 3% in the US? Now, what percentage of the "gamer" population are fuckwads when gaming online? Perhaps 30%? Those figures are probably still rather high.

So, by creating a game that features fuckwaddery in its online play - either by completely neglecting the design of a social environment for the online portion of the game, or by designing the gameplay in such a way as to reward fuckwaddish behavior - you end up targeting 1% of the population, and likely not annoying 2% too much since they're already used to it. That leaves you with 97% of the population outside of your potential online customers. I believe that targetting 3% of consumers while excluding 97% will rapidly become a strategy that is not viable, as game budgets continue to escalate and companies continue to develop ways to generate revenue from online players.

[SpikedHelmet]

Yeah, but compare that with 60% of the general population being fuckwads -- maybe we have it easy.

[Caydr]

Here here (hear hear? Hear here?), I can personally attest that much of the world's population is probably just beyond hope. We've hired 3 people in the last 2 months now where I work, they last a few weeks at best and then they're out on their ass.

One person can't measure anything properly, another person can't read a blueprint, and another asked, on his first day, if we're allowed to smoke pot on-premises. Another guy, hired for an important high-paying job has been bumped through the shop just because he's simply an idiot. Finally he's at the lowest rung on the ladder and he does a swell job as long as you don't mind coolant leaking all over the floor and his entire area being left in a mess consistently, day after day.

Another guy goes through several $70 boring bars a month. He crashes them right into the part (at 10,000 rpm), causing half the part to disintegrate and the bar to fly off, probably damaging something else in the process. This guy's been to 4 years of college and has worked as a machinist for years. Another guy has managed to cause a breakdown on a $700,000 machine every time he works on it.

Another fellow was recently fired because he simply could not be made to get along with anyone. The final straw was when he THREW a $[rather expensive] part across the room in frustration. He wasn't even working on it! The boss had to have me paged (as I was working in his area) in order for me to have an excuse to get the hell out of there. When you need to order an evacuation (and change the door code) because you're going to fire someone, there's something wrong.

Another guy gave a first-off check on a line of 150 parts - and didn't even check the print. He just takes a look at it, wobbles it on a table to make sure it's square-ish, and signs the page. $7,000 in high-grade stainless steel wasted, not to mention 18 man-hours to cut the stuff, and 3 orders delayed a week because we couldn't get more metal in stock. This is just in the last 2 months... And don't get me wrong, by and large we've got a lot of good, smart, dependable people... but I never imagined until I entered the workforce how useless much of the population is.

[manored]

I think the cause of idiocy in online games is, beside human stupidity, the fact that you are pretty much wearing a impenetrable mask all the time that you can change fast and easy...

The solution (The one that doesnt involves massive social re-education) would be to somehow prevent you from changing your mask.

[Felix the Cat]

Caydr, perhaps you might read the article, or at least the first page or two of it. The author's main point is that people are not naturally fuckwads - or to put it another way, "jerks will be jerks" is not a valid assumption. 60 years of psychological research tells us that the way a person behaves is dependent upon the social environment. The entire point of the article is that by changing the social environment in such a way as fuckwadism is not accepted, people will not behave like fuckwads.

[Teutooni]

I think the hosting system is good in terms of social environment. The host (or autohost admin) is the absolute authority in his game, and can kick/ban fuckwads with impunity. If the host is a fuckwad, find another host, or host yourself.

Ingame harrasment is mostly limited to shouting at newbs, which is by no means a small matter, but things could be worse. In team games (1v1 is intrinsically immune to most fuckwadism) hurting an ally ultimately hurts yourself, and is certainly not rewarded. Reclaim stealing might be an issue, but is quite rare, and rarely considered stealing - you will rather have an ally "steal" the metal than the enemy.

Worst ingame "harrasment", apart from insults, is propably staying back and "vulturing" - waiting for his team to die and then go on a killing spree (porcing/econ whoring in spring terms). Though this is often related to player skill - the porcer might not know how to attack effectively, or how to best aid his team.

[Day]

who gives a shit about some fuckwads dicking around in some noob game

[Teutooni]

who gives a shit about some fuckwads dicking around in some noob game

The noobs, obviously.

[Felix the Cat]

who gives a shit about some fuckwads dicking around in some noob game

To give a lolpost a serious answer... the people who stand to lose from the fuckwads dicking around, namely, the company who made the game.

[SwiftSpear]

Made a TLDR here, I'll just give it all to you in one (two(better make it three)) paragraph(s).

The answer, through much experience (ask for examples if you want), is in my opinion that you must not punish lack of skill and/or experience. Make finding players of equal skill easy. The angry players are usually the ones that aren't having fun, and they aren't having fun because everyone around them is a much better player.

One example that pops into my mind is Counterstrike. Play CS and you're almost certain to not have a good time until you've played for many, many hours. But if you log into CS and pick a GG server - Gungame or Reverse Gungame - you will probably have fun immediately and not turn into a retard, simply because it's so newbie friendly and doesn't take a lot of skill. Everyone is fighting with a gun they're uncomfortable with for the majority of the time. Not only does it build skill for the "real" game, but it places everyone on equal footing. Even a terrible player will probably get a kill every couple rounds.

I know this from experience, since I was terrible at CS, joined a GG game by accident, loved it, and it's about the only online shooter I play right now besides TF2. The other day I tried playing CS and I was actually doing PRETTY GOOD! I learned how the real game was played while having a good time. I learned what weapons were good for what. This is what most (all?) games are lacking, a way to learn to play while still having fun and not being called a newbie every 3 seconds. Not having to look at that 0-20 scoreboard every time you die, not be humiliated by someone running at you with a knife while you've got a rifle, and actually still dying. And then having obnoxious quakevoice-man say "HUMILIATION!!!" about as loud as a machine gun. Do not punish people for sucking.

Here's hoping this isn't paraphrasing the article, since I haven't read it and can't until later.

I disagree almost entirely. Chess is at least as popular as monopoly... if not WAY WAY moreso. Games where there is a huge amount of difference between a highly skilled player and a low skilled player don't really have any disadvantage or advantage over any other game. Some people prefer the one, and others prefer the other.

I'll give an honorable mention at this point to NS though. Because of the asymmetry of the teams, often it's a fun game even if you do suck. The fact that aliens are jumping off the walls at you, and the just general scariness of the environments, often means by the time you are over the atmospheric immersion of the game, you are generally indoctrinated enough that you aren't your run of the mill nub any more anyways.

[Saktoth]

The angry players are usually the ones that aren't having fun, and they aren't having fun because everyone around them is a much better player.

Oh yeah i get that, only for the opposite reason.

This is what most (all?) games are lacking, a way to learn to play while still having fun and not being called a newbie every 3 seconds.

Its called Speedmetal.

[Erom]

In Guild Wars, all of your characters are tied together, so when someone friends or blocks you it friends or blocks all your characters. The game doesn't use separate servers either, so the only way to "change your mask" is to buy a new copy of the game, which solves 90% of the anonymity problems.

The company also reward players for doing good dead periodically in their newsletter. Just a little section full of people who gave newbs gear or helped people out while a dev was watching (not on a marked dev account obviously). Obviously these people were a drop in the bucket of the entire playerbase, but overall I still find the people playing Guild Wars surprisingly polite, especially for an online game without a subscription fee (which usually brings out the idiots).

Small efforts to make people play nice have large payoffs.

[manored]

This is what most (all?) games are lacking, a way to learn to play while still having fun and not being called a newbie every 3 seconds.

Its called Speedmetal.

I got comnapped the first time I played speedmetal :)

[rattle]

who gives a shit about some fuckwads dicking around in some noob game

Yeah, people who start serious and lengthy internet arguments are much worse tbh.

[Felix the Cat]

who gives a shit about some fuckwads dicking around in some noob game

Yeah, people who start serious and lengthy internet arguments are much worse tbh.

THE INTERNETS ARE NOT FOR TALKING ABOUT THINGS THEY ARE FOR SPAEM AND PRON



Why is it that every time any sort of discussion comes up, people have to spam the thread with shit and then bitch at the people who are discussing without contributing anything of value?

If this were my forum, half the people here would be banned...

[rattle]

This wasn't directed at you.