Having been on the developer end of this choice several times, I can tell you that the reason developers don’t do it is because matchmaking type schemes attract substantially more players, especially with party support. Most more casual players just don’t want to deal with anything beyond pressing a Play button and additionally party systems make it easier to play in your own little bubble of friends and not leave your comfort zone, mirroring the trends of society as a whole. It wasn’t about microtransactions or any other moneymaking scheme beyond more players = more money, although now that this type of play is the norm of course publishers are looking for ways to exploit it for more money by manipulating the matching algorithms.
Is there any disadvantage to removing the anonymity of multiplayer games? Does that create privacy issues? Because if everyone knows who exactly you are, I tend to think it would cut down on the vitriol.
Makes sense, as you want critical mass, but once you’ve got critical mass, why not allow private servers? Is there another hassle that these bring on?
It’s just a lot of extra work. You need a bunch of UI and the way matchmaking systems communicate with the game and start up instances is usually very different so there’s also a lot of internal work. If you don’t want to give out the server software, it’s even more work because now you need in-client remote admin tools and some way to expire servers so they don’t eternally eat resources.
If you want to support mods (fewer and fewer among competitive games) or you’re after ship and you have a robust user base clamoring for custom settings (Overwatch) then maybe you can justify it. Otherwise, it’s too much work for an unclear benefit.
What does “removing anonymity” mean in this context? Do you just mean publishing real name and address? All that would do is promote swatting.
The important things in this context are a) establishing a reputation, and allowing the community to enforce it’s mores, and b) using the rewards systems built into games to reinforce behavior that the developer wants to promote.
If the community standards are garbage, because the player base is all assholes, than a) won’t work. But b) will always work, because the games themselves will always have rewards systems built in. There have been a number of articles written about how MOBAs have tried to adjust reporting and moderation tools to promote good behavior, with mixed results.
My solution: I want them on the Game Grid until they die playing.
Pretty sure Blizzard tried something like that, and IIRC it failed pretty miserably.
It would lead to massive harassment of every girl and woman on the internet and probably most minorities too since every guy seems to get to grow up into an adult most their lives but the rest of us are required to do everything perfectly starting around 14 when you become the target and somehow it’s your fault.
This came out when Blizzard tried their real name BS. A room full of guys apparently spent two seconds thinking what it would be like with a name like Tiffany in a game full of guys who have been given permission to be jerks into their 30s, and have all the tools they need to track you down.
Yeah we’re letting boys be jerks well into their adulthood, treating other people like dirt while requiring teenage girls to grow up almost immediately as soon as they hit puberty, but yep, that problem is what side of the bed I got up on.
All these theories about why people do what they do… is strangely absent of nearly half the population but for some reason, that’s not important.
bans. hard, immediate bans. use peoples real life credentials to make sure they dont try to smurf in a new account. its up to a games publisher, the ones who run the servers to end this shit.
Quote for truth, though I’ve seen both sexes be assholes on the internet, men are far more common in online gaming numbers and far more likely to be asshats. I once heard a 35 year-old man go off on a 15 year old female guildmate after she messed up in a raid with the comment: “I hope you get raped because anyone that sucks this bad at WoW probably sucks that bad in real life too.”
Seriously. straight up yelled that to her on a semi-public voice chat. What kind of person even thinks that is okay to say to another person, regardless of place?
Said person got zero done to them in-game because it was on a voice chat not associated with WoW. He was kicked from the guild, but probably said and typed things just as bad to others as well.
As many folks said above, it’s not the anonymity issue or even the age factor (entirely), it is the lack of accountability, moderation, and consequences.
A 35 year old man talking to a young girl like that is only going to change his behavior with this:
And if that doesn’t work, he needs to be removed from the situation. She shouldn’t have to put up with that, and the oh they’re not 60 crowd seems to put all the weight on his needs and absolutely zero on hers or any other victim this guy goes after.
Despite beliefs otherwise, this guy is probably dirt in real life.
My concern with bans is that if you ban too aggressively that’s another tool the trolls use against you. Consider Facebook, where the suspensions and bans I’ve seen have mainly been against the victims of ill behavior, because the bigots report them instead.
I feel like most of the people in this thread either don’t play many video games online or haven’t really thought through what they are asking for.
Removing anonymity online is a terrible terrible terrible idea with almost no benefits and tons of negatives. Imagine if the next time you killed someone in LoL they switched from harassing you in game to harassing you in real life. Imagine retaliation for political beliefs online or for getting in to an argument with someone about how good/bad a game is (some of these threads on this forum were extremely toxic).
I think some things should be bannable, such as harassment, racism, etc, but a lot of things should not. I would say only the most extreme. Instead you should have the tools to mute people.
People are assholes online, but this is not limited to people saying insults online or people intentionally feeding. It is also people playing a team based game/experience and ruining the experience of others due to complete lack of consideration. It is that person who goes afk during a timed activity, that person who doesn’t know anything about a champion but decides to go it anyway, that person who is doing a complex scripted fight and doesn’t know anything about it, etc. Those people deserve to be called fucking idiots because they harm others just as much as the guy purposefully afking in LoL.
I would also always err on not banning/suspending people except in the most extreme examples. I think requiring multiple reports from different people is reasonable in 99% of situations. If someone is truly toxic, you will not be alone in reporting them.
The problem/downfall is that being online removes consideration for others as human beings. Most people would feel like assholes for treating others terribly if they were standing right in front of them. Most people would feel like assholes for wasting someone’s time for a stupid reason. That consideration doesn’t exist online. Instead people want the people they play with to support their experience, or at least not actively work against it.
I’ll just repeat that the problem is lack of consequences, not anonimity or lack thereof. Though I’m well aware that there are no easy solutions to that problem.
I’m 100% in agreement. I didn’t like him before because he acted like an asshole, the event only added to that. He was kicked from the guild, but it seemed like such a slap on the wrist. Particularly though, it fell between who was able to do anything. Blitz had nothing to go on since it wasn’t their voice chat. Our only tool was to kick him.
If we imagined there was a better way, what would it allow? Reporting as a tool seems so ineffective.
Social pressure? If we stop accepting this kind of behaviour, if we keep calling it out? In this specific example, maybe that guy should’ve been out of the guild?
Per Skipper’s post, he was kicked out of that guild. But there was no ability to then kick him from the server or the game or enforce any sort of lingering consequence.
Oh. That serves me for only reading the quote. But maybe that’s enough for one offense? And if every guild kicks people who behave like that, a repeat offender will find himself outcast and shunned, relegated to PUGs and LFR.
When I was in the guild scene, there were guild known for their toxicity and just rude/rule breaking behavior. I’d take anything that guild said about someone with a grain of salt.
On the the other hand, if you had a treasure who ran off with the guild gold or something, they seemed to fly around like wildfire and you’d think that would do it but no, they did that to join another guild to give them money two or just sell their avatar on ebay and wind up with another account.
Things might have changed, but then the guilds didn’t really work together for anything but recoveries for a few hours… hard to believe they’d work together to boot someone from a community now.