Valve making steps to address toxic behaviour on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Quoting: KimyrielleFirst you say that most people in games known to be problematic are males, then you bash me for pointing out the fact that the overwhelming majority of toxic people in online games are males, and that the underlying problem is what's usually referred to as "toxic masculinity".

You are twisting my words to somehow fit your narrative.

I said that the majority of trolls in competitive online games are male because the majority of the playerbase in competitive online games is male.

What you are doing is the equivalent of pointing at a language school and saying: Most of the assholes there are women! Therefore, women are the problem!
(At least here, most students and teachers in language schools are women, in case that comparison doesn't make sense to some)

To those of us without some imaginary crusade to fight, that construction of a false causality just highly ridiculous. And unfortunately not too uncommon nowadays, which is why some of us are quite annoyed by it.

Quoting: KimyrielleI just wonder...if I am making all of this up, how come that many games publishers put in place measures to combat a problem that according to you and some other posters here, doesn't even exist?

Assholes don't exist?
I don't think anyone here claimed that. Like me, pretty much everyone here welcomed the method proposed by Valve.
It's just absurd (and sexist, btw.) to put it on gender, when the truth is that most of the players in these games are male to begin with - and therefore most of the assholes there, too.

And I especially welcomed the weighing of the reporter, because we all have known and met people who are prone to find everything offensive, take everything as a personal attack and go out of their way to be obnoxious nuisances making everything about themselves and their gender/race/sexuality/whatever their "thing" is.
Those people will go out of their way to try and silence others even if nothing bad was said - especially if reporting is made easy. Therefore, weighing the reporter is simply necessary to prevent reporting abuse.

Quoting: KimyrielleAs a general remark: I got quite some experience with bullies, both online and offline. And honestly, if I had a dime for every time I heard the line "Take a chill pill! It's just a game!!!" when somebody tried to excuse being an asshole in a game, I'd be rich.

By now I'm 90% sure those "assholes" and "bullies" you met online were just venting some frustration, which you somehow took personal and made a much bigger issue of than it really is.
Competitiveness leads to high stress levels, which lead to people being frustrated, which leads to venting - which usually isn't nice, true, but it's just part of the environment. And especially kids and teens are prone to that due to a general lack of self-control.
Which some people will do relentlessly and those need to be muted (trust me, I wish Mordhau had such a feature back when I played it). But if someone just goes sweary for a moment and then shuts up (which is the vast majority), there's no reason to step in.

Apparently, some bullies don't even realize that they are the bullies themselves, and try to contrive some logic after which they are the victim. I don't think there is a chance for honest and open discussion, so I'm going to mute those bullies.

Quoting: Doc Angelo

Quoting: KimyrielleThe toxic masculinity (and that's what we're talking about here in the end) that has more or less defined gaming culture since its inception needs to be finally removed from it.

People are people. Some are assholes, some are nice. Some of them are male, some of them are female. Who cares? It's the behavior we're talking about, not the gender.

It would be awesome if you could believe me that what I say comes from a place where I hope that people can be nice to each other, no matter what their gender, their skin color, their religion is or whatever you could use to divide human beings into groups.

Can't say it better than that. :)

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: KimyrielleAs a general remark: I got quite some experience with bullies, both online and offline. And honestly, if I had a dime for every time I heard the line "Take a chill pill! It's just a game!!!" when somebody tried to excuse being an asshole in a game, I'd be rich.

By now I'm 90% sure those "assholes" and "bullies" you met online were just venting some frustration, which you somehow took personal and made a much bigger issue of than it really is.
Competitiveness leads to high stress levels, which lead to people being frustrated, which leads to venting - which usually isn't nice, true, but it's just part of the environment. And especially kids and teens are prone to that due to a general lack of self-control.
Which some people will do relentlessly and those need to be muted (trust me, I wish Mordhau had such a feature back when I played it). But if someone just goes sweary for a moment and then shuts up (which is the vast majority), there's no reason to step in.

If you act like an asshole, even if it is due to frustration or stress, doesn't that make you an asshole?
Also from my own experience from games like DotA or LoL there are alot of people who act consistently in a toxic manner (or: like assholes). It's for a reason those games' communities have such a bad reputation.
So in my opinion it's quite likely that the majority of the people Kimyrielle sees as assholes are actually ones (not literally). Though I would argue that those (=random people in multiplayer games) wouldn't count as bullies but I guess that depends on your definition of what consist of bullying.
(this is just regarding the part I quoted, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with most of your other points).

Quoting: fagnerlnA little off topic, I was talking with someone about Proton and how intrusive anti cheats blocks it, and I was thinking about why there's no anti cheat based on AI.

On CSGO I do some "overwatchs" and there's a lot of obvious cheaters, with wallhacks, aim, speed hacks, etc, really easy to catch, so an IA can do the job. Looks like it's really easy to bypass VAC, but I think that it's a lot harder to bypass a AI.

Maybe an IA can detect a toxic player too

The future I can see is fabulous.
First, the AI will be well trained, as they are being now, to understand, catch and ban cheaters.
Then, the AI will be trained, to watch, report and mute toxic players.
Then, we will play happily a lots of counter strike games.

Then, after more training, the AI will... strike on the humanity, and Skynet will rise.
Then, we will have to use our counter strike abilities to fight terminators and survive...

Quoting: Lakorta

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: KimyrielleAs a general remark: I got quite some experience with bullies, both online and offline. And honestly, if I had a dime for every time I heard the line "Take a chill pill! It's just a game!!!" when somebody tried to excuse being an asshole in a game, I'd be rich.

By now I'm 90% sure those "assholes" and "bullies" you met online were just venting some frustration, which you somehow took personal and made a much bigger issue of than it really is.
Competitiveness leads to high stress levels, which lead to people being frustrated, which leads to venting - which usually isn't nice, true, but it's just part of the environment. And especially kids and teens are prone to that due to a general lack of self-control.
Which some people will do relentlessly and those need to be muted (trust me, I wish Mordhau had such a feature back when I played it). But if someone just goes sweary for a moment and then shuts up (which is the vast majority), there's no reason to step in.

If you act like an asshole, even if it is due to frustration or stress, doesn't that make you an asshole?

Not really.
People react to stress/frustration in different ways. If everyone who started saying stupid shit in a moment of anger would immediatly be branded an asshole, I don't think we'd get very far ;)

I rather have people venting and calling me names than trying to swallow their anger, which might be nicer for me in the moment, but would ultimately just lead to more profound problems than me being bothered. Of course, just being angry all the time and raging at everything constantly isn't healthy, either, if you do not happen to be green and mutated.

But it is for the latter cases I see measures like Valve's reporting being useful.

Quoting: LakortaAlso from my own experience from games like DotA or LoL there are alot of people who act consistently in a toxic manner (or: like assholes).

No doubt.
I think this is way more pronounced in games that are not only competitive, but also highly team-oriented.
At least, I, personally, find it a lot more frustrating to lose due to someone else's mistakes than due to my own - which makes me more sad/sorry for my team than frustrated.

And DotA/LoL, in contrast to Overwatch, is highly team-oriented from the get-go. While you can get pretty far in Overwatch carrying your team mostly alone / being carried by someone else in your team - at least on the lower-mid ranks.

Which I think is the other takeaway of this - it is mostly the lower-mid ranks that have the most douchebags. Guess that would make a nice research paper, wouldn't it?


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 11 February 2020 at 3:55 pm UTC