A) I’m not sure how geography plays into this. Perhaps you were making a cultural claim? B) You only need to take the issue as seriously as you take gaming. However, for the companies involved, figuring out what is preventing >50% of their potential market from engaging is a serious, valuable problem.

FWIW one of the main reasons my (woman) SO plays overwatch is that the abuse controls tend to yield tangible results.

The problem is not as clear cut as you make it out to be. For instance, I stopped playing Overwatch because the abuse controls you mention got in the way of me having a good time with the game. So while some people may come in as you try to "control" the community, others will leave.

As for geography, I'm from Brazil. It's been my experience that people from 3rd world countries tend to have a thicker skin when it comes to online interactions compared to a number of people from 1st world countries, so that would explain what the poster above said.

This seems contradictory. People from third world countries have a thicker skin but don’t play games because the abuse controls aren’t strong enough?

I can understand some part of this. Shit talking is not automatically abusive. But if you’re playing, and someone says “bitch you suck stop playing” repeatedly, I really can’t blame you for not playing anymore. This is not as cultural as it is psychological IMHO: if you’re distracted from the game you won’t enjoy it.

I mean that the abuse controls prevent me from having a good time because they're too tight. For instance, the Overwatch developers prevented people from saying "gg ez" at the end of a match because they deemed it too abusive. This kind of view towards abuse is too extreme to me and eventually sapped my will to play that particular game.

The fact that not being able to say "gg ez" sapped your will to play a game is part of the problem, isn't it? What happened to getting enjoyment from, you know, actually playing the game, rather than the pointless shit-talking that literally no one else benefits from?

It's not your place to tell me how to enjoy the game. It shouldn't be the developer's place either. This is one thing Valve understands really well and it's why I like them a lot.

This image explains part of the problem when it comes to matchmaking, but it applies to other aspects of the game. https://i.imgur.com/0OA7fIt.png Companies like Valve understand that the best way for them to exist is to be a neutral platform that has some very basic rules, but then groups of people come together and create their own servers with more appropriate rules for that group. Some servers will have harsh moderation, some will have nearly none, others will be somewhere in between. Individuals can then find the servers they like best and everyone is happy.

Companies like Blizzard don't understand this and so they push for the view that they think will make the most people happy (at the expense of others), which is to prevent people from acting in ways that they deem are abusive. I disagree with what they think is abusive and so I'll just stop playing their game since they don't want me there.

That's fair, but I disagree with this:

> It shouldn't be the developer's place either.

Of course it should! It's up to the developer to create the atmosphere they envision for their game, whether that's a "wild wild west" or a heavily moderated environment. I think it's perfectly acceptable that Blizzard doesn't let you do the shit-talking you want, just like I think it's perfectly acceptable that you don't want to play the game because of it.

It's interesting that you use Valve as your example, though, because I've played a lot of Dota 2 (and DotA: Allstars before that), and that's by far the most toxic gaming community I have ever encountered, which is the biggest reason I don't still play it—otherwise, the game itself is fantastic. For someone like me who likes the gameplay but couldn't care less about the social aspect, even minor shit-talking can be draining when it happens every. single. game. So it goes the other way, too: clearly Valve doesn't care as much about players like me, so I will stop playing the game.

Yea, sounds like you have a culture mismatch, I wouldn’t play either if I had pet phrases I couldn’t say.

what abuse control has stopped you from having a good time? Do you feel that it was over-controlled? Did you take offense by beeing controlled at all? Have you been reprimanded due to those controls?

>what abuse control has stopped you from having a good time?

The Overwatch developers ranged from preventing people from saying "gg ez" at the end of a match to saying that they would scour people's social media accounts and ban them from the game if they deemed it the right move. Just way too many instances where they signaled that they were very ban happy and that they deemed all sorts of things that I think are normal as abuse or harassment.

>Do you feel that it was over-controlled?

Yes.

>Did you take offense by beeing controlled at all?

Yes. I don't like an environment where I can get banned if someone doesn't like my trash talk. It goes further than that though because these kinds of signals from developers shape the way the community behaves and expects other people to behave and IMO this particular direction is one I'm always unhappy with. Contrast this to the way Valve handles their communities which is very hands off. I prefer that a lot more to the way Blizzard generally does it.

> Have you been reprimanded due to those controls?

No.

Since when is the worlds 9th largest economy third world?

I always thought it aligned with cold war alliances, in which case brazil would be third world.

Not a terribly meaningful phrase on the whole.... china’s doing well these days, but you’re only going to feel that if you happen to be in the middle or upper class, for example.

China is a second world country by definition.

I guess that was kind of my point: the terms don’t map well to any concrete economic description.

Third world does not have to do with the size of the economy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

You should read what you post, it was coined doing the Cold War but it had to do with developing countries and their economy back when influence was king.

The Cold War ended 20 years ago though, and since then the term started to mean “poor/backwards” countries.

Now in the case if Brazil, you’re post-industrialized country with the worlds 9th largest economy.

You simply don’t fit any definition of the “third world”.

Just to remind you that we are all getting old -- its much closer to 30 years since the cold war ended.

Nobody's asking you to take abuse of women in multiplayer games seriously - at least not you personally.

People don't ask people who've just had a heart attack to take food poisoning seriously. But food poisoning still deserves the attention of people who can afford to care.

Everyone gets "abused" in games. Bantzing, shit talking, or whatever you want to call it is a component of every competitive endeavor, from basketball to chess. The anonymity of online interactions and lack of immediate concrete behavioral correction exacerbates this tendency in online games.

I, like all reasonable people, welcome women who want to play in these waters. The argument can be made that women deserve extra sensitivity, because they are more emotionally fragile and less able to handle shit talking, but that strikes me as incredibly sexist so I don't hold that belief.