That's pretty weak OP. You must not like games all that much if you'd bail over a few idiots on the internet.

The only toxicity I can think about is my wife cutting me into pieces in Snipperclips. Not enough to quit gaming (but pretty close to start a divorce).

Never. Seems pretty extreme. There will always be assholes associated with everything, but I won't let em push me away from the things I love.

It is fucking annoying though when you experience something awesome and you go to your favourite forum or avenue to share your experience and it's instantly shat in like you're an idiot for enjoying something others don't. It sours it all, not always but enough.

Games like Anarchy Reigns or Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen which I love were just things I had to keep to myself until I found Gaf.

Not everyone has close friends who even remotely share the same interests I know it sounds petty but a shit toxic community can ruin things for others. It really can.

Take a step back, play the games you like and don't interact with the unsavoury elements of the hobby.

It's what I did.

Nobody's gonna dissuade me from playing single player games at least. They're fun as hell.

Dude, playing online isn't the only way to play games.
Play single-player, it will restore your faith in gaming and you can take your own time.

Toki767 said:

If it weren't for GAF, I wouldn't even know about most of the toxicity that exists in gaming.

Granted, I still kind of ignore most, if not all of it.

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This.

But I get where you're coming from, I try to not read news at all these days. I just live my life and try not to get involved with shit happening all around the world and fucking maniacs fighting over things on internet and face to face.
So just play the games and don't get caught in shit you can't change. Some people are fucking crazy and we can't change that, all we can hope is they don't breed.

Recall said:

It is fucking annoying though when you experience something awesome and you go to your favourite forum or avenue to share your experience and it's instantly shat in like you're an idiot for enjoying something others don't. It sours it all, not always but enough.

Games like Anarchy Reigns or Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen which I love were just things I had to keep to myself until I found Gaf.

Not everyone has close friends who even remotely share the same interests I know it sounds petty but a shit toxic community can ruin things for others. It really can.

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Man, you should've seen my last gaming thread lmao. Was partly my fault though. Barely knew anything about the series, and was hype at how beasty a character was. Definitely learned a lot. Responses definitely left me a bit sour, but I mean, eh, I still have fun with the game.

But I know what you mean. Mainly multiplayer gamer I guess across PC/console and have come across many different types of gamers. Trolls, racists, rage kickers, etc. I usually just join a different game/server though. Theres this one mmo that had a few guilds dedicated to just randomly killing people, even new players. They'd wait outside the starter town and kill people that were on their way out. Almost got me once and killed my dog :/ I remember a group of em flooded the streets once just killing people. Won't lie, it was a pretty cool day though. Everyone was on alert, more experienced players chased em throughout the town.

But anyways, if you're talking about a community then I can see that aswell. Why I don't really mess with N4G or Dualshockers anymore... There are a lot more places now that I think about it haha, but I've never let em stop me from enjoying something I like, but in-game and out the toxicity can be incredibly draining.

Old school single player here. Never encounter these assholes online because multiplayer is very shallow and tepid compared to a well developed single player campaign. You can only play so many death matches before the novelty wears thin.

Don't listen to what people online say maybe. Otherwise you will soon be leaving Internet as well

It sucks that the OP has felt the need to come to that decision.

Luckily I feel that I've managed to avoid most of the crap. I generally only visit Giant Bomb, Waypoint and here and even then avoid reading comments on a story that might be considered divisive.

There are assholes in every walk of life and as you get older (I'm 42) you learn that it's not even worth trying to engage with them.

I've always played videos games with the intention of getting away from the world for awhile, so as a primarily single-player dude that doesn't consume a lot of gaming news and tries to avoid comment sections, it's not too bad. I've lost my interest a time or two, but not because of anything specifically related to gaming. It's a nice escape, and I like it to continue as that.

Play single player or couch co-op games and remove yourself from the community as much as possible. I've just got a Wii U and it's an absolute delight. You don't need to knock the whole hobby on the head altogether because of some shitheads.

Eh you take the bad with the good. If you play any competitive multiplayer game you will run into some real dicks. I played LoL for 5 years so yeah I experienced my fair share of assholes. In any community you'll get your token shitheads.

I can't speak for all fighting games but whenever I played Tekken or GG online the people have been very friendly and often giving me advice on how to improve. I think some communities are a lot worse than others when it comes to toxicity.

Though I have met some of my closest friends from gaming which makes encountering the occasional asshole worth it.

If you refer to the gaming community as a whole, I keep myself to GAF. Every time Google shows me a gamefaqs link I regret clicking it.

Toxicity, while not the main reason, played a part in quitting at least one online multiplayer game that's quite popular right now. People will say "mute everybody", but if you aren't able to grow thick skin, even the first sentence it's going to hurt before you mute. Not to mention that this is worse if you need to communicate to succeed. I'm not a special snowflake, and I can take a lot of abuse in lgbt phobic stuff (as a example), but other things still hurt badly.

ResoRai said:

But anyways, if you're talking about a community then I can see that aswell. Why I don't really mess with N4G or Dualshockers anymore... There are a lot more places now that I think about it haha, but I've never let em stop me from enjoying something I like, but in-game and out the toxicity can be incredibly draining.

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Hey Reso -- this is Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief at DualShockers. Man, this whole thread bums me out because I've been there.

Just wanted to throw you a line and let you know that we know it's an issue -- likely because the N4G audience is in many ways inseparable from ours. We just this summer started bringing in some CMs to clear that toxic attitude as much as possible.

Hope the community is changing in the right direction in your eyes, and hope we don't contribute to an estrangement on gaming.

Yeah, totally gonna give up my hobby.

Gotta grow some thicker skin op.

lmcontaldi said:

Hey Reso -- this is Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief at DualShockers. Man, this whole thread bums me out because I've been there.

Just wanted to throw you a line and let you know that we know it's an issue -- likely because the N4G audience is in many ways inseparable from ours. We just this summer started bringing in some CMs to clear that toxic attitude as much as possible.

Hope the community is changing in the right direction in your eyes, and hope we don't contribute to an estrangement on gaming.

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That's good to hear. I know Guisuppe, I think it was, always tried to discourage that kind of discourse.
Nice to know theres even more being done.

You're going to encounter right wing trolls online anywhere but I always felt like GAF and other gaming sites do a good job calling them out and culling them after exposing themselves.

Dont play multiplayer with voice chat or the experience will damage your soul

Toki767 said:

If it weren't for GAF, I wouldn't even know about most of the toxicity that exists in gaming.

Granted, I still kind of ignore most, if not all of it.

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Pretty much

I did a experiment regarding this, when the latest Wow legion expansion was released. I had not played the game for 3 years and wanted to come back because a irl friend had started playing again.

I decided to roll a healer this time, and focus on clearing 5 man dungeons since the guild I was in was really small and not that active. So as you can imagine there was a lot of dungeon keeper with randoms that I was forced to play. The thing is this, I knew beforehand going into this that the toxicity would be there, but I wanted to kinda see and experience it myself. Being a healer you also have much more responsibility on your shoulders, meaning its easier to get shit thrown at you..

So how did this go?

Well, whenever a dps class died due to some random reason they kind of instantly yelled in our group chat that it was my/healers fault, with all kind of interesting words. I never said or replied a single bad word about anyone. Through all dungeons I did not a SINGLE tank ever talked bad or yelled at me, and the tanks usually also very rarely died. It was interesting because these tanks generally where the ones being vocal against the dps classes who yelled at me.

So my conclusion to this experiment I did (nothing new here) was that in a game like Wow, people with toxicity in them might be more common in dps classes, who also by nature doesn't carry as much responsibility on their shoulders as the tank and healer does. I of course know this would be a lot different to lets say a top 10 PVE progress guild (or a serious pve raiding guild), where I can imagine dps classes are as much held accountable as tanks and healers.

I think going forward for online gaming in generally, it would be nice if there was some sort of reward system that rewarded good and nice behavior, and at the same time punished people who are being assholes just because they can.

Back to OP:s question , yes i certainly takes this toxicity into account whenever im interested in a new game and it has online functions.

DieAntwoord said:

I hate the word "toxicity" but it's the best word I can think of currently.

I think I've reached that point. Tomorrow I'm packing everything up gaming related and taking my cash bounty of 1300 dollars from GameStop and more than likey never touching this hobby again.

Since that nonsense happened a couple of years ago it's been really, really hard to look at gaming in a positive light and wanting to be associated with it.

I read an article, it's politically charged. The comments are a shit show on both sides filled with adults who are way too old to be displaying behavior fit for 3rd graders.

I try to watch streams and people are sexually harassed and being threatened with violence constantly.

I read about museum and video game archival projects that have interested me being shut down because of gamergate.

There's no fun anymore. Everything in gaming has such a large amount of politics and shit people associated with it that I can't by association support it anymore. The dregs of society have won yet again and I guess they got what they wanted by running people like me away from gaming to save "gamers"

I just can't deal with it anymore.

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Embrace retrogaming via emulation or physical media my friend, your new "expensive" hobby...

Who here has quit gaming because of the rise in toxicity?

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No. Im not so thin skinned as to let what other people say ruin my enjoyment of a hobby

I was thinking about the OP point and found it sad on a few levels really. Partly because it sucks that the situation is so bad that they feel they have to bail but also because it feels like somebody seeing a serious problem within a broad creative medium and walking away as if to avoid being somehow tainted by association rather than acting in solidarity with those who suffer most because of toxic behaviour and trying to make a positive impact. I'm not saying that's necessarily easy, I just find the dynamic of identifying a problem and then deciding to abandon the medium on that basis feels counter-productive.

Don't misconstrue this as trying to be insensitive or lacking empathy. If you're in a situation where you're feeling victimised, upset or in a broader sense the toxicity directed at others makes you anxious or upset then by all means step out and look after yourself. I've done the same in certain spheres of my life, where a hobby seems so connected mentally with feeling anxious or anger or something else negative that I can't take part. To stress, that's not what I feel like I saw from the post and if I'm wrong then I'm sorry, it just comes across in the tone of saying 'I'm one of the good ones'.

Misogyny, homophobia, racism, macho culture and other hurtful, shitty behaviours are prevalent in parts of gaming because it's pervasive in our society and that needs to be smashed. How you do contribute to that depends on your own safety and health and so on but if you're able to that means calling it out head on and combatting it. And if you feel unable to do that, then to talk about your experiences, to promote non-shitty, inclusive behaviours, to not engage in discrimination, to support inclusive, fun communities within gaming. But whatever you can or can't do, the core thing is that we need voices like that within gaming, not out of it.

I'm a football (soccer) supporter, I love the sport and fan culture. There are elements within that culture that need combatting and lots of fans actively oppose that discrimination when it rears its ugly head. That changes football culture and makes people feel less alienated and alone. Fans could just walk away and abandon football to the bigoted minority but it's too important. So's gaming- at its best, it's a wonderful, inclusive medium of creativity that's worth fighting for and not letting shitheads ruin it.

As it stands, statements like in the OP feel aloof and somehow 'above' the problems in gaming. That the best thing to do when faced with toxicity is to publicly make a show of going 'I don't like this, everybody, and I'm not going to be tainted by it' which as far as I can tell is just walking away from the problem. By all means, sell all your gaming stuff and never bother with the hobby again. But if you do care about this stuff as you so obviously do, your voice is far, far more useful and valuable staying involved than it is on the outside. To reiterate, if toxicity is damaging you, take time out temporarily or permanently, you do you. But if you can, I'd say stay, embrace the very real, very prevalent positives that exist within the wider gaming community and use your voice and experiences to help stop toxicity getting worse.

When someone is being harassed or treated horribly or being abused in-game, people like you who care and give a shit are a thousand times more useful in our hobby than on the outside writing it all off by association. What gaming is and can be is defined by those involved in it and it only gets worse if our reaction to toxic behaviour is just to put it all in the bin and walk away.