I have been playing games my whole life. It wasn't always like this. I have played way more multiplayer games than single players games in my lifetime. But i was born in that sweet spot where i got to play the best single player games ever made, and observe both sides of the coin. And toxic does not mean calling for your mom on mw2 lobbies. Back then we would say the most agregious shit and actively ruin each others experiences and still laughed about it... things changed..
Games used to be art more than anything. It was niche. When i was playing spyro or crash or mario kart or smash bros or halo 3 split screen, trying to complete levels faster and better than the last person in super mario 64...
Even though there was a strong sense of competition then, multiplayer or split screen, we were laughing, enjoying our time. now people want to hop off after 4 games of getting spanked repeatedly.
AGAIN, Gaming was niche then.
Now, gaming is like social media, or streaming services. It's mainstream. Its an ESCAPE from reality but not in the same way it used to be, because it is no longer art first, and business second, it is now a business exclusively.
Your experience is completely manufactured, optimized for retention.
So just like netflix swore they were going to fix the problems cable tv did not even have to begin with, and instead started to tell you how to think in their movies and tv shows, charged you more than cable tv did, and gave you worse content, gaming studios started manufacturing your experience and telling you how to play and enjoy the games..for their profit.
That over time is taxing on the mind. But you don't realize it, until you are depleted already.
Just like social media, just like streaming services. We just consume without even taking the time to realize the content just isn't even good, or complete, or real.
That is exhausting over a decade + of the same psychological abuse of being told:
"you're going to like this, trust me. You just have to play the way i want you to play. And you will have fun, i promise. Don't forget to pre-order too, and get the battle pass. It's gonna be a good one this time...promise."
A lot of people can't externalize it but they are exhausted. They just want something to do that isn't a 9-5. And games have turned into exactly that, a second 9-5, where you never clock out.
What im trying to say with all this is gamers are toxic not because we are bad people and want to be. But because we are irritated. Exhausted. We just want to enjoy the game, but can't, because the experience is OPTIMIZED, MANIPULATED, MANUFACTURED. and we are being gaslit into thinking the problem is us for not enjoying the experience.
- "Get gud, scrub."
- "Just play the meta, dude"
We are constantly at each others throats because it makes studios more money. This is just the ERA we live in.
Social media has the same problem, streaming services, music, hollywood movies.
Very little is created for the sake of enjoyment. Things are made for optimized engagement and maximum profit. And we are feeling it inside but can't fight it because we just want something to do that gives us that dopamine hit, at the end of the day... we are not perfect beings that will boycott every single thing that isn't up to par, even if we should do that.
Im not an asshole for wanting to win my game of ranked in a moba game or hero shooter. It's RANKED. But i turn into an asshole when i realize that no matter how good i play my win rate will never be above 50-60% because the experience is manufactured for me to get mad and play longer hours trying to get that next rank, that extra win, that streak. And to yell at my teamates because they are preventing me from doing so.
When people get frustrated theh engage more, they comment more, they play longer. Not less.
Its a small % of people that just stop consuming when they get exhausted.
And for competitive games, hero shooters specifically, there is so much that the scoreboard cannot reveal about why the experience is the way it is. There is context to every single round you play. For instance both your tanks are going negative and you are shitting on them telling them they are throwing but they are getting healed at all so thet can't absorb nothing. They go to the frontlines to die in an instant. But when the game is over who is gonna take the blame. The person that has the lowest score. These hero shooter games are incentivizing people with a single brain cell to go for 40 kills because there is a scoreboard and often in ranked play your points are based off of dmg dealt or kills. So people play these games like its call of duty and then when they loose they will have a massive ego and act like they did nothing wrong because they made kills. When they know damn well cleaning up don't mean nothing in these kind of games. It just doesn't work man. You can't design the game in a way that makes people play selfishly, but also make it impossible for anyone to win without having damn near perfect team strategy and synergy. It contradictory. Doesn't fkn work. It's either a team game or it's not. It's either cod or its battlefield. Can't do both at once. But they do it because they want more money and they want every single possible human being to buy their product.
That's why especially hero shooters are just never fun.
Gamers are toxic in general because they choose to keep engaging with an experience that is actively built to make them miserable.
Find good single player games that you genuinely enjoy and support. Like dispatch, crimson desert, resident evil 9, idk. It's time for the gaming industry bubble to burst if you know what i mean(it's not a real bubble but it needs a financial crash, a market reset. We need to bring it back to its original state. When people had no choice but to work their ass off until their game truly succeeded. Because the players decided the game was worth their time. And not because some corporate overlords with infinite borrowing power can sell you unfinished dogshit for 300$ a year.
The reason why games like marvel rivals feel like literal psychological operation is because well first of all it is hahah, and secondly society and life has just changed, in general. And finding refuge in gaming is not going to do anything for us, but make them more money and give them more power to do this bs. And ignoring the problem at large by trying to cope and find other ways to enjoy the games won't help either. It just enables them to keep appealing to us with intellectual properties we are nostalgic for or love, and stab us in the back with predatory monetization models.
I understand that this was a video exclusively talking about hero shooters and why they don't work though. But that is my take. It is a bigger problem, causing this genre to just not work.
