Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder if toxicity is inherently built in to the nature of Overwatch. It's a 6v6 team game that incentives you into a play mode that punishes you heavily for leaving a game you aren't enjoying. I realize non-competitive modes are a lot less punishing, but anyone who's played a lot of Overwatch knows if you want to "play Overwatch the way it was meant to be played," you have to go to competitive. Speaking psychologically, I'm curious what that kind of experience does to a person's behavior (short term and long term).

I've played hundreds of hours of Overwatch on console with my wife. We don't use mics, because we had enough bad experiences early in our career to make it not worth the risk. I never have problems when I play by myself.

Surprising number of people questioning the methodology in this study. I would've expected that if it ran counter to anecdotal experiences described by women (and men who group with them) who play, but I'm not convinced more rigorous methodologies would significantly change the results. If someone does believe that, I'd seriously challenge their reasoning.

I don't think toxicity is built in, though I understand where the thinking comes from. I play Overwatch (albeit on PC) and pretty actively use a mic, and I make a point of being the first person to talk in a channel. I'm friendly and I'm even-keeled about it, and that sets the tone. Once that tone is set it's very difficult for your garden-variety douchebag to start mouthing off.

The LFG system also helps.

Comparing overwatch to League of Legends, League is sooo much worse, and I don't know why.

Also FWIW the voice you use in OW can cause drama. I've definitely had games where I get flak for my voice - when it was more androgynous often people would want to know my gender.

I've seen people get exploded on for their accents, sounding young, etc.

Yeah, that can make sense. I'm a white American male with a deep voice, people aren't going to give me much shit. But by being friendly I can make things easier for other folks, and I occasionally get PMs from people who tell me they appreciate that.

Yeah, games where someone kicks things off in a positive manner or with a joke almost never turn into toxic nonsense. I wish I were better at being the one to do that.

I think people are simply very good at scapegoating. I’ve seen so many instances where someone was targeted for something blatantly inaccurate e.g. “rein never used his shield”, then rein gets a card specifically calling out high damage blocked, person continues to scapegoat. The only thing that changes at higher SR is the targeting is somewhat more accurate, but it’s always the same cause: tilting and wanting to blame someone else.

To loosely quote Richard Dawkins from the god delusion, the purpose of a theory is to formally describe something in order to question it. Questioning the methodology of a study is to derive understanding, rather than belief which neither need theories nor want questions.

The result did run counter to anecdotal experiences described by women, as is mentioned in the second section. The female account did not see more sexual or sexualized comments, out of the whole 339 tests only one was definitely address to him and a second event that the author is uncertain about. As describe in depth by the author, outliners like those are of questionable value. That is very far from the anecdotal experiences usually described about competitive online team games.

The questioning/challenging of abilities was the other finding, which the author speculate is derived from when a player is underperforming and get frustrated they lash out at team members who is overperforming. This is where a gender difference is found and it is an excellent starting point for further studies. For example it would make for an interesting path to compare studies that look at game theory experiments where player punish generosity, and in cases punish generosity more than defection.

I would also like to see a more in depth study on exactly what underperforming players do when they get frustrated. What is the common outlets and how they differ depending on circumstances. The author did mention that they were more often the overperfoming player when he used the female account so its possible the methodology in this study actually did influenced the result, which the author says in the article.

I found this study interesting but it did not change my view about the issue. I have always though that the difference in online game experience comes from the method people use when trying to insult someone else, rather than the rate in which people do it. If the only clue someone has is the name then that is what people will use in order to guess what method create the best insult, which results in primarily a gender difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com