Video games have always brought people together. When online gaming became more accessible for people, gamers created more of those memories — along with many more bitter ones.
As it became easier to interact with fellow gamers, so too did it become easier to get irritated by them. Whether you’re playing the game or perusing gaming forums, the gaming community will irk you in a few ways. I apologize in advance for my brethren’s transgressions.
5. Sore Losers
An oldie, but a goodie (it’s not good, but you know what I mean), sore losers have been around since long before video games and they’re here to stay. A sore loser might send you hateful messages after the match ends or even spew bile during the game with text chat.
If it’s a fighting game, your opponent will be more likely to hop on their headset if you’re winning to voice their dissatisfaction with how you play, no doubt claiming you’re using a cheap tactic or fighter. Even worse is how your own teammates can be sore losers and are quick to berate you and your team when things don’t go their way. Speaking of teammates …
4. Everybody’s a Pro
Winning is a great feeling that doesn’t require video games, but video games are one of the few activities that can consistently provide exultation. So, it makes sense competitive gaming has been popular with the community for quite a while. Today, the esports scene continues to grow and players can always watch and marvel at top-level play.
Unfortunately, this also means players draw comparisons between the pros and the rest of population. I play “Rainbow Six: Siege” quite often, and the number of gold players who belittle their team for making “noob” mistakes or running a weapon load out is too large to count. Wannabe pros also attempt to shot-call like the pro players, yet fail to understand they and the rest of the team lack the mastery of the game’s fundamentals to even think about running a proper strategy. These players conveniently forget that they rank the same as their teammates, so obviously the skill difference isn’t that vast.
This mentality lives even outside the games themselves and it is common to find forums of players of a certain game suggesting balance changes that they know will be better for the game long run. Or, my personal favorite is when people judge a new a character or mechanic or whatever addition to the game solely based off a trailer and start crying over how it will break the game. Only, of course, to be completely wrong when the change is actually implemented.
3. Hating What’s Popular
Some people hate seeing others happy and some hate seeing others being successful, so be prepared to read some nasty comments about your favorite games if they are widely beloved. Too many gamers are committed to tearing down games that have critical and/or commercial success.
“The Last Of Us” is often reduced to a playable movie. Almost every game released by Nintendo is just a rehash or childish. “The Witcher 3” is an okay open-world game held back by lackluster combat. You get the gist.
These people also fail to comprehend that, for some people, video games are a source of simple enjoyment and games like “Call of Duty,” “Fortnite,” “Madden” and “NBA 2K” became popular because of their accessibility, even if they aren’t works of art. If you don’t get why a game is popular, there’s usually one reason — it’s fun.
2. Entitlement
No one likes a spoiled brat, and plenty can be found within the gaming community. With the technology to update any game throughout its life and communicate with video game developers, gamers have gotten used to getting their way to a degree unlike any other consumer in the entertainment market.
Moviegoers just have to get over a bad movie when they see one. They might go on Twitter and dedicate a few tweets about how garbage it is, but then they go about their day. Gamers do no such thing. They go on Twitter, on Reddit, on the game’s forum and any other page they see fit to voice their dissatisfaction.
Sometimes their ire is warranted and gets developers to follow through on their promises. Green Arrow probably wouldn’t even have a hood in “Injustice 2” if the fans didn’t keep the pressure on throughout the game’s life. Other times, it isn’t even close to appropriate.
Oh, the game servers are down? Time to complain nonstop, tweet every employee in the video game industry and ask to be compensated with in-game currency. Oh, my favorite character is getting nerfed? Time to hit Reddit and bring up how this game is slowly dying, call the nerf completely ludicrous and decide the developers must be a bunch of chimps to even make such a change.
What’s that? Another “Call of Duty” is coming out? Time to shit all over it before, during and after release while asking the developers to come up with new ideas and finally remaster “Modern Warfare 2.” We gamers are fickle bunch, to say the absolute least.
1. Toxicity
No other contender could have hoped for the top spot: Toxicity oozes within the community in so many ways, it is rather depressing to think about. Kids and adults hurl insults at their fellow gamers like they’re paid to do it. They don’t limit their insults to the player’s skills in-game, either.
Racial slurs, sexist statements, homophobic remarks and more constantly surface in game chat and anywhere online. Anything deemed stupid is no longer just stupid, but autistic (surprisingly “retarded” is off the table for these guys). Any representation of an LGBTQ+ romance that isn’t relegated to a comic no one reads is instantly called unnecessary and claimed to be part of an evil gay agenda. If you even sound like a woman in game chat, prepare to be commanded back to the kitchen a thousand times (and that’s on a good day).
Yes, everything else on this list irritates to some degree, but toxicity goes beyond irritation. It can ruin a game for someone, maybe even an entire genre. Toxicity divides people, and that goes against one of the best parts of playing video games.
