Content warning: this article is about objectionable behavior in online games, including online harassment. It contains homophobic, racist, and misogynistic language.
About a month after Overwatch was released, I opened the game and was greeted on the main menu, without context, by the following: “ill ddos ur gmas cpap machine sun”. The Overwatch community has its fair share of attitudes, but I often find myself amused at the lukewarm insults and threats that get thrown around, rather than agitated. See, I’ve been at this competitive online gaming thing for nearly a decade, now, and I’ve experienced my fair share of internet nastiness.
A common complaint with Overwatch is that players will frequently whine about team composition (“Get off Tracer, she’s useless,” says the inept Genji) or behave like sore losers, no matter how fairly a match goes down. Annoying, sure, and this ultimately detracts from the fun of the game, but genuinely toxic behavior has proven to be comparatively uncommon in Overwatch. As many players I’ve spoken with have put it, “it’s nothing” compared to that of other similar games. This is because Overwatch, through its mechanics, actually promotes pro-social behavior.
Fair warning: I’ll be discussing some of the more unpleasant things that I’ve witnessed online, below.
Competitive online gaming started for me in 2008 when I became an avid Left 4 Dead player. As a competitive person, I was easily taken in by the games’ Versus modes, which demanded intense concentration and strategic prowess. This sort of high-stress, cutthroat gaming was right up my alley. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I grew to expect a certain amount of harassment, griefing, and spamming of mindless bigotry that came with playing. As an act of self-defense, I padded out my friends list with just about anyone who resembled a decent human being. I wouldn’t have to play alone and I would never be out-voted if someone, immediately upon hearing my feminine-sounding voice, decided to try and kick me from the game.
I took an extended hiatus from playing, but several months ago, I was feeling nostalgic and decided to jump into Left 4 Dead 2 again for the first time in years. Within a matter of minutes, I felt as if I had traveled back to a more primitive time in video game history. I could hardly open the game before being reminded, “Oh yes, this is the sort of thing that people think is funny or edgy or something and goes completely unchecked.” Words like “faggot”, “nigger”, and “cunt” reentered my consciousness, as did my resentment towards the players who used them. I also realized that what I had once considered par for the course was a load of BS. After spending some time away from this kind of behavior, it was clear that it didn’t have to be the default experience in a video game, despite all the times that I had been told that this was simply the nature of the beast.
Game developers have been hard at work, trying to curb player toxicity for a few years now, doing so the best way that they know how: through systems. Riot’s community management system for League of Legends is probably the most well-known (though, many players do not share Jamin Warren’s enthusiasm for its effectiveness). Because of this, we now have concrete evidence that both game design and community management (or lack thereof) play a significant role in player behavior. As Ben Lewis-Evans’ GDC talk on anti-social behavior in games illustrates, game designers have the power to steer their communities in the directions they desire by creating games that are functionally pro-social. In his talk, he describes a variety of approaches that designers can use to produce positive results, and Overwatch employs many of them, offering a comprehensively pro-social experience for its players.
Overwatch’s most important social feature is arguably its chat functionality and the fact that players can easily navigate in and out of voice channels. Because it’s assumed that not everyone on your team will be in the same voice channel as you (if at all), Overwatch has no shortage of automated character audio cues, like a teammate’s character shouting, “Behind you!” if an enemy approaches from behind, in addition to a selection of useful voice commands for players to choose from. I have “Thanks” mapped to my middle mouse button, personally. Like most games, the only way to communicate with the enemy team is through text chat, which is set to censor inappropriate words by default, though players find hilariously inventive ways to say, “fuq” and “beetch”, nonetheless.
Small team sizes and short match lengths are also natural deterrents against trolls in Overwatch. Most players won’t have too difficult of a time getting at least one friend into a group with them, proportionately reducing the already narrow chances of having to play with someone abusive. Furthermore, because match turnaround is so quick, players inclined to harass others usually can’t be bothered to stick around for long. These are just some of the systemic means of dealing with negative behavior; players have a variety of options available to them, should they decided to take matters into their own hands.
There are multiple, streamlined ways of reporting players for spamming, cheating, or harassment that don’t take the reporter out of the game or require more than several seconds of their time. You can block players if you aren’t inclined to report them, and though Blizzard has decided to remove the “Avoid This Player” feature due to players abusing it, it at least further demonstrates that the developers are onto something. There’s also an option to rate the match itself, which Blizzard has said it will be using to “improve match-making and the game in general.” All of these features encourage players to express any negative feelings they may have through the game’s systems rather than in the chat. It’s hard to say at this point just how far Blizzard will go in handling toxic behavior, but their zero tolerance policy regarding in-game cheating may be some indication.
Overwatch wants its players to be gracious and sportsmanlike, and has given them the tools to comply. One of the most obvious examples is the commendation system. At the end of every match, the game algorithmically identifies players who dealt significant damage to the enemy team, selflessly healed teammates, or performed other impressive feats, which are usually specific to the character. By displaying the accomplishments of those who didn’t necessarily just get the highest number of kills, players are given the opportunity to commend teammates who helped assist their teams in less obvious, self-serving ways. As a result, support characters often receive the highest number of commendations at the game’s end. This system also creates scenarios where members of the losing team rally behind their one teammate who makes it onto the commendation board as a show of solidarity. Occasionally, players will even cast their commendation for an enemy player, as was the case during the beta when 72 million enemy players were commended. While far more controversial, the “Play of the Game” feature plays a role in recognizing players and fostering camaraderie, as well. As Blizzard continues to improve upon this, hopefully we will see increased social implications (in case Tommy Wiseau getting “Play of the Game” somehow isn’t pro-social enough for you).
Lastly, I don’t think it can be ignored that Overwatch has an exceptionally diverse cast of player-characters in terms of gender, race, nationality, body type, and varying degrees of robot. We don’t know much about their sexual orientations, but it’s probably safe to assume that there is some diversity there as well. There’s no empiric data to suggest that this largely aesthetic decision on Blizzard’s part contributes to a more inclusive community, but I have to imagine it feels that much more uncomfortable to say something outright racist when you main a Brazilian guy with dreads. Feeling the urge to spam the chat with misogyny? Hope you aren’t planning on playing one of the eight female characters in the game–you might seem foolish!
This is not to say that bigotry never occurs. I’ve personally witnessed a player refer to Symmetra as “curry woman” (wow, dude, so clever), and once heard someone casually use the word “faggot” in team chat. But in my 60+ hours of playing, that’s about as bad as it’s gotten. I’ve heard other women talk over the mic and have done so myself in the team chat, having yet to receive so much as a single, “OMG, A GIRL”, let alone be harassed for details about my neighborhood and where I live. I’ve seen gamertags that included names like “Katie” and “Moxy”–something you definitely didn’t do back in my day. Mine has always been deliberately gender-neutral, and I have often been presumed male (or as one player put it, a “mama’s boy”) as a result.
There have been some valid criticisms of Blizzard’s restrictive approach to community management with Overwatch. Things like forcing players to use pre-made sprays break with tradition and limit players’ sense of self-expression. As someone who was a server admin for a fairly prominent Team Fortress 2 clan some years ago, I know first-hand how fun community-owned-and-operated gaming can be. On the flip-side, I also know what it’s like to have a bunch of trolls come in and, in a coordinated effort, kill your server because they harassed everyone into leaving before you had the chance to effectively deal with them. I once suspended a player for using a weapon that he named, “The Nigger Launcher” (displayed prominently every time you were killed by him), and caused a lot of drama among some of the other admins, despite our server’s clear rules against racist language, because he happened to be a regular player. With Overwatch, there’s not nearly as much subjectivity.
In an ideal world, playing video games online would be a safe and fun experience for everyone without being so heavily regulated. I am optimistic that we will get to that point, one day. In the meantime, however, I am thankful that I can enjoy my $40 purchase in relative peace.
