shaunsdu

freespeech

Take a look at this video:

+ Watch video

What I find hilarious about that is the way NOBODY on Insurgency can just ignore the guy, they all have to act even more retarded in return.

Eranmane

On another note, I don't see how this turned into a Nintendo versus the world thing, but I will say this...they haven't done anything right by not including online and/or voice chat. Yes, you take out the chance for offensiveness and so on, but you also take out the chance to play with your friends and/or pit your skills against strangers, not to mention the lack of ANY matchmaking options that all Nintendo games lack...no choices for rules or preferences, just whatever standard they impose, and therein lies the problem. Yes, Nintendo avoids trouble by completely excluding competent online, but they would also do the same thing by giving you OPTIONS with matchmaking and voice chat. If the constantly overloaded servers in Brawl are any indication (Error 86420 anyone?), Nintendo isn't avoiding online because of potential dangers, it's because they don't have the means, willingness, or knowledge to get it right just yet. If you don't want to deal with the crap online, then don't play online or mute voices...work hard at providing OPTIONS for each individual to enjoy on their own terms, not wide blankets of exclusions and restrictions. And Microsoft would do well to work harder at curbing language, but they DO have options to avoid players for such things.

This article is not about any one company, it's a bout an entire group of people working their hardest to ruin games for everyone but themselves for the sake of minor amusement. Arguing about whether or not online or voice chat themselves are evil is useless...it's avoiding the issue altogether, not solving it. Look at it like a restaurant, you should be able to go and have it your way, not avoid the restaurant altogether because you don't like a few things on the menu. If Microsoft's truly worried about the dickwads on Xbox Live, then they should impose stricter punishment for frequent offenders, or implement their "Gamerzone" feature a lot more. And if Nintendo was so worried about all the scary dangers of online, then make some of the options parental locked, or at least default off, but at least include them as choices for educated people with free will to make for themselves.

TheBlackWatch

I want an MMORPG/online game where every player is required to pass A) a spelling and grammar test, and B) a basic etiquette test. Yeah, in my dreams. :P

Pammeh

PsycheDiver

excel_excel

soul4sale

Eh, I loved Halo 2 but without the party system, I wouldn't have played much of it at all on Live. All the spray and pray gets old quickly. The idiots were just icing on the cake....private games were a good time, though.

I'd like to see more Halo 2 maps redone in Halo 3...Hell, if this is the last Halo game for a while, I'd love to see all the Halo 1 and Halo 2 maps reworked for Halo 3.

GorbyGipper

Hell, I played on Live with strangers for the first time in weeks the other night. Halo 3. 5v5 social. My team was three friends, some stranger named JABLES GUNZ and I. The first thing we hear as Snowbound loads up "aww man, I don't wanna play with these n******!"

Naturally, we mocked the biggot son of a bitch for being a racist asshole. We then immediately mute the jerkoff so we can play the game in peace. We lost...he performed the worst while being taunted to keep up with the team (who played poorly anyhow, not a good game for my team...I was the only one with a positive kill:death). We mocked him for poor performance, set the prick as avoided and filed complaints for hate speech.

JABLES GUNZ, just one of the racist asshats ruining the online space.

GorbyGipper

Jinto

Strangelove

Then again, schools aren't allowed to discipline (much less challenge nowadays) students anymore either - why should they act differently online?

Baseball bats change everything.

C4Dillon

Bertson

fenderfuel08

Kotaku should set up a Live account so that Kotakuites can meet up using the Friends of Friend menu item.

crapsh00t

I've never really had too many problems with TF2 (PC) but maybe that is again because to have a decent PC to run it means having money which most parents won't spend for their kid. Plus I've found they're likely to get banned. It's not like the old Q1 days where everyone was calling everyone a "f4gg0t" and a "r3t4rd".

The 360 does tick all the right boxes to allow these types to breed and the fact it's a pay service as well means MS should be doing alot more to control it.

chiefpoopingpants

There's a bit where he says a "request message," like those at movie theaters regarding cell phones, won't work for an online title, but I have to disagree. Sure it's a little condescending, but if you see the message enough times, it'll sink in eventually.

boopadoo

So, who thinks a cleansing is in order? ;p

GDK

In MMOs the worst I've seen is usually just a lot of beggars. Some griefers, but they're pretty easily dealt with - having a named character on a paid service they're not exactly anonymous to the company. Exceptions are games like Lineage 2 where people were made unable to play by companies camping needed dungeons to farm gold. You MUST have good moderation in these things.

Otherwise though, I'm just not interested in online gaming on consoles as most people know it. Sometimes I'll jump into a quick match in Guitar Hero 3 or a racer where there's no chat, but if the systems couldn't do it I wouldn't care. Griefers will always find a way. (haha, I remember Diablo was more about hacking than playing.)

fuchikoma

SSJPabs

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

KreacherOfBloodandRank

TrettOff

play on admined full-time servers. you will have high chances of good games with decent folks.

Crazy_Buffet_Happens

Grey_Fox

Bauske

Vorekdor

Gray665

I'm certain GTA4's multiplayer will bring this level of doucheiness to new heights.

LongDarkBlues

If you want a larger market, start making games with an appeal wider than that of the sci-fi / comicbook style that's not a patronizing horse grooming sim. People argue if "games can be art", but I don't even think that question can be legitimately asked until the subject matter itself begins to show a little diversity. Once that happens, a lot of the discourse that happens online will show a bit of growth as well.

As it stands, a lot of us grownups are awkwardly hanging around the turf of teenagers and wondering why they can't be more friendly (forgetting how miserable most of us were at that age). The problem isn't within the mechanics of a voting system, but within the design of the games themselves. We have mountains of games that are appealing to both adults and children, but very very few that are appealing to solely adults.

(excuse typos and unfinished thoughts - posting "on the job" so to speak).

futurebiblehero

Mr.SithNinja

JamieA

And it's not just that. I don't want to play with kids, I don't want to talk with kids, I don't want to get my ass handed to me by kids. I'm an adult gamer and I want to play with my age group. Why doesn't MS recognize how uncomfortable it is for me to be playing a game and my wife hears some little kid tell me to "___"...yeah, you fill in the blank because you've all heard it.

Islandkiwi

kw4k

Tepoz

It's the 25+ year olds saying "nigga" and "fag" DIRECTLY to people as an insult that really bugs the shit out of me. It's just plain ignorance and bigotry. And the worse part is that there is no repercussion for this language really on XBL. There are apparently no MENSA candidates on XBL. lol

I think every online XBL game the player needs to be able to mute anyone they want too.

axiomatic

Just wait until the PS3 install base is larger. It's only a matter of time.

dead_red_eyes

Yeah, that's the main reason why I don't like my girl playing online. She can take it, but I sure as hell can't.

It's crazy to see that I'm not the only one who's run across TONS of racists/bigots/ignorant asswipes in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, or even Vegas 1 for that matter. So far in this thread, there's been a good amount of comments about it. Does every redneck racist flock to that game, or what? Hell, even Call of Duty 4 gets the same treatment in the loading screen where everyone has some anonymity for a short time. It seems that the "war games" are the way to go for racist bitches, as I've never seen them in a game of Rockstar Presents: Table Tennis.

dead_red_eyes

I just hate it when people play music through the mic. It really wrecks the experience for me to have to mute someone. But hey, it's quick and easy to do.

I think it all boils down to me loving the shit out of TF2. That fact that I can still play it on my friggin Macbook (yes, the kind without a GPU) is a testament to superior scalability in design. I think playing any game at near-minimal video settings shows you how bright the fun-factor really shines through.

el_gordo

Or turn off the voice chat in your profile options.

@Dag:

Everyone and their mom has used that Penny Arcade comic at one point in time. We all know where it's from.

@NecronomiconUK: - "Or if it really gets on your nerves then you just change your privacy options for voice to Friends only and never have to put up with assholes ever again."

Well said!!!

@IronsUK: - "90%+ of the talk on xbox live is mindless drivel."

Indeed. It's a rarity when people actually want to communicate in a way that is geared towards the game (tactics and such).

@shikaningen:

Great post!

dead_red_eyes

That is the most dangerous, moraly bankrupt statement anyone could make. You are basicaly saying that when you go online and spew racist hate speach you are simply "On vacation and not responsible for your actions."

WOW! I can't wait for that argument to arise on the next episode of Dateline: To catch a Predator! " It's ok, I was on an online vacation. I didn't actualy do anything (yet)."

Let's all go on an "online vacation" and trade child pornography with eachother. You know becasue as you said, we shouldn't be held responsible for our actions online.

I am astounded by your level of retardation.....

Mr.SithNinja

Knight-Zero

kuraitenshikun

I don't completely buy your theory, good sir.

CommentatorHatman

Tepoz

There have been so many articles on this on a bunch of different sites about this and the bottom line is there is nothing M$ will ever do about it. Say for the sake of argument that M$ actualy did what they should do and Banhammer all the douchebags Witzbold style.... They would literaly be killing off 75% of their business!

They could also very easily just disable a users voice-chat option. Let the douchbags play but not be heard. Oh, let me revel in that thought for a moment..... online gameplay without some 11 year old calling me an "F'ing Ni***r"........ oh how I yearn for the day.....

Damn it!Back to reality.... M$ will NEVER do anything that socialy responsible out of fear that it might cause a few douches to stop subscribing.

Oh look here come the ever so retarded " Just mute them and move on " comments. It shouldn't be up to me to filter out the socialy inept and racist hate-mongers when I go to play online. That would be like Kotaku saying " Just don't read the post that you may find offensive. " They know, as should M$, that ignoring a problem will not make it go away. It will only grow into the unstoppable force that is online douch-baggery.

Mr.SithNinja

I've come across quite a few people who try to abuse the system but it's not easy to do. The banning process takes into consideration how many complaints the person has filed, and how many complaints the person he/she is filing against has. If everyone is filing complaints against that one douchebag, those douchebags have a tendency to dissapear. The only way they can get back into the scene is by paying for a different Live Gold account. The monetary aspect keeps alot of people in the different gaming tournament scenes in check after they learn the first time.

On the PC, if there's no way to totally ban a user's account system-wide, then I don't use my mic unless it's in Ventrillo with my clanmates. One of the best things to happen to the Battlefield community was when user accounts were tied to their bought game. If you were banned, you basically had to buy another game and create another account and start from scratch. This is why STEAM has been gaining major ground on the PC because hackers/cheaters/griefers can be banned system wide. The exception of course is Call of Duty 4 which uses the old-school pre-patched Battlefield account management system in which you can create an infinite number of accounts to hack/cheat/grief. Concerning the PS3, my guess for the reason why PS3 owners don't user mic's because there is no system-wide banning.

Tepoz

That, and I kinda suck at pretty much everything.

Hubert Humphrey Methadone

You're killing the internet.

That's one of the benefits to it all. The fact that you do wear a mask. The fact that you are not who you are. You are someone else. You are not responcible for your actions. You are simply not you. you're on vacation from reality.

This is why I play games. to step into another skin.

You remove the mask of my new skin, you remove an aspect of the game. The talking shit is what happens. It happens in sports locker rooms, it happens with friends, it happens all over society. It is part of who we are as a species to try to promote who we are over another. Removing the anonymousness of it, removes this skin. It removes my mask and removes insertion.

I don't want this

huginn

jimb213

The same went for EVE Online - I'm not going to pay monthly for frustration. Being griefed by people who have years of experience on you, and then being told it's part of the game? Forget that.

Omatic

zeekle

CS is a cesspool, I mute everybody on pubs when I go in for a quick fix.

zibby

wirebrain

KM91

Popularity of a game x Amount people can show off if they are good at it = Number of stupid people who will play it online

RobTheBuilder

Hubert Humphrey Methadone

That game is perhaps the best example i can think of of the industry being hamstrung by its audience.

Sunjammer

zibby

UR A GIRL? Boobies! Pics pls.
jk.

Yeah, that's gotta suck big time. As a guy, it pisses me off because I'd like to play with more females, as it just seems more fun as the atmosphere is less charged with fake "macho" BS filled with "noob" or "ghey!"

It's why I love playing Burnout:Paradise. There are a lot of women playing it and the people seem to take it in stride, which is as it should be.

heretrix

Me? If I had any kind of authority, XBox would have more roving "moderators" that could be summoned when some douchebag can't keep his word-hole from spouting racist, homophobic, and/or offensive dribble. The moderator would be able to listen in, and then swiftly swing the banhammer, ending the offenders time on XBox Live for some period of time.

People who play online should, A) not worry about having some 13 year old toilet mouth punk ruin their experience, and B) be able to have something DONE about these miscreants.

Oh, and parents, please take a bit more responsibility and raise your children right. Don't let them become douchebags. Manners, people. Fucking learn some.

PissedPS3Fan

Heyyou27

Gray665

TheTime

If I hear one more 13 year old start trying to flirt with me and demanding pics, I'll scream.

strixus

WMeredith

peet

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

Kyle81

I also recently picked up a PS3 (girlfriend got it for me for my birthday), and I have to say I have noticed a much smaller douchebag constituency on PSN than on XBL. From what I've seen, deathmatches bring out the worst in people. Team games and co-op games tend to bring down the level of overall douchebaggery. Still, given my experience, I would have to go with PSN over XBL.

Sasquatch

Roto13

This is not a new phenomenon nor limited to online gaming. Just look at comments on youtube, digg, local newspapers sites, blogs, message boards etc. Save for Kotaku(seriously, the comments here are either well moderated and/or the contributors are mostly open minded, considerate, humorous and intelligent) the majority of online babble is just saddening.

I think if everyone was face to face rather than anonymously online things could be a little better. Of course, there are those certain special assholes who are rotten to the core but like I stated early, hopefully they'll be the next Darwin Award winner.

I'm going to get a little crazy now but we, as citizens of the world, have with the internet a wonderful means to bridge gaps and open minds like never before in history. It's made the planet a whole lot smaller and we're letting a few bad apples(more than a few, maybe a bushel) ruin it.

Don't let the bad apples win.

goody71

MMO's are fairly well protected, relative to FPS games. MMO games have Gamemasters that help keep asshats under control, although you will still find it. An FPS may or may not have an admin online at the time.

You can pretty much expect new and creative ways to filter out the crap when joining a new online society. The ones that do it the best will get higher customer retention. The ones that do not will be known as a cess pool.

J449

I like to think of them as an essential part of gaming nature - like forest fires, or spiders; they somehow seem to help keep things in balance - even though they suck.

... Just think - if everyone who played WOW was a nice normal person, and this writer were correct - it might mean the end of console gaming as we know it.

So Thank You ****wads. Sincerely!

Teh Ytop

subnet6

heretrix

heretrix

Schoolimangooli the doogie mag goosie!

TheEngineer

MugenNoKaze

zerokoolpsx

xibis

That way there can be no more free trail whoring to get around a ban when someone earns a bad rep. It will also prevent someone from getting another credit card to make an account from in the event that a particular credit card is blocked from making an account.

XBL implemented a reputation and player review system, and I happen to know from very trustworthy sources that they keep a close eye on those things. I think the main problem with why it isn't particularly effective, however, is that any jerkface can always get his(or her) buddies to rep them back up, effectively negating the bad feedback.

I don't think the current design of this system, essentially to push all the poor-rep people into the same matchmaking pool, is a very good one because their behavior won't change as a result. They'll only experience other players with similar poor sportsmanship and that will have a reinforcing effect.

XBL is a great service but the population is, in my experience, at the very least 70% jerks. If MS wants to grow a larger casual/non-gamer crowd, they need to take the gamer community and mainstream perceptions into account.

Right now it just seems like they will take money from everyone, regardless of how they conduct themselves. XBL is already a disreputable dive bar with a cover charge, despite selling great drinks. MS can do a lot to change the behavior of its patrons and draw in a larger and more well behaved crowd, but they need to take this way more seriously than they have so far.

Ma1agate

Tetelestia

too many gamers want to be the prodigy that can pick up a stick and be the best in record time regardless of what the game is. but these people can't accept the realty that there's always someone better. it doesn't mean they're not good, but we live in a world where losing is unacceptable. so people will get on voicechat and rip their team but they're in last place in the overall standings. it's always someone else's fault. it can't be they just had a bad game. even Michael Jordan lost. for me , it says a lot to be able to face good opponents online and talk about the great matches and tactics and such. ut3 comes to mind as i've made alot of friends from matches i've won. too bad some people have too much to prove from a simple hobby.

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

lionkitten

Kinda off-topic, but online behavior really can't stunt the growth of single player games, so to me, it's just a convenient excuse for developers who can't create a compelling single player element, and instead shovel out the same fragfest MP crap we've seen in a hundred different shooters.

seafisch

I've refused to ever use the headset for these reasons. None of my friends are gamers, so I'm not really interested in striking up a conversation with some 12-year-old in Arkansas whose "daddy" has a Confederate flag on the back of his pickup.

Or, even more to the point of the post, the 17-year-old in suburban Pennsylvania who's only allowed to be the raging racist that his is under the sublime cover of online anonymity. If MS has any intentions of combating the "underdeveloped manchild" image of gaming, it's got to put its energies into eliminating every one of these turds.

Come on, we know it's a big, fascist, omnipotent organization. It's got the power to do that.

bluetom00

SigmundTheSeaMonster

It would definitely be better if you could put players into age demographics for matches.

tikibomb

gaggle64

Atrius

One of the things I like about Frontline is that voice is only for your squad, not your whole team. That cuts out a lot of crap ... and your side isn't really penalized for people who don't want to voice chat.

jayntampa

Done.

Tuxy79

Pinhead

resistance was the best though. i would play TDM with a lot of my clanmates. we wouldn't talk to the rest of the team, clan members would go to a specific frequency and co-ordinate among ourselves. we dominated a lot of matches that way. i wish more ps3 games used the resistance setup. it's still the best on the console and is feature rich. my only other bad experience was on Live when some asshole got pissed when my lei fei beat the hell out of his cheesy vanessa. wasn't even close. he sent some pretty nasty messages afterward. i had to block him. but not without beating his ass again and with two perfects to boot. i know it wasn't voice chat but it was annoying all the same. it's a shame though, voice chat is a necessity for many games but all it takes is one idiot to ruin it.

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

belo

Played Halo 2 on the first xbox, that was kinda crappy due to the fuds on there.

GingerMohawk

This article also made me think of Hot Shots Golf 5. There is an entire section in the instruction book about online behavior and how to act correctly when you are playing online games. This is probably why they don't have voice chat on that game as of now.

kyosuke9999

I don't think that voice chat is in the slightest the only way for assholes to ruin fun. If a game has no alternative well yeah, no conflict, but no extra fun either. I've seen what people do with and without voice for a long time and it makes no difference in the end.

Someone said that online games made them think worse of people, and I get their point, but I understand that the phenomenon goes beyond games so I don't point my finger at any one thing. I can go anywhere and find an equally depressing level of immaturity. I was naive enough to think Kotaku itself was immune, but I've found that the elitist "idiots" penetrate every level of the online world, and the guy complaining about being made fun of via voice chat for sucking at Halo 3 inevitably ends up being the guy harassing someone for sucking at something they are good at.

It is your classic vicious cycle, so I've long since stopped expecting anything better. Trying to silence things is inherently silly, as the people who get off yelling fuck at you will get off just as much when they are silenced and resort to spelling fuck out with bullet holes. There's always gonna be a way to cause grief. All you can do is allow anyone to turn off any feature as such.

Bobby McPresscott

I honestly feel these n00bs who behave anti-socially towards everyone will eventually be the death of online gaming, or at the very least stagnant its market. Dealing with 'troublemakers' though is too big of problem for Microsoft to tackle - they're everywhere!

humongous_mouse

Best use of voicechat I've ever experienced online? Well, Battlefield 2 is pretty damn good at that, since the transmission is restricted to your squad members. I do remember strategizing and even friendly random talk, instead of the crying and whining.

solar_tf

There *are* ways to deal with this. MS's problem was that initially they were in a land grab, they just wanted as many people to sign up as quickly as possible to pump up their numbers. So they had no interest in imposing real restrictions on anybody. Now that they've apparently hit a wall, they're going to need to concentrate more on the user experience to entice people beyond the hardcore to sign up.

Ditto for Sony and Nintendo, but they're not under as much pressure both because there's a sense that you get what you pay for with them and because online play just isn't so much of a focus. But they will still have to deal with this eventually.

I know at the moment, I won't really play online much because of the idiots, though I usually have ok experiences with Resistance, mostly because it's easy to ignore people and not talk to anyone. (I don't even have a PS3 headset.)

badasscat

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, however, almost every server is full of people that can't shut up. Which is good, really, since it's a tactical game that kind of lends to talking a lot.

Through it all, though, it seems to be a much better experience than XBL. A lot less crap to deal with from assholes. I know that has to do with the initial price barrier keeping a lot of kids out and the current marketshare being less combined with less people actually using mics making the concentration of idiots a lot less, and that it's due to change as more people buy into the system.

But right now, anyway, a lot more civil.

PapaBear434

Word. My exact same experience.

heretrix

While this type of language really doesn't bother me all that much, if it turns out to be the only thing you are saying during the match, it tends to be a complete annoyance.

One of the best experiences I've had online is playing Burnout:Paradise. While you do run into the occasional idiot, generally the people have been great. I tripled my friends list playing just that game..

heretrix

Poison

I think the problem here is not the personality disorders/complexes of people who reguarly play online, but the fact that any previously rational human being, given anonymity and a headset, will take the opportunity to act like a complete and utter ass.

Saying that, there are plenty of strong online communities with a reputation for intelligent and considerate interaction in online games.

qizarate

Yin

I'm pointing my finger mostly at Halo in this case. And don't confuse that with FPS games in general because I just don't think that is the case. When I played the Frontlines demo I was hard pressed to find a person say boo, and while COD4 does have its own jerks it is still far less then anything I find on a Halo game.

PhaseDMA

meleeblub

Even text can get fairly offensive for no real reason, and it's easier to filter that.

Nirual

Maybe the future is Xbox Live style service but with the option of a Wii style anonymous service.

RobTheBuilder

psychobaka

dreamc

Garo

I have a bunch of friend gathered in a sorts of community that has been playing everything from console and computer games online to playing pen and paper RPG over IRC.

Skipping ahead to today, I play almost every game possible together with my fiancée and cooperative modes is something that can make us game a game we would otherwise not even look at. So I would like to say that I'm a person that isvery interested in multiplayer...

...but I never ever enjoy random matches of any games online. Actually, that's a lie, I once had one great match of PGR3 where me and some guy from the UK managed to smash into each other, prevening both of us to even compete with the people still on track. And instead of starting a yelling fight over it, we started to laugh and make silly jokes as we drove side by side at low speeds. But that's one of the few exceptions I can think of during almost two decades of online gaming.

I wouldn't say that the "total fuckwads" (love that comic too, PA really got it right) ruin online gaming for me.... they just ruin the random games and that's why I only play with friends. What they on the other hand probably do is steering the market towards single-player games (since a majority of people still don't play online at all) with added online elements if at all rather than the other way around... and call me crazy, but I actually prefer it that way.

I just it would steer the developers towards more couch coop as well, sine that's what people (and with people I mean me and my fiancée) really want ;)

Seriously though (why stop now when I've already written a novel?), I think more (online) cooperative gaming would probably both boost online gaming and reduce the fuckwads, since such an attitude really hurts cooperation and they would not last as long as in a game where they can spew shit over their opponents.

The Whaleman

XbhaskarX

FelicioLostHorizonPT

There's a difference between being cocky because you won and logging onto a match and immediately hurling racial epithets and obscenities at someone.

One you're entitled to do, the other makes you a great big dick.

PooPooKaKaBumBum

Meeting people within the parameters of any activity does not decrease the perceived randomness of the encounter. Maybe that's missing in my first post. But in our daily life we are trained not to perceive others as people doing similar things. We do not recognize them for what they have in common with us, but we recognize them for their differences. In that regard we do not perceive the other people driving around in their cars. We do not perceive the individuals who dress "normal" (or what we define as normal). We sure know a lot of stories about bad drivers and weird dressers. How come? Are you blind to regular folks?

I never felt connected to anybody buying in the same mall than me, because that alone is not enough of an connector to feel related. I do not remember them buying there.

It takes many more attributes to socially connect. If those attributes are given room to display, then the social interaction might work better. Look at Facebook and/or MySpace. On those sites people can pre-filter their social interactions, thus eliminating (at least from their perspective) any unwanted people. The resulting encounters are perceived more to be personal and, above all, less random.

Ramdomly connecting to online matches will still be perceived as random. Any game is not enough of an unifier. It would be best if the PSN and XBL gamer tags had settings to reflect parts of your personality, such as "likes/hates smack-talk", plays for fun/victory, etc. The game has to bring together the right people, optimize the social connectivity itself. Talking trash should not lead to being banned but being marked, so that people, even if playing randomly, can avoid contact. In real life you sharpen ALL your senses. Games somehow seem to think that playing the same game will magically make people get along. Look at a football stadium, even there normal fans will shun the hardcore fans, will shun the fans of the other team. People don't like it too random.

Asbestos_Underwear

Now in games like PGR3 it was different (a bit) because generally people got on well there and were more mature, however you still got smack talkers and braggers which frankly is not my idea of 'fun' especially when you have to PAY to go online.

On my PS3 now, on stuff like GT5p, Burnout Paradise, Motorstorm I've had far more enjoyment because TALKING is not a large part of it. People just PLAY and work around the lack of comms. COmms are great with friends when you want them but for a lot of games are not needed and just turn every damn race/match/game into an chatathon/bitching session...

I played for years on the PC online before consoles ever went near online multiplayer and we made do with TEXT input which is far better cos it's easier to ignore and harder to come over as agressive/annoying.

Text comms = good
voice vomms = for lan/friends only

I thank god that on PS3 online, not only don't I have to pay for it but I also get to actually play without getting hounded into turning on a headset and responding (when I don't want to - ie if my GF is asleep in the room) or because it's full of idiots i'd rather not talk to/waste time on/get dragged down to the level of.

In short - voice comms are for braggers, bossy fuckers and show offs (on public servers). In private games it's a very good thing to have.

Sharpfish

xxXFWaNKXxx

That's great.

Online idiots are one reason why I have no desire to play online.

Eltigro

thinkfreemind

In fact, almost all human action aims at this very same thing - whether writing a book, achieving something remarkable and noteworthy in some scientific field, composing a song, crafting poetry, working a clever joke, buying a shiny fast car or a huge McMansion.... :ahem: the writing of this post. And make no mistake, the principle reason why people dislike hearing those loud-mouthed jackasses spew their vacuous hateful bilge is that the design, largely apparent only to the subconscious, of their arrogant speech offends one's own instinct for domination and supremacy. "How dare he presume power and authority over me?!" or "How dare he have a willingness to threaten my position and my good thing?" is the thought that obtains in the subconscious mind, having imbibed the churl's rantings. Or another reason why it is offensive may be that upon hearing it, one can't help but conceive a bad opinion of the person, and one might wonder then whether his own participation in such a game that evidently attracts such wretched people will cause him to be viewed by the rest of society as being equally meritless and contemptible; certainly, no one wishes to compromise his standing in society - the very reason why no one who listened to the N'Sync et al. or watched the Teletubbies, if he had any sense or intelligence whatsoever, would choose to disclose this fact to others.

This is called competitiveness and, as I said, it underlies most human activity and especially human-to-human interaction. If you remove the competitiveness that drives this obnoxious behaviour, you necessarily remove a moiety or more of the drive to play the games in the first place. And competitiveness can be good or bad; obviously in this case, it is quite a bad thing, but not so insidious as when it found to be an impetus for bloody conflict or institutionalized discrimination.

shikaningen

You can read the base here:
[www.dtcc.edu]

NETIQUETTE

Todays, most people don't know about the rules of conduct that govern the internet, and this is the root of the problem that cause the degradation of the Signal/Noise ratio.

Theres 3 type of players:
- Newbies
- Oldbyes
- Noobs

Oldbyes sould know and respect the netiquette.
Newbyes don't know the netiquette, but ask about it, and accept it.
Noobs are people that don't know the netiquette, or don't want to respect it.

If you are a oldbye, is your role to know the netiquette, respect it, and teach it to others. Theres always some dudes that will TeamKill, and never learn, but If mayority know the rules and respect it, the internet can be really a good social and fun area.

If you are old on the internet, and don't want to respect the netiquette, you are a n00b, and part of the problem.

Here is some guidance for netiquette on online games:
[www.atmaxplorer.com]

Don't be a noob, learn and teach internet netitquette. Make our Usenet grandparents proud

Tei