Wil Wheaton: Anonymous trolls are destroying online games

[ZLoth]

From Washington Post:

Wil Wheaton: Anonymous trolls are destroying online games. Here's how to stop them.

"On the internet,"  says the iconic New Yorker cartoon, "nobody knows you're a dog."  It's a joke, but it's also a problem. More venom than ever before is flowing from behind the cloak of anonymity, where people remain entirely unaccountable for their words and deeds. Recently, random men used the anonymity of a huge city like New York to harass actor Shoshana Roberts while she walked the streets of Manhattan. Unnamed users of Ask.fm bullied a British 18-year-old until she killed herself last year. This is especially true inside the gaming community, where female developers like Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu were forced from their homes by credible, anonymous threats. Feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian has canceled public speaking engagements thanks to anonymous threats of violence. And activists from #GamerGate are hiding behind user IDs to terrorize women like my friend Felicia Day.

Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society's worst actors. The loudest, most obnoxious, most toxic voices are able to drown out the rest of us–a spectacle that has nearly pushed me to quit the video-game world entirely in recent months. I don't need to hear about the sexual conquest of my mother from a random 12-year-old on Xbox Live ever again.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

I think the trolling problem isn't just limited to the online games, but to the Internet in general.

[Billy F 1988]

Trolls be trolls, man. Just nothing but a bunch of attention whores with nothing else to do but plump up and get lazy all day long. Literally. One name comes to mind with trolling problem in my opinion: YouTube. I can't tell you how embarrassing it was for me to dig in to this YouTube culture where you literally can do anything you want with little to no consequence, trolling included.

So, you want to know how to stop them? Don't become one.

[Zeffy]

Trolls be trolls, man. Just nothing but a bunch of attention whores with nothing else to do but plump up and get lazy all day long. Literally. One name comes to mind with trolling problem in my opinion: YouTube. I can't tell you how embarrassing it was for me to dig in to this YouTube culture where you literally can do anything you want with little to no consequence, trolling included.

I have an intense dislike for the bullshit on YouTube, even more so that people make a living out of making videos that are incredibly stupid.

As an active Xbox Live member for the past 9 years, I can say that online gaming has just gotten worse and worse over time. There's something extremely disturbing about a 8 year old who can say "fuck" more than you would've been able to at the same age, and even more disturbing that you are either a derogatory term for homosexuals, or a racial slur for Africans. It's horrible. At one point, you were forced to hear it all too, but nowadays, you can isolate yourself from that by only talking to your friends. It's no picnic. Online shooters such as Call of Duty are the worst in that regard.

However, you can see that their personality carries on to the Internet itself in the way people post comments, talk, etc. Yes, I did smack talk a shitton back in the days, but I never talked that way off the game. I don't know what happened to parenting in the modern age, but it has clearly become a norm for 9 old kids to consistently curse and beg for the new iPhone.

I'm a hardcore gamer, but I am disgusted with how this trend has turned sweet little boys into savages who can't talk civilized with a stranger over the Internet without referring to them as some insult.

[vdeane]

Something tells me that trolls don't care whether you become one of them or not.

Another issue with online games (MMOs in particular) is that experienced trolls will often repeatedly kill new players just for the fun of it.

The internet has become Lord of the Flies, and we're Piggy.

[algorerhythms]

I've never bothered with Xbox Live or MMORPGs. I don't play with 12-year-old shitheads in real life, why would I want to play with them online?

Then again, I'm probably not the target audience, considering the most recent video game console I own is a Sega Genesis...

[Scott5114]

It'll only become a problem until it starts costing the people running the servers or the game publishers money. Sales are down because nobody wants to listen to the little kids mouthing off to them? Suddenly there's an incentive for the powers that be to shut the little shits down.

[adventurernumber1]

I have a strong dislike for gaming trolls. Do they not have anything better to do with their time? On websites like Roblox where you can play games and have in-game chat with people all across the country/world, trolls are plentiful. I have played games on Roblox before, and I will not lie, there are a lot of actual good, mature, fun people on games sometimes, myself included. Then you have trolls & hackers and all sorts of people that can troll in any way imaginable, whether it be spamming the chat log, consistently trying to push a roadgeek off the road when he/she is trying to drive on a realistic road *cough* far too many times that one has happened *cough* spawn-killing on a shooting game, and etc. etc. etc.

I agree with Scott that this isn't causing an actual problem, despite millions of people getting pissed because of trolls, so I doubt much would be done about something like this.

But it's true, as said, that you can prevent it in one way by not joining this squad of trolls. I personally certainly will not, no matter where it be. Roadgeeking on virtual roads is a hayload more fun than preventing others from doing so.

[vdeane]

I agree with Scott that this isn't causing an actual problem, despite millions of people getting pissed because of trolls, so I doubt much would be done about something like this.

I wouldn't phrase it that way.  It's an actual problem, it's just not a problem the company has an incentive to address.

[Billy F 1988]

That in itself is what gets me a lot. It's like most websites and gaming servers have become a cess pool of trolls who think they're non-chalant on the outside, but clearly are messed up in their heads inside with how they compile the biggest pile of garbage this current Internet generation has been experiencing lately. And yet, these web sites and gaming servers offer the freedom to be accessible anywhere by these trolls. This isn't becoming an incentive to address. It is the need to stop trolling dead in its tracks.

I personally had a YouTube account at one time and subjected myself to the trolling after talking some smack about a couple of individuals. I must tell you the kind of smack I received was none too pleasing and with that, it made me avoid YouTube completely as far as communicating with other YouTubers go. It's just too much of a hassle. Really the only way to stop this from getting worse is by not becoming one in the first place. Some are saying to flat out ignore them, which, actually, in my opinion, only makes the situation worse. and reacting to them just worsens the situation further.

I know Xbox Live and PSN can't do diddly dink to get rid of gaming trolls. Once they address one troll, more will propagate exponentially.

[Laura]

Gamer gate is a huge problem. It is NOT okay to threaten people like that, particularly women. I haven't been keeping up with it much other than what my friend (who happens to be an Internet pop song reviewer) Todd in the Shadows has posted against it on his twitter account. It's beyond immature nonsense if it is affecting people in real life.


iPhone

[Zeffy]

whether it be spamming the chat log, consistently trying to push a roadgeek off the road when he/she is trying to drive on a realistic road *cough* far too many times that one has happened *cough* spawn-killing on a shooting game, and etc. etc. etc.

Most of those fall under griefing, not trolling. Trolls are the people who constantly go out of their way to fuck with you non-stop. You know, the ones who mock you, the ones who... (crouch and uncrouch in FPS repeatedly simulating a rather sexual motion), the ones who will consistently curse at you, etc. Those are trolls. Roblox has absolutely nothing compared to what you can find in blockbuster titles like Call of Duty.

[Pete from Boston]

Why are you saying it like that?

[Duke87]

Anonymous trolls are destroying online games. Here's how to stop them.

Ignore online mode and play your games offline? That's what I do.

You could also take Nintendo's approach and not allow players to communicate with each other online (to keep it family friendly, in line with Nintendo's reputation). But this does, admittedly, make some very popular features impossible.

[Pete from Boston]

The latest in combatting trolls:

The gaming journalist who tells on her internet trolls — to their mothers

The article doesn't explain how she went about it, nor does it discuss the privacy issue.  Still, this is very satisfying. 

[GCrites]

What's really killing gaming is the narrowcasting of the entire product line to 12-29 year old males. There's too few of them and they have little disposable income. Some 12-29 males love these tense online interactions and everybody else hates them, including their family, spouses and girlfriends.

[algorerhythms]

The latest in combatting trolls:

The gaming journalist who tells on her internet trolls — to their mothers

The article doesn't explain how she went about it, nor does it discuss the privacy issue.  Still, this is very satisfying. 

From what I understand, they were very easy to track down. The dumbasses were sending the messages on Facebook, using their real names.