There is a good number of trans players in the fighting game genre. While I don’t actively go looking for opinions, I never hear anything negative. The commentators use the pronouns the players want. It’s nice. And yeah surprising. Wouldn’t think players who choose that genre to be so accepting.
I think some of the more niche games/genres tend to make its community more open and inclusive, since it’s a bunch of people wanting more people to enjoy the things they do.
The moment you get competitive, shit goes downhill hard. From my anecdotal experience with World of Warcraft, a game that caters to both tryhards and casuals, the latter are much more likely to hang around and help you out, or ask for your help, while the former will actively try to make the game worse for everyone, especially those of the opposing faction, ganking low level players that cannot fight back “for the lulz”.
Also, anyone that has ever played in a LAN like setting, with your buddies literally within punching distance, knows that everyone behaves better and are less likely to go full apeshit
The scientists then looked specifically at players of shooter games, a genre often associated with military themes and violence. They found that shooter game players were also more likely to hold inclusive values regarding gender roles and equality compared to the general public. Their views on social tolerance were not significantly different from the average American.
Across every model tested, the authors found no evidence that playing video games broadly corresponds to an increase in exclusionary values. “The average person should take away from our findings that video game players are not some monolithic community,” Pauley told PsyPost. “While exclusionary and vocal segments of online gaming communities certainly exist, and we certainly do not want to downplay that, our findings suggest that on average, video game players hold slightly more inclusive values than the general population.”
So, the same problem that has plagued the internet since its inception: the loud idiots are too fucking loud
Here’s my personal anecdote that supports this.
I live in Pennsylvania, which is considered a swing state, but it did vote for Trump both of the times he won. Pretty humiliating.
AGDQ this year was in Pittsburgh so I got to attend a couple days. It is by far the most inclusive crowd I’ve been in locally, where people can just let their true colors out without constant fear. I think it’s the only crowd where I’ve heard “trans rights” exclaimed and met with cheers. And it’s truly inclusive in both directions. I’m a big old bearded straight cis white guy and nothing made me feel out of place either.
Between gaming communities and FOSS/linux communities, I think it’s we nerds who are so inclusive!
This guy skewed the data, pretty sure:
Unless that game is csgo
Source: I play csgo
Don’t for get dota 2!
Source: I play valve games.
I mean, I’m an old gamer.
I feel like we are one of the worst groups for inclusive language but actually pretty damn good at inclusive behavior.
makes sense,maybe the less inclusive/racism thing comes from your view not the video games you play.
Yeah, woah. What a surprise!
This is much more obviously true in the table-top space, but I suspect the obvious expansion of diversity in gaming culture was exactly what all the awful reactionary gatekeeping crap was about, and why they continue to peddle the myth. I’ve seen similar arguments made that comic books are only for young white cishet men and that publishers are deluding themselves by not only catering to that market, despite the fact that the comics market in the US has pretty much collapsed while the more inclusive Euro and Japanese markets are doing very well thank-you-very-much.
There’s no way this is actually true. Maybe it seems like it because companies want people to look at them and their games more positively but literally every competitive game and then others isn’t.
I dont recognize this but sure, study says… But im going to go with my own experience. :)
Truly the most oppressed class of people 😢
/s if it wasn’t obvious
Metal heads and punks are also really inclusive despite society viewing them otherwise.
and despite a tiny but vocal minority of them being bigoted assholes (for metalheads at least, don’t know enough about punks)
“Nazi punks fuck off”
The Skinhead movement was originally Nazi punks. As The Dead Kennedys said, they can fuck off.
Might be just my anecdotal experience but that seems to be the case for basically any group of people. Edit: typos
Maybe it depends on the subgenre of metal. Every time I discover a new black metal band, I have to research if they are Nazis or not.
Agreed. Most people, generally, tend to be good individually. We recognize we’re all humans. We all get hungry, we all love, we all struggle.
It’s the vocal minority that are bigoted and utilize DARVO just like rapists and billionaires 🤷♂️. They very well may be on a sociopathic spectrum and/or have devolved by losing empathy, which humans evolved to build society and community and thrive together.
Yeah, really good point. I’d say it’s a bit peculiar with metalheads, since it’s a culture that revolves around dark and violent themes, so it makes its bigoted members a bit more visibly harsh or extreme, than other musical (or not) cultures. But this is just me nitpicking, you hit right in the center.
every group of humans has a subset of bigoted assholes. dont hold it against them unless they are tolerated by the majority.
Punks are always having to run off Nazis who want to come to their shows.
Punks yes, Metal heads not until somewhat recentlyish… ;)
Yeah, they are thinking of 2000s xbox live chat. It’s been a while since then.
This study isn’t saying that xbox live users today are better than xbox live users 20 years ago. They may actually be worse. All they say is that xbox live users today hold more inclusive beliefs than the general public today. The community could still be more toxic than the general public, despite those beliefs. And the general public could have become worse over the last 20 years.
I think games these days don’t select for anything in particular. It’s a giant space that caters to every taste. That gamers are more inclusive than the general public could have any of a million reasons, but I think it’s easier to look at non-gamers than try to find any commonalities among all gamers
Also the trash tends to stink the most.
Not really, I’m thinking of literal unapologetic nazis on Steam, gamergate chuds on Twitter, incels on Reddit, mykittens on Discord and so on and so forth. Competitive games suffer from bigotry the most, but there’s still plenty of casual “you aren’t a real gamer if all you play is Sims/Stardew/Animal Crossing” aimed primarily at women, too. And of course it’s currently the wave of nick fuentes type stains that freak out over anything even remotely “woke” that keeps the shitshow going, the GoW situation literally just took place.
However I do think that all of the above is strongly amplified by the outrage content farms, so I can believe when “The authors suggest that hostility might be driven by a vocal minority of players rather than the general gaming population. It is also possible that certain specific online communities reinforce exclusionary behavior, even if the average gamer holds progressive views.”
yah you don’t find a lot of lobbys like ‘good old’ xbox cod lobbys like that anymore. league of legends i believe currently still holds the crown for current day toxic lobbys
Maybe in ranked queues, but I play a ton of the more casual game modes (ARAM mayhem and Arena) and the toxicity isn’t super common to see. Like, it does happen but it’s much rarer than it was a decade ago now that Riot actually moderates things.
I still see calls for eliminating minorities in Steam forums, and not very subtle ones at that.
I always got the impression the only people who use Steam forums for anything non-technical anymore are people who were teenagers when TF2 dropped and never grew up.
Yeah about the forums…
The only reason you actually choose to go there is either for fixing a game bug or a mod.
You don’t go there to discuss the game.
The only other topics there are either horny or toxic.Yep, was looking up a bug. Even if I hadn’t been, it’s still there.
That’s one place normal people know to avoid and is not representative of the whole.
I haven’t used Steam Community Forums for a few years, but when I did, it really depended on the game (and I’m not the type to be playing the games where there those behaviours would become prominent). As someone who mostly plays indie games, I found the odd racist post where it was clear they were trying to find like-minded people and nobody would bite. Also, if I reported something for any reason, they typically took care of it within 24 hours at the most and I never had a case where I reported something get rejected.
It was a choir of angels compared to comment sections on ifunny or 4chan.
All the people who complain about games being woke don’t play any games.
they probably play call of duty or similar…
You dont understand, I simply have GOT to buy and play the new FIFA/FC/Madden/NBA2K its simply so much better than last year’s! No, thats not all I play, of course not. I also play, like… Uh… GTA 5… Yeah, what a story, am I right? Especially when that guy goes “oh shit here we go again”? What a moment. Also that one PlayStation game, uhh, well I forgot its name. Anyway, what’s your Valorant rank?
And they’re butthurt about somewhat woke fanfic of their beloved game.
Chasing that diamond in league.
Who am I kidding, they’re chasing silver.
Nah they couldn’t get to silver so now they play TFT.
In almost 50 years of playing D&D I’ve found that gamers tend to be more accepting of just about anybody than the general public is. I think it’s partly because the gamer population itself gets more than its share of being spurned by that public.
