I've been gaming consistently for 30 years. Managed to do high level jobs, keep a long term relationship going and build a house by hand while bashing up the monsters 5-10 hours per week. Fortunately, most of the MP thing was LAN parties with friends, so missed both the joys and woes of MMO chat. I am active on several quite busy gaming Discords and they are all very civil and supportive. Good moderation helps there, which gaming lobbies tend not to have.
I've kind of dropped off from gaming of late...recent (ish) times saw me playing single player games like Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 4 and starting Starfield. I used to like the Battlefield games, but generally didn't use the microphone to speak with other randos (a hangover from not being loud when the baby was sleeping...he's 19 now!). I half tried linking up with other players on PUBG and also Elder Scrolls Online but that ultimately didn't do it for me. So no, not a social gamer at all me! My son though, he does play with actual mates at times, less the randos though.
It used to be great jumping onto CoD with Moko and H and usually some of Moko's mates. Now if I am playing anything it is with chat turned off, because I can't be bothered with the bs.
My gf's 14yr old son plays a lot with mates, but he also has a crew from the US he has met online that he sometimes plays with when the timezones cross over enough.
Maybe it's a function of age, but I came into gaming as a tween/teenager on the Sierra Quest games (Police Quest, King's Quest, Space Quest), lost touch with gaming for about 20 years, then went deep into an Assassin's Creed rabbit hole in my 30s. As a consequence I never got into multi player games; I deeply resented the necessity for it in AC Unity, because for me gaming was a solitary activity where I explored new worlds and met new characters. Almost like reading a book! Who knew?
Stories of the dark side of the multi player chats was starting to emerge around this time too, which didn't make it especially attractive to a female gamer when all I wanted to was to engage with the game and not some snot nosed pre-pubescent 12 year old with opinions.
I have nothing useful to say about gaming, but I must object to the characterization of your productivity as “spotty.” Your publishing record and the other activities you mention on this blog suggest that your productivity is exemplary. BTW, I have downloaded The Complete (but little) Book About Procrastination, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. I will, soon.
I've been an online gamer for more than 20 years. I started out playing Quake and Quake 2 over dialup. I played WoW since release.
And you're right. Chat sucks now. When it was new, a lot of it was driven by novelty. In the early days of WoW, I'd chat in ventrilo servers with people from everywhere. Over time, that dropped off. WoW provides an ingame voice chat (that no one uses). The fragmentation of the community into guilds using their own discord servers is nearly complete now. In newer games, people will generally stick to established meta-guilds that might span several games.
Trolls dominate most of the text chat channels in games, especially in the FPS (first person shooter) sphere. And they are mostly young men spouting racist, misogynistic crap.
The only time I haven't see this recently was in Helldivers 2. Players were more interested in spreading Super Democracy throughout the galaxy and crushing the fascist automaton threat. And the voice chat was great (it's integrated into the game) and a lot pf PUGs were really fun. Until the trolls came - but they didn't troll by spewing hate. They called in airstrikes on you, team killed you, etc. That reduced the fun of the game. Now we spread democracy from the barrel of a flamethrower with a small group of mates.
Oddly enough, my main source of online gaming camaraderie is Sims4, a notoriously single player game. The argument around what is real gaming aside 😉, it is a game with a rich community, collaborative ventures, sharing, and player initiated competitions.
As someone who is late to the party (lets say I understand the risk of productivity suck) only tends to play “battle royale” type games with “RL” friends, I assumed gamers were still experiencing the social interactions I’ve always associated with the stereotype. To hear otherwise is disappointing. All the “isms” aside, that seemed an important aspect for people who may not feel kinship among the gen pop.
I play Call of Duty and Delta force but the mic and chat function is off. I like the random gameplay but the talking leaves me cold. I'm not here for friends but for the flow and the music I play. But it's always fun to occasionally hear people say FFS Captain Craptacular and rage quit
I've been gaming consistently for 30 years. Managed to do high level jobs, keep a long term relationship going and build a house by hand while bashing up the monsters 5-10 hours per week. Fortunately, most of the MP thing was LAN parties with friends, so missed both the joys and woes of MMO chat. I am active on several quite busy gaming Discords and they are all very civil and supportive. Good moderation helps there, which gaming lobbies tend not to have.
I've kind of dropped off from gaming of late...recent (ish) times saw me playing single player games like Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 4 and starting Starfield. I used to like the Battlefield games, but generally didn't use the microphone to speak with other randos (a hangover from not being loud when the baby was sleeping...he's 19 now!). I half tried linking up with other players on PUBG and also Elder Scrolls Online but that ultimately didn't do it for me. So no, not a social gamer at all me! My son though, he does play with actual mates at times, less the randos though.
It used to be great jumping onto CoD with Moko and H and usually some of Moko's mates. Now if I am playing anything it is with chat turned off, because I can't be bothered with the bs.
My gf's 14yr old son plays a lot with mates, but he also has a crew from the US he has met online that he sometimes plays with when the timezones cross over enough.
Maybe it's a function of age, but I came into gaming as a tween/teenager on the Sierra Quest games (Police Quest, King's Quest, Space Quest), lost touch with gaming for about 20 years, then went deep into an Assassin's Creed rabbit hole in my 30s. As a consequence I never got into multi player games; I deeply resented the necessity for it in AC Unity, because for me gaming was a solitary activity where I explored new worlds and met new characters. Almost like reading a book! Who knew?
Stories of the dark side of the multi player chats was starting to emerge around this time too, which didn't make it especially attractive to a female gamer when all I wanted to was to engage with the game and not some snot nosed pre-pubescent 12 year old with opinions.
I have nothing useful to say about gaming, but I must object to the characterization of your productivity as “spotty.” Your publishing record and the other activities you mention on this blog suggest that your productivity is exemplary. BTW, I have downloaded The Complete (but little) Book About Procrastination, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. I will, soon.
Me too, but also, me neither.
Have to wonder if the text says something along the lines of: whatever you did to finally open this book, keeping doing that, but without the delay.
I've been an online gamer for more than 20 years. I started out playing Quake and Quake 2 over dialup. I played WoW since release.
And you're right. Chat sucks now. When it was new, a lot of it was driven by novelty. In the early days of WoW, I'd chat in ventrilo servers with people from everywhere. Over time, that dropped off. WoW provides an ingame voice chat (that no one uses). The fragmentation of the community into guilds using their own discord servers is nearly complete now. In newer games, people will generally stick to established meta-guilds that might span several games.
Trolls dominate most of the text chat channels in games, especially in the FPS (first person shooter) sphere. And they are mostly young men spouting racist, misogynistic crap.
The only time I haven't see this recently was in Helldivers 2. Players were more interested in spreading Super Democracy throughout the galaxy and crushing the fascist automaton threat. And the voice chat was great (it's integrated into the game) and a lot pf PUGs were really fun. Until the trolls came - but they didn't troll by spewing hate. They called in airstrikes on you, team killed you, etc. That reduced the fun of the game. Now we spread democracy from the barrel of a flamethrower with a small group of mates.
For Super Earth!
Oddly enough, my main source of online gaming camaraderie is Sims4, a notoriously single player game. The argument around what is real gaming aside 😉, it is a game with a rich community, collaborative ventures, sharing, and player initiated competitions.
As someone who is late to the party (lets say I understand the risk of productivity suck) only tends to play “battle royale” type games with “RL” friends, I assumed gamers were still experiencing the social interactions I’ve always associated with the stereotype. To hear otherwise is disappointing. All the “isms” aside, that seemed an important aspect for people who may not feel kinship among the gen pop.
I play Call of Duty and Delta force but the mic and chat function is off. I like the random gameplay but the talking leaves me cold. I'm not here for friends but for the flow and the music I play. But it's always fun to occasionally hear people say FFS Captain Craptacular and rage quit