Thursday, February 23, 2017

Overwatch Toxicity: My Thoughts

Hey Guys, guess I'm going to be doing a triple post this week. This is a thread that I happened to stumble upon on NeoGaf that is sharing information from a MIC article based from a Reddit thread. Essentially, Reddit user "neutrondamage" has been sharing her online sexual harassment horror stories while playing Overwatch and this sparked a number of Reddit users to share their harassment stories.


I want to mention that this specific Reddit user(neutrondamage) has been playing on competitive. A lot of the users who have experienced harassment have mentioned they've played in competitive mode or haven't mentioned it. Nonetheless, just reading through these horror stories is enough to make you want to lose faith in the Overwatch community.

Should this come as some surprise? This has been going on for a while, but we are now just starting to take it more seriously. Want to know why a lot of people don't use game chat? It's because of toxic adults and teenagers who just want to shit talk other players online.

Personally, I've rarely experienced this on Overwatch casual. The competitive mode of Overwatch is where all of the toxic assholes are at. Even though I'm playing on console, there is still a number of people who do still use the in-game voice chat. You're only going to get two kinds of people, one will actually be focused on the game and want to peacefully bring the team together and the other who will criticizes people for not being good with a hero or playing the objective. Hell, some of them will just bring up racial or gender slurs.

I cannot count the amount of times that someone will bring up season rank when they want to argue against you. If you're one of those assholes that actually take the time to look at someone's stats and bitch about them, then you really need to evaluate your life. Not everybody takes the game seriously.

I get it though. People will get mad if they feel like they are on the losing side, but it doesn't mean they have to bitch about it through their mics. They just need to suck it up and take their lose like an adult.

Constructive criticism exists for a reason. Instead of saying something like, "Genji you suck", PROVIDE SOME FUCKING FEEDBACK. It's not that difficult! How the hell is someone going to get better at the game if they have some toxic manchild bitching at them rather than helping them!?

More importantly ,other than just skill, I'm just shocked that grown-fucking adults will make fun of someone based on their gender or race. Why? It's a concept I'll never understand, but assholes like these shouldn't be allowed to even breed. Why should it matter that a woman is playing Overwatch? She's just trying to play the game just like any other man could. Why the hell would you call someone a "nigger" if it has nothing to do with how they're playing the fucking game? People are just stupid.

The Overwatch community was regarded as being kind at one point in time, but it's when competitive mode was introduced that the toxicity level has grown. That's not to say the entire community is toxic. I still like to believe it's a lot friendlier compared to Call of Duty or League of Legends.

Before I wrap up, I want to add a final takeaway. It's okay to trash talk, but there is a certain boundary that shouldn't be crossed when trash talking.
Till Next Time.

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