Most toxic gaming communities you have come across.

[Chezza]

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

A lot of these conversations have got me really thinking though: what actually is a toxic community? Based on what's been written here, it could be any of the following:

• An elitist community unwelcoming of new players
• A fanboi community that refuses to accept criticism
• An aggressive community that features excessive hate and bullying
• A holier-than-thou community that believes there is a right and a wrong way to enjoy a game
• A community that has in-game cheaters
• An arrogant community that believes liking their game makes them superior
• A childish community who care more about Tumblr art and fan-songs than the game
• A trendy community that only likes a game because it's in vogue

 

Many of these are incompatible, yet all seem to be given as examples of a toxic community.

What's a terrible death? Drowning in the ocean, burning alive, getting eaten by a gang of hungry dogs? Non of those are compatible but all are terrible deaths.

 

A toxic community can be any of those based on your perception of toxic.

 

Although my thoughts on a toxic community is one that has lots of anarchy / bad moderation, offensive language, anger and bullying.

[Teivman]

The Five nights at freddy's fandom and the Tumblr fandom *which is the source of about 99% of the toxicity on the internet* Also Undertale.

[Impie]

I'll copy-paste something I posted on the creepypasta wiki on this subject.

 

Quote

When I was a mod over at Gamejolt the webmaster thought it'd be a great idea to allow any and all FNAF fan games onto the site, with Scott Cawthon's permission. The site quickly gained a rep as the FNAF Fan Game Host, because it was rapidly oversaturated with shit FNAF games, and a toxic community of bickering junior high age trolls who spammed everyone with abuse, couldn't take criticism, and never listened to anybody but themselves. They dominated the site with shit FNAF games so that you were lucky to find an original game once every three pages while browsing the site. They drove people away from the chatrooms and the site itself with their toxic bullshit, brought all their friends and followers from reddit to harrass anyone they disagreed with, and turned the site into a joke that took a couple of years to even begin to recover from. And god forbid if you were a moderator trying to keep their flame wars in check, cos they'd take that to reddit, too, and you'd be quickly singled out by a legion of hateful morons. One guy impersonated me on their reddit group to slander me and turn their entire community against me, and it worked because they were morons who didn't even consider that anyone could just make an account with my GJ screen name and say whatever ridiculous bullshit they wanted. It was a nightmare and part of the reason I left the site.

 

And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, too, cos we had already opened the floodgates for Pewdiepie games. That community was pretty terrible too, but nothing compared to the brats of FNAF.

 

Basically we went through these different phases of toxicity, a new one every year I was there. First we were getting floods of terrible horror games and slenderclones: too many users uploading nothing but bad slenderclones and bogging down the chat with stupidity related to that.

 

Then Slendytubbies was released on the site, and came the Slendytubbies/Hamachi plague, where the chatrooms were constantly bogged down or derailed with requests for people to join a Slendytubbies game, or questions about how Hamachi works (despite resources on the forums explaining it). I shit you not, every ten seconds these kids would derail conversations in all the chatrooms with this shit.

 

Then the Pewdiepie contest, sponsored by the man himself, where the winners would be streamed and reviewed by Pewds. Legions of his dumbass followers flooded the site and used every cheap, childish, dirty tactic they could to place in the contest, and the site was host to infighting every ten minutes. SO many people got banned (I had a rep as the Dirty Harry of the mods, who basically gave one warning if they were seriously out of line before I slammed them with a mute or ban, depending how many times they'd been an asshole).

 

Then the FNAF bullshit happened.

 

Combine that with the usual "site mods are nazis, fuck em" factions constantly causing trouble on the site, and dealing with hackers and cyberbullies, and figuring out who actually made a game that was uploaded there, and who was trying to steal credit for it. Honestly it was still worthwhile for the most part, til the FNAF thing. That was probably the worst thing to happen to the site, and I think it's still recovering.

TL;DR - Five Nights at Freddy's has the most toxic community.

[june gloom]

3 hours ago, Chezza said:

Although my thoughts on a toxic community is one that has lots of anarchy / bad moderation, offensive language, anger and bullying.

A lack of decent moderation absolutely creates a toxic community. I know I rag on Thief fandom a lot but the irony is that the Thief subforums were the most highly regulated portion of TTLG. Unfortunately the rest of the site is equally toxic if not more so, and a big part of that is how badly it's moderated. The rationale is that a light hand on moderation enables for a greater "marketplace of ideas" or some liberal nonsense like that, but what it essentially results in is far-right lunatics shitting the bed with the lights on and everyone trying to reason with them as if they were rational adults and nobody gets thrown out for arguing that the transgender rights movement is a ploy by Corporate America to erase our humanity.

[Arctangent]

5 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

• An elitist community unwelcoming of new players
• A fanboi community that refuses to accept criticism
• An aggressive community that features excessive hate and bullying
• A holier-than-thou community that believes there is a right and a wrong way to enjoy a game
• An arrogant community that believes liking their game makes them superior

I'd say all of these are good examples of what can be a toxic community. It doesn't have to be all of them, or only one of them; anything that facilitates hate and drives away people who enjoy the games is toxic, and it doesn't have to be one specific way.

 

That's why I can't really consider a community with a lot of fans based on fanwork or just trendiness actually toxic; sure, it may be annoying to some people ( who ... are probably actually toxic themselves, considering they seem to want to drive away people who just want to enjoy themselves ), but it's not really cruel in any way. Similar reason why I'm "ehhhh" on the cheaters thing, while that'd certainly drive away players it's still possible for the community to have a non-toxic attitude.

[geo]

2 hours ago, Impie said:

I'll copy-paste something I posted on the creepypasta wiki on this subject.

 

TL;DR - Five Nights at Freddy's has the most toxic community.

From the story it sounds like Reddit was the issue as they'd leave Reddit to go ruin someone else's site. I've heard about Twitter raids where a few hundred people would go random channel to random channel insulting the player / host. They'd be like OMG wow I went from 6 to 106 just to get berated by the 100 people for 5 minutes who would just leave to do it to someone else.

 

One of my original games was lucky enough to stay on the front page of Game Jolt among quite a few shitty Undertale and Five Nights at Freddy's fan games. After that they did away with fan games on the front page. Fan games then had their own section. To make things more interesting, I had a few dozen 4 & 5 star ratings without a single 3, 2 or 1 star. Then 2 weeks of having 5 & 4 star ratings, suddenly in the span of 20 minutes I was given a 1, 2 and 3 star rating. I assume someone tried to entertain themselves by adding those 3 ratings since I didn't have them. This is probably why itch.io ties ratings to users so you can see who left it. Then again the itch.io traffic that I've received is pathetic compared to the GameJolt traffic.

 

I participated in a PewDiePie game jam. The amount of traffic I received was amazing. The amount of new Twitter followers was amazing. The traffic was a few hundred per day before the jam ended... when he covered the game it bumped up by a few thousand. I gained a thousand Twitter followers. Here's the catch... about 90 - 99% of those Twitter followers were spam bots or beautiful women who happen to have under 30 followers. There were even real, non game jam games that were against the rules to enter, but they sure did... just for the traffic. Games that had been made years earlier.

[Baratus]

I have 500 hours of DOTA 2 logged on my Steam account, most of which were matches against bots because I could not stand the whinging petulant manchildren that make up its playerbase. Most matches against complete strangers involved verbal tirades being thrown around at the worst performing players in the match - usually me, picking a support role to try and be useful instead of trying to go for glory like the rest of my team. I had a few matches where I played with people I kind of knew which I suppose is the intended experience because they were actually sort of okay, although frustration was definitely a huge part of the game when our ill-defined plans didn't quite work out. I could probably count the matches I've enjoyed on one hand.

 

Any team-based multiplayer game in which each player's performance determines the success of the whole team just opens the floodgates for elitism and toxicity directed towards anyone whose experience and performance doesn't meet the expected level of "flawless or better", and can quite frankly, get fucked.

[pnptcn]

Out of everything I've played and that includes stuff like Dota, TF2, etc nothing comes close to Minecraft. Something about that game seems to bring out the worst in people. A distant second is Eve-Online for similar reasons. I've had some great experiences with both games but they always seem to end in hot rage, bitter tears and smoking ruins.

[geo]

The more I read about EVE Online the more I want to say EVE Online. Players have killed one another in real life. Others have gone to events to mock one another in real life. Chances are if it involves real money, people will get toxic real fast.

[Uncle 80]

My only remaining gaming community is me and my brother's Worms games via the 'net. That is a great gaming community, and the only one I care to be a part of after i ditched Starcraft (2). Single player 4 lyfe!

[RightField]

I've not been part of really that many but when choosing between total annihilation, warcraft 3, gearslutz & ateaseweb (not games but still) and doomworld, the latter is by far the worst, mostly probably because doom being a game from texas & the gun-loving american medieval population vs the rest of the civilized world stuff. (I'm not really trying to shitpost here so if you disagree please ignore this and don't reply?) 

[Mr. Freeze]

Literally the only multiplayer game that has a non-shit community is the Quake series or Killing Floor 2. I fucking hate HARDKOAR GAMURS so much. 

[Looper]

Easy answer: Heroes of Newerth (at least the open beta :D).

If you think Dota 2, LoL or any other MOBA has a bad community, it is still nothing compared to HoN. Daily death threats, racism, playing on both sides, griefing, friendly fire with certain skills etc. You could make a new account in 1 min (or less) to reset your rating, and there was no report button. It was the Daikatana of communities.

 

Though there was this one case in Dota 2, where I'm pretty sure some dude abused his wife and the baby was crying the same time. The dude was screaming as loud as possible in the microphone and insulting everyone in the team. We still won the match and in the end I said 'We won because of better team spirit' in the all chat.

[Mondobizarrro]

This community may be toxic (well on the multiplayer area at least). But honestly, mainstream fandoms like overwatch, sonic, and Cod are way worse (especially on console)

[Quasar]

The Blood community. Its toxicity follows it around like a deadly trail to other forums and sites.

[Doomkid]

On 10/27/2017 at 8:08 PM, Mr. Freeze said:

Literally the only multiplayer game that has a non-shit community is the Quake series or Killing Floor 2.

1 hour ago, Mondobizarrro said:

This community may be toxic (well on the multiplayer area at least).

I've always thought the MP side of the Doom community was fine, even back when I was a chillum. Like literally any group anywhere there's some bad eggs, but most of the time if you ask for help with something - ask for a match, ask for assistance setting up servers etc etc you'll actually get it. It's been that way ever since I've been a part of it, anyway. Other than the occasional quickly-banned lunatic I don't see anything even remotely approaching actual toxic gaming communities on the MP side of Doom. Any gameplay footage/voice chat combo video you see on YouTube or whatever for most super-popular current gen games contains so much screeching and constant berating of one another. Not even funny and clever, just people anywhere from 10 to 45 just filled to the brim with unbridled rage at all times. The few specimens we've encountered like that in our little MP community over the years are treated like some kind of science-fiction alien being, far from the norm. Totally shit behavior is certainly the exception in MP Doom. #LongPointlessRant #IstandWithDoom #KONY2012

[Chezza]

The fact that DW has a active "post a picture of yourself" thread with no bullying or abuse is a pretty damn good indication of a non toxic community imo.

[Nevander]

1 hour ago, Chezza said:

The fact that DW has a active "post a picture of yourself" thread with no bullying or abuse is a pretty damn good indication of a non toxic community imo.

That is as long as my picture stays out of it lol

[ASD]

4 hours ago, Quasar said:

The Blood community. Its toxicity follows it around like a deadly trail to other forums and sites.

You mean the modders using Blood's resources in Doom wads?

[Lila Feuer]

13 hours ago, Quasar said:

The Blood community. Its toxicity follows it around like a deadly trail to other forums and sites.

It still has a community? 😝

I remember a Kurt guy being bullied a lot for his Blood 2 Resurrection project that he was one-manning since nobody wanted to help him, I have no idea where it is today or if the guy is even still sane at this point. The bullies were apparently ripping him off a lot too for their Hypertension project, which I also don't know what's happened to that since. Yeah I could google these things but I don't care enough atm, just what I recall seeing and hearing for a long time.

[CARRiON]

13 hours ago, Quasar said:

The Blood community. Its toxicity follows it around like a deadly trail to other forums and sites.

I tend to agree, sort of. I talked to a number of long-time loyal fans and they were very pleasant to talk to, but others where so rude and stand offish that I honestly couldn't tell if that was their real character or if they were trolling me.

 

I think being such a small community, and constantly being shit on by Atari and having various modders who rip off their work, it has created a very weary and cranky lot.

 

I am curious though, what instances made you choose the Blood community as your most toxic community? I imagine it must be something pretty substantial for such a small community to tick you off that much?

[Quasar]

On 10/30/2017 at 2:49 PM, CARRiON said:

I am curious though, what instances made you choose the Blood community as your most toxic community? I imagine it must be something pretty substantial for such a small community to tick you off that much?

Me personally, nothing at all, and like the above post(s) mentioned I'm sure there are some great people there. But what I've seen the most of are:

* People being followed around to other forums for the aforementioned bullying and

* Really negative over-the-top reactions toward a friend of mine's Blood engine recreation project.

[Walter confetti]

On 26/10/2017 at 4:30 AM, geo said:

The more I read about EVE Online the more I want to say EVE Online. Players have killed one another in real life.

Holy shit, really?

That's... Pretty disturbing.

 

Anyway, yes, when there's real money in the game people go nuts.

 

Also, what do you guys think about clash royale community? Never played that game, but from what i've seen is highly toxic.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Well people killed others and tried to put the blame on Doom.. Wouldn't put the blame on a game for shitty people who do things like this.

[geo]

13 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Holy shit, really?

That's... Pretty disturbing.

 

Anyway, yes, when there's real money in the game people go nuts.

 

Also, what do you guys think about clash royale community? Never played that game, but from what i've seen is highly toxic.

To be fair there are other games where players have found one another in real life and killed or tried to kill one another.

 

The EVE horror story I heard was maybe more than a decade ago someone hired an actual hitman to murder his competitor in real life. The guy was thrown in prison, but still made $10,000 a day or some laughably high number from his EVE business. Even in prison he still had an entire system and employees in place to ensure things kept going. Its tough to find things that are a decade old on Google especially when people can hire an in game hitman.

 

Then there's the wizard story where a community went out of their way to harass an individual, they destroyed him, extorted money from him, then their leader flew off to whatever fan fest, where he then wore a wizard hat and gleefully told the story of ruining this guy's experience until he wrote a message pleading for mercy as EVE Online is all he had in life after his wife left him, he closed with giving out the guy's information and told others to make him kill himself. It does sound like the player getting harassed was a bigger fish.

 

Here's a video of said speech:

 

Then there are the "war stories" about giant factions going to war, then the smaller factions get in on it because loot!!! Then lone players get sucked into it and drafted, because if you don't fight for them... they'll just destroy you right then and there. It makes me wonder if there's just some way to go offline where you'll be safe or if you're always on or if they'll put a turret there for when you return. The stuff costs in game currency which amounts to real world money.

 

With that all said, I have asked friends who were into EVE online about the toxic community and they said its gotten better to the point old players build up new players to loot those new players once they get big enough. They both explain its literally the game. There's nothing to do, so you just attack or defend.

 

Its all fascinating.

Edited November 8, 2017 by geo

[Megalyth]

23 minutes ago, geo said:

 

 

*I put on my robe and wizard hat*

[NeedHealth]

I don't even know what to say. My words escape me. That is beyond ridiculous and yet so human.

[Megalyth]

5 minutes ago, NeedHealth said:

I don't even know what to say. My words escape me. That is beyond ridiculous and yet so human.

Yeah that guy is slime. I may joke about it, but really, he ought to have that traffic cone shoved up his ass.

[geo]

34 minutes ago, Megalyth said:

Yeah that guy is slime. I may joke about it, but really, he ought to have that traffic cone shoved up his ass.

And not put on his head?

 

I think he's an official something to the company too and those in the audience are members of the company. Its an interesting skew how they can see things in that way.

Edited November 8, 2017 by geo

[Megalyth]

10 minutes ago, geo said:

I think he's an official something to the company too and those in the audience are members of the company. Its an interesting skew how they can see things in that way.

That's even scarier, like some kind of weird MMO cult.

 

I've heard that the game has a ridiculous learning curve as it is, then you have real-life stalkers, assassins, wizards casting spells over a willing audience...

 

It must be the best game ever made if people will deal with that kind of nonsense and pay money for it too.