Git Gud: The "Why" of Toxicity in Gaming
A Excerpt from "Get in the Game" on Understanding the Less Savory Parts of Gaming
Legendary game designer Ron Gilbert surprised the gaming world by announcing a revival of the much beloved Monkey Island adventure games. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished seven-fold, the gaming community did what it (sadly) does best on occasion: Trash talked it to the point of Gilbert having the imminently reasonable response of no longer providing updates on development.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Pockets of toxicity are a sad reality in gaming, one which is much bemoaned by developers and (arguably) the larger gaming community in equal parts. The notoriety of such behaviors has given many a marketer pause when considering integrations into the gaming ecosystem, due in part to the rather superficial way in which we discuss toxic “gamers” and gaming communities (often with a dismissive “gamers are jerks”).
As is the case with so many things in life, the why of this toxicity is considerably more nuanced. My new book on orienting marketers and business decision makers to the opportunities in gaming, Get in the Game, is out in just a few short weeks - below is an excerpt from Chapter 4 on toxicity and representation in gaming, which provides more background on the topic.
Excerpt from Chapter 4 of “Get in the Game: How to Level Up your Business with Gaming, Esports, and Emerging Technologies”
The “chat” in certain games or gaming communities (the voice or text discussion overlayed the gameplay) has occasionally become a thing of legend, or more accurately, notoriety. Exchanges in certain corners of the gaming community, ranging from specific games to generalized platforms like Twitch, are filled with the occasionally good-hearted ribbing (“git gud” is an invitation for players to “get good,” or improve upon poor play) one might expect from competitive chatter, but often tetters into the realm of excessive obscenities and slurs directed at specific groups—notably women and minorities. The mere presence of a female voice on a gaming chat-enabled service like Xbox Live evokes upwards of three times as much verbal abuse as a male voice.[i]
It’s probably unsurprising that as a result, certain aspects of gaming have a representation problem. Moreover, this is in some respect relished by small, virulent parts of the gaming community that hold specific beliefs around what does or does not constitute a game, what is or is not a proper way to play a game, and therefore who is or is not a “gamer.” The participatory culture around the fandom of gaming, as discussed in the preceding chapter, entails a high degree of ownership over the medium by portions of the fandom. When this ownership is mixed with what psychologist Christopher A. Paul calls “toxic meritocracy” built into how games are designed and brought to market, it is a particularly noxious mix.[ii]
Paul argues that gaming is a place where the ideology of meritocracy runs rampant, seemingly unaware that accumulated and transferable skills from game to game, enabled by game designers that had for many years designed games with an ethos of making them “for gamers” as the only viable demographic for game play. The resultant culture is one where skill within the game is privileged above all else, without awareness for why others might not have the same familiarity with game systems to be similarly “skillful.” The period in the 80s-90s where gaming was specifically focused on young men essentially cemented that same group, who were affluent and privileged enough to play games in their free time, as the default “gamer” group. [iii]
Skillful game play was encouraged by design—early arcade and console games from this period were designed to kill you quickly either as a means towards monetization (defeating the player would often yield another quarter)[iv] or memory limitations (games could be small in size so long as it was hard to make much progress). Merit in games was thus assessed by those that had the economic ability and cultural permission or encouragement to play games. Those same game-players would thus go on to be game designers, creating what was essentially an echo-chamber of this set of “gamers” making games in the vision and of the design that most conformed to these sensibilities, including characters and themes that would be interesting and relatable to this same set of young, affluent, and predominately white men.[v]
As gaming rose in prominence, and new populations had access and monetization methods that conformed better with their needs and expectations in gaming (as discussed in the earlier chapter on the rise of gaming), this formerly insulated community came under threat. In particular, many mechanisms in free-to-play games were reviled by legacy gaming fans as they represented a departure from supposedly merit-based skill norms—thus, free-to-play mechanisms that provided a material advantage (for example, things like boosters, etc.) were derided as not real games, nor those that played them real “gamers.” Ironically, counter to this fetishization of masculinized skill amongst legacy gamers, the most acceptable mechanism for free-to-play from this group comes in the form of purchasing skins and other cosmetics or clothes for their virtual avatars in games like League of Legends.
The vitriol from this group fostered a complicated relationship with women in particular, who were more likely to find the themes and mechanisms of free-to-play games (predominately on mobile phones) to their liking, including lighter and more positively-oriented aesthetics and settings more often found in casually-oriented games. However, women resisted being associated with anything “casual” because of the negative implications in the more “traditional” gaming culture.[vi] But even when they enter these more traditionally skill-based game spaces, the reaction is hardly welcoming. As noted above, female voices in these game environments were lighting rods for harassment, a phenomenon that was particularly amplified when the harasser is losing.[vii] Here too, the reaction is one of threat—in this case, around a concept TL Taylor associates with competitive gaming known as “geek masculinity.”
Geek masculinity is essentially a counter to traditional sports or athletic cultures as a requirement for masculinity, inclusive of the physical activity of the sport itself. It is facilitated by interest in competition and relationships in alternative formats like video games. In this light, dominance is asserted by demonstration of knowledge and competency or skill within these environments. As women increasingly enter these spaces, they are fundamentally up-ending these systems of exclusion by threatening the status markers that men were relying upon to secure their masculinity.[viii] In this way, a subculture that has occasionally been the refuge for social outcasts adopts behaviors that are as exclusionary as the ones they may have faced in popular culture, all for the purposes of preserving identity around a fandom through which they have high emotional and personal attachment.
When developers and journalist contribute to the othering of these groups and modes of play, particularly in the assessment of how skill is a superior mechanism for assessing games, the attitudes of these players are reified by the larger social and cultural constructs within the gaming ecosystem.[ix] The previously discussed example of Gamergate[x] once again serves as a poignant example, where female developers and journalist were largely under siege by the toxic elements of the gaming community for raising issues of inclusivity and making spaces for women in gaming. The reactions ranged from verbal abuse to physical threats against these women, thrusting the problem of representation and toxicity within gaming into the limelight, which reverberates even today.
In summary, the increased presence of those not conforming with the idealized “gamer” challenged the very foundational identity of those that consider themselves a “gamer,” leading to a high degree of toxicity and therefore considerable barriers for those not conforming with this identity (women, minorities) to integrate in a meaningful way. Toxic behaviors proliferate in gaming platforms due to the often deindividualized and anonymous ways in which communications can occur on these platforms—without fear of reprisal, the ugliest beliefs someone might hold are free to come to fruition.
However, it is not unreasonable to say that things are improving, and all hope is not lost across the potential downsides of gaming and undesirable elements of the game community. Much of this due to the efforts of both game publishers and gaming enthusiasts.
For a broader discussion on other complicated topics in gaming (including violence and addiction) in addition to a roadmap to understand opportunities in gaming and esports, preorder Get in the Game wherever books are sold.
[i] Jeff Kuznekoff and Lindsey Rose, “Communication in Multiplayer Gaming: Examining Player Responses to Gender Cues,” New Media & Society 15, no4 (2012): 541-56
[ii] Christopher A. Paul, The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2018)
[iii] Carly A. Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 188
[iv] Christopher A. Paul, Free to Play: Mobile Video Games, Bias, and Norms (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020), 9
[v] Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design 2nd Ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2013)
[vi] Amanda Cote, “‘Casual Resistance: A Longitudinal Case Study of Video Gaming’s Gendered Construction and Related Audience Perceptions,” Journal of Communication 70, No6 (December 2020): 819-841, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa028
[vii] Kyle Orland, “Study: Online Gaming “Losers” are More Likely to Harass Women,” Ars Technica, July 21, 2015. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/study-online-gaming-losers-are-more-likely-to-harass-women/
[viii] T. L. Taylor, Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012), 120-121
[ix] Christopher A. Paul, Free to Play: Mobile Video Games, Bias, and Norms (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020), 169
[x] Caitlin Dewey, “The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/