Things aren’t quite what they used to be…
Yesterday, I was unfortunate enough teabagged right in the middle of my face.
Luckily enough, though, this was in an online multiplayer match so months of drawn out therapy were largely unnecessary. It did, on the other hand, beg a rather pressing question; where have all our manners gone? I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to find dependable and clean online matches increasingly difficult to come by nowadays.
A quick trip into Xbox Live or the PSN, for instance, will reveal that a great many players can now boast the average maturity, temper and courtesy of a teething, juvenile shark; just how many matches have you joined to find abuse, foul language and xenophobia whipping between teams faster than a rocket-propelled tennis ball? Too many, I'd imagine. Indeed, Many gamers I know won't even touch the online systems for this very reason, and I’m starting to sympathise with them. With around 70 odd million people currently hooked up to the online community world-wide (23 mil. for Xbox Live and 40 mil. registered for the PSN in early February 2010, according to official in-house figures), you'd think that it'd be easier to find a civil match, right? Going by the likes of Call of Duty, you’d be mistaken.
What’s gone wrong?
Naturally, some will take it upon themselves to blame the 'youth of today’ as - admittedly - it has become nigh on impossible to avoid the sycophantic tots and leering troglodytes yelping and squeaking over the likes of Halo 3 or Killzone 2; I also have no doubt that these rather miserable folk would then promptly go on to proclaim (with a thorough air of infuriating smugness) that “youth violence in the UK has risen by 37% from previous years as of 2008” as if this explained everything, while pointing wildly in the direction of the increasing number of hoodies, chavs and hoodlums roaming our streets with their trousers falling off and a swagger as if they have a flamingo stuffed up their bottom.
While blaming today’s youth for most of Britain’s other problems, no doubt.
On the other side of the coin, many of a Daily Mail disposition wouldn’t dare miss an opportunity to declare that the games themselves are at fault; after all, there have been more than enough studies over recent years to put the fear of God and games into parents and players alike. A good example would be the recent study from Iowa, USA (carried out amongst 130,000 players), seeing as it suggested ‘definitively’ that games increase aggressive thoughts while decreasing empathy regardless of sex, age, or race. "We can now say with utmost confidence," project lead Craig Anderson claimed, "that regardless of research method — that is experimental, correlational, or longitudinal — and regardless of the cultures tested in this study (East and West), you get the same effects."
Nonetheless - and I’m sorry to burst someone’s bubble - but I can’t help but point out that both would appear to be a smidgeon far from the mark here.
For a start, it would be both highly unfair and infinitely closed-minded to suggest that the young are the only problematic users of online gaming services; I mean, we’ve all come across thirty year-olds and up with the table-manners of a flatulent goat stalking the internet matchmaking systems like Battlefield, and to be perfectly honest, there are - quite simply - some nasty people out in the world regardless of what age they happen to be.
Next, there is just as much evidence from perfectly respectable scientists and researchers to suggest that, actually, games aren’t quite the villains they’re painted to be; in fact, many have not only pointed out flaws in the validity of the afore-mentioned test subjects themselves but in the biased nature of the team, many of whom were apparently ‘life-long’ game critics in the first place. That’s a bit like asking David Cameron to write a biography on Gordon Brown, and expecting anything but a pile of dirt at the end of it.
Of course violent games are going to ‘increase aggression’ and ‘decrease empathy’ for a period - so do violent films and TV - but in reality, things aren’t often as bleak as you would be led to believe; a more recent study (from 7th June, 2010) even went as far as to suggest that games are only harmful to a small proportion of the population with certain psychological traits.
“Recent research has shown that as video games have become more popular,” Christopher J. Ferguson, PhD, stated, “children in the United States and Europe are having fewer behaviour problems, are less violent and score better on standardized tests. Violent video games have not created the generation of problem youth so often feared.”
So what’s causing all this bad-behaviour, then?
Personally, I think the biggest factor in this new and sole online epidemic of rudeness lies squarely at the feet of online gameplay itself. No, hear me out; what about the 'high-stakes, all or nothing' nature of the games themselves with their endlessly hostile, score-crunching and stat-bashing tendencies? Think about it - in modern titles it’s all about racking up those numbers and serving your own interests rather than the victory conditions or the people around you and this crafts an experience that revolves ceaselessly about the self like a brilliantly massive, ego-centric constellation of a superiority complex.
Understandably, this could alter the way some folk see and react to games.
On top of that, you can’t deny online anonymity and zero expectations are something akin to a belly full of Dutch courage; I mean, nobody here would know that you’re a spotty, hairy virgin with the general balance of a disabled giraffe or a blubbering, forty-something lump of fat large enough to support your very own micro-climate, so what’s to stop you from venting a little frustration every now and then?
Regardless of what you believe, however, working out the cause isn’t quite finding the cure; so, what’s to be done? Well, as famous explorer Edmund Hilary once said, “it is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”.
A fine solution if ever I heard one.
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