Gamers Talking About Gamers
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I think the main cause for my misguided ideas about what causes toxicity in gamers is that I’ve only operated off of my own experiences and ideas. When I heard stories, I would interpret them through my own preconceptions about toxicity in the gaming space. That’s not to say that I am not confident in my knowledge, though.
Even so, I wanted to expand that knowledge base — and incorporate the opinions of others in my own community. Here is a link to the survey itself, if you’d like to view it, and a spreadsheet of all the anonymous answers if you are interested.
Neither of them looks super good embedded, which is disappointing.
Demographics
The first half of my survey relates mostly to the demographics of the responders. Here I encounter my first of a few flaws in my survey. I received 65 responses to my survey, but almost all responses came from people in online communities I am a well known member of.
I’m an active member of multiple Discords and Twitch stream communities. In these spaces, I knew most respondents would be my age or younger — but I also knew I’d get a high rate of reply. So, the age data is skewed toward young but that is unsurprising.
I tried to broaden my scope by sending the survey in other places, like other discords and subreddits, but no other location resulted in nearly as many results, if any at all.
I’m also aware that the online spaces I inhabit welcome a high percentage of queer people, so I left questions about personal identity very open. The most common identifications were still male and then female, respectively, but there is a larger number of various non-cisgendered respondents than total male or female respondents.
And, the other downfall of using these online spaces for my results is that almost all of the respondents are very big fans of video games. The spaces are mostly game focused, so I was anticipating this. I thought during it’s creation that this would be a boon, but in hindsight I do wish I had gathered the thoughts of people unfamiliar with games.
I asked about which games people remembered playing first, to get an idea of when they got into video games, and also what their favorite games were, to get an idea of what type of games they prefer. I found that these responses varied wildly, and while there were a few standout games that many people cite as their favorites, there were dozens of unique games. What’s more, many people cited nostalgia as a factor in what made a game their favorite, which was relatable to my own experience.
“Me and my Dad would play over the Christmas period in 2018. Fond memories now that he’s no longer here… he’d be concerned I’ve played it 15 times.”
All of this was important to frame the information and opinions I gathered in the second part of my survey.
Toxicity
Originally my project focused a little too broadly on “toxicity” and “art” as general concepts in gaming. If I could re-do my survey, I would make sure to either expand the survey further, or cut questions related to games as and art form.
I found that respondents were unsure of what I meant when I asked about “art games.” My time in media studies made me forget that the truthfully quite undefined lines between low and high art, high concept and low concept, commercial and independent production, and other important factors.
Because of this, when I asked people which games came to mind when they thought about “art games,” I mostly received answers of games that have very high focus on visual aesthetic, games which are thematically about making art, or games that require literal drawing on the part of the audience.
“…games that focus less on gameplay and more on nice graphics, or games where you can literally make art”
If I had explained the concept better to prepare respondents I beleive I could have gotten more useful answers. That isn’t to say nobody understood my intention; I got many responses of very arthouse games, even some that I didn’t expect. Even among these responses, however, I lacked context for why respondents thought of these games this way.
I wish again I had followed the question up with an inquiry into their reasoning; I suspect that some games on the list were there because of thier personal importance to the respondent, and I didn’t anticipate that. It would be interesting to know for sure, but I don’t feel it would be appropriate to assume.
Arguably the most important part of the survey was about participants experiencing toxicity amongst “gamers.” I was unsurprised to learn that most people had experienced at least some toxicity.
These answers are, in general, not as strongly connecting toxicity to a certain “type” of game as I was expecting. It’s interesting to reconsider my own ideas about toxicity in light of what other people define as toxicity in their reasonings, and by inferring what it means in context of certain games.
No matter the findings, a strong note to end on is that not one respondent found that community was not an important aspect of gaming. Going forward I’m going to keep more in mind the nature of games as a communal art form. More so than many others, I’d say, games are very much about who you play with.