Being autistic is really hard on a game like Overwatch. Like, I LOVE the game to heart, genuinely, because the game’s global, internationalized themes just come along naturally to me. And if it weren’t for that, I would still hate FPS games to this day. Sometimes, you’re supported, but other times, you’re going to get threatened very badly by others. Some people never really understand how the brain of someone on the spectrum or another disorder actually functions.
Today, I do really need to expose something I got today. I seemed to perform very poorly in a competitive Gold match today, because the other team was targeting me - but they weren’t the problem. My team was. That’s because they were getting increasingly aggressive towards me. When I was being mentioned in the voice chat, I left because I needed peace of mind. So then they decided to rampage all over me in the text chat. They literally have been threatening to rape me, to see my family die, calling me a “little kid”, someone even joked that they had my address and doxxed me (not for real). But this is HARASSMENT.
I do not want to expose their names because that is inappropriate. But likely, this all is a misunderstanding from the teammates in which they do not understand how to treat someone who isn’t neurotypical. And I personally feel like that it’d be a morally correct choice to see if there’s a possibility to add tags to our player career profiles, as well as on the competitive matchup scene if possible or elsewhere. That way, others can understand the context of their teammates and who they are going to work with.
I think there’d be tons of potential here. We can see where else people from around the world are playing with us, we can note down their playstyles, we can look into their personalities, their gender, their main character(s), and most importantly, any conditions they have. The important thing to note is that tags can never be user-defined: they have to choose from what’s available to them. Nationality would be pre-determined based on what nation they’re in at the moment (so if you’re in Australia, you’re automatically assigned the Australian nationality).
EDIT: I think an idea to just at least let us display information about us in our career profiles instead is a safer option, but it shouldn’t be displayed anywhere else to minimize the risk. Again, this is just my personal opinion.
I just think all of us on the spectrum deserve much more love and support than what we’ve got at the moment.