And in this case do you understand how next to nobody is losing then? Blizzard gets the money from alternate accounts and these people constantly keep getting banned and people who ARE only using slurs because they think they can get away with it will stop. So why oppose it?
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Well, they still stay on your nerves, so you achieved nothing.
It’s for a reason, that one of internet rules is “don’t feed the trolls” - same applies to other undesirable elements. They want attention, and you are giving it to them.
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Because somebody said some awful things to you, somehow the devs support this behavior? I don’t understand the correlation.
Also good luck finding an online multiplayer title where people aren’t awful sometimes.
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Yeah, somehow devs are responsible for brainwashing their players into being nice.
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We’ve achieved a lessening of instances of toxicity. Not EVERYONE is in it for the antagonism, a % of them are doing it because they think they can get away with it due to the anonymity of the internet. You cannot argue that some people don’t do things just because they think they won’t get punished. It happens all the time and creating a fear of punishment will lessen it.
I don’t see a downside to punishing these people at all. Your argument is that they will continue to get punished … so be it. And the deterrent will be there for those who aren’t committed to it. A reduction will happen. Just like attitudes towards these things in “real life”. The change all started because people stopped just letting that crud slide and turned around and said “That is not cool, howabout you stop?” in so many words.
You’re basically arguing that criminals will continue to commit crimes so we shouldn’t bother enforcing laws.
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My argument is more about hardening offenders, making them evolve. If you are getting punished just for casual slur, may as well go “all in”, since you can’t go any further, than ban.
Into what? Are you afraid the trolls will eventually become script kiddies and attack people?
People are already using words we find so abhorrent we can’t even say them. I don’t think it’s gonna get “worse”.
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More like they will become more experienced in angering others. Racist, sexist, etc. insults are only first step.
Please tell me how insults can get worse than telling others to commit suicide or calling them derogatory words related to aspects of themselves they were BORN with.
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I don’t understand what this individual wants them to do. My understanding is the nastiness happened in voice chat? Do they want the devs to have an algorithm constantly scanning all voice comms and autobanning people when it detects certain words and phrases? This is impossible for obvious reasons.
Do they want their reports to have outsized importance? They want total authority to ban people they find offensive? That also doesn’t work for obvious reasons.
So what precisely do they want except to complain and repeat the tired line about “people are terrible etc etc”(you too, are a person). If you want to vent, that’s fine, but it hardly gives you the moral high ground.
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Oh, they can. More creative form of harassing others is manipulating players into fighting each other(basically, classic “trolling”). I am not very experienced in that, but it works even in places with moderation.
I hardly think someone who’s dropping N bombs and F slurs in chat is the antagonistic megamind you portray here.
From my experience these people mostly find the one thing they are incredibly afraid of or afraid of becoming and use that. That’s it. Xenophobic? Racial slur. Insecure about their sexuality? Homophobic dribble. Unsure of their own capacity? Calling people stupid or unskilled.
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But you want them to become such “antagonistic megamind”. Because it’s moderation and bans, that encourage such evolution.
It’s like treating disease - you eradicate most, but they get replaced by more elusive and resilient ones.
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Bans come in waves. It’s not instant. Be patient. It will happen.
I challenge that. hardcore. Just because it leaves the truly dedicated trolls exposed does not mean it does not reduce the overall undesirable population and attitudes.
Your entire argument is falling back further and further. The culture needs to change and in order to do it the behavior must change on both sides. Making it unpleasant or annoying to be a jerk is the first step and that won’t be happen if we’re apathetic to the antagonistic population.
And so now you’re arguing we should just let people have preventable diseases?
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More like you should come up with better solutions.
Such as? Ignoring them doesn’t do anything.
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It does, it gets them bored, that they aren’t hurting anyone.
If they got a reaction out of you, they already won.
This is true and (IMO) it goes deeper than that. Honestly, it’s the game itself. The heroes of the game are mostly white and the villains are mostly people of color. Further, heroes like Lucio are just walking stereotypes of how they portray people of color. In America, they always portray us dribbling a basketball, singing, acting, or otherwise entertaining white folks - Lucio is a walking embodiment of that.
Now, I will admit that Blizzard did manage to do an astonishingly good job on Efi, but then diminished her by making her robot act like Hattie McDaniel straight outta Gone from the Wind. The only killer robot in gaming history that basically runs around playacting like an escaped slave “Oh massah, please stan’ behin’ ma barria”. God, I cannot stand Orisa. There’s a point - I swear to God - at the start of the match where Zarya hurls some discriminatory, anti-robot crap at Orisa; and Orisa swallows Zarya’s insult and channels Chiwetel Ejiofor from 12 Years a Slave and says [paraphrased] “Oh, massah Zarya, I’s learnin’ use my graviton charge by watchin’ you”. We’re either the villains (Sombra, Reaper, Doomfist), the entertaining stereotype (Lucio), or the absurd (Orisa); I wish Blizzard would stop putting people of color in the games or at least hire people of color to advise you.
To circle back to the OP, the racism in the game is as wide and deep as this nation. You can’t change hearts and minds, the best thing you can do is block and report. Really, that’s all the tools Blizzard has deigned to give us to combat racism. Yes, this means the bullies always win. You also have to keep in mind that Blizzard has to keep a balancing act. On one hand, they have to pretend to be inclusive, on the other hand, they know their bread-and-butter are young, male, heterosexual white gamers who lack the self-reflection the discern the thin boundary between racism and “being edgy”.
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“Just ignore them, they’ll get bored” is a lie we tell kids so we don’t have to have confrontation. Confronting antagonists solves problems but you cannot stoop to their levels. You don’t have to be “right” you just have to make their efforts unpleasant.
They will not, this along with your argument that “they’ll just escalate” is a completely contradicting statement. They will continue to escalate until they get a reaction. The kind of person who drops that level of hate just to get a reaction is going to keep at it until they get it and they will. From someone because there are millions of people out there and not everyone deals with harassment well. So why not punish them? Because they’ll try again? THousands won’t after losing all their stuff or their access. And if that doesn’t work escalate the punishment. Hardware bans. IP bans. Knock home the point that it’s NOT tolerated and is downright unacceptable.
If they never get to play the game again, I don’t care how much they think they’ve “won”.
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