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The Washington Post Decries 'Toxicity' in Videogames (siliconvalley.com)
This week the Washington Post shared the story of 20-year-old Sam Haberern, who was playing Call of Duty on his Xbox when the other players "started asking him whether he had ever testified in court or murdered anyone."
"They said they were from Maryland and that they were going to come and kill me," he said. By then it was 3 a.m., and Haberern decided to quit. One of the gamers in the party then sent him a message via Xbox Live. It contained his home address. Next his house phone rang, then his mother's cellphone. A message appeared on his TV screen from one of the party members -- it was asking why he didn't answer... Haberern contacted Microsoft, which makes Xbox, via its website and reported what happened. Unsatisfied with that process, he then typed a Reddit post, which would go viral, asking what recourse was available to him. The varied and ultimately unsatisfying answers centered on a common theme: There was no good solution.
Toxic behavior in competitive activities is not a new development, nor is it exclusive to video gaming, as social media users can attest. But its persistence amid a rapidly rising medium -- both in terms of users and revenue -- spotlights the question of why undesirable or, in some cases, criminal interactions have been so difficult for the video-game industry or law enforcement to eliminate. Now, with technological advances in online multiplayer games and video gaming's increased prevalence worldwide, a growing percentage of the population is becoming unwittingly exposed to a slew of abusive acts that are only becoming more visible. While game publishers, console makers, online voice-chat applications and even the FBI are aware of these issues and working to confront them, complications stemming from modern technology and gaming practices, freedom of speech concerns, and a lack of chargeable offenses on the legal side make toxic elements a challenge to extinguish.... Ambiguities within the U.S. legal system have played a role in constraining the efforts of law enforcement during the era of online gaming.
After the death threats, Haberern didn't contact the police, but questioned whether Microsoft was creating a safe environment for kids.
The next day, he was back to playing videogames. "But I definitely don't accept invites from people."
Toxic behavior in competitive activities is not a new development, nor is it exclusive to video gaming, as social media users can attest. But its persistence amid a rapidly rising medium -- both in terms of users and revenue -- spotlights the question of why undesirable or, in some cases, criminal interactions have been so difficult for the video-game industry or law enforcement to eliminate. Now, with technological advances in online multiplayer games and video gaming's increased prevalence worldwide, a growing percentage of the population is becoming unwittingly exposed to a slew of abusive acts that are only becoming more visible. While game publishers, console makers, online voice-chat applications and even the FBI are aware of these issues and working to confront them, complications stemming from modern technology and gaming practices, freedom of speech concerns, and a lack of chargeable offenses on the legal side make toxic elements a challenge to extinguish.... Ambiguities within the U.S. legal system have played a role in constraining the efforts of law enforcement during the era of online gaming.
After the death threats, Haberern didn't contact the police, but questioned whether Microsoft was creating a safe environment for kids.
The next day, he was back to playing videogames. "But I definitely don't accept invites from people."
So a guy suffers harassment, doxxing, stalking and death threats but doesn't call the police.
The Washington Post meanwhile disregard entirely the illegality of all of those things, claim the law is lacking in this instance and blames video games?
I'm not sure who the biggest fucking idiots in this situation are. The guy that didn't call the police, the Washington Post or the antisocial people that would be antisocial malicious bullies in any environment.
Uh, wrong? MANY video games online are full of trollish teenager-tweens who try to out-edgy eachother and think/act like they're all gangsters. To pretend this isn't the case makes you a visible-on-map dumbass, nothing more.
I don't see any numerical data in TFA substantiating this. Is "toxicity" in video games more prevalent than elsewhere in life? It seems a simple enough question, and the fact that TFA doesn't answer it suggests the author simply has an axe to grind against video games, and is using the logical fallacy of a single example to promote his point. Usually people end up making this logical fallacy when they begin from a pre-determined conclusion, and work backwards to find supporting data. Rather than the opposite (look at the data first, then arrive at a conclusion.)
It's unsubstantiated journalism like this which leads to stupid things like parents pulling their kids out of school after a school shooting elsewhere in the country. Statistically, your kids are more likely to be shot outside of school than at school. So you're increasing their odds of being shot by pulling them out of school.
Bored teenagers (or close approximates) think this shit is hilarious. Yeah, online gaming is a toxic sludgefest. But (shocker), it's not really any part of "gaming". Hint: it's the "bored teenagers" part. Games are just where they hang out. Note this little detail:
“It was great,” said Haberern in an interview with The Washington Post. “I was talking [trash], they were talking [trash],” he said, adding that such antics are typical and understood to be part of the culture.
In other words, they were vigorously insulting each other, and he thought it was hilarious, and hand-waves it away as "part of the culture". Insulting strangers... what fun! Apparently, someone didn't appreciate his view of the "culture", and doxxed the dude (his gamertag was probably displayed on social media), then had some fun of their own. Hey, isn't this "part of the culture too?" "But... but... it happened to meeeeee!"
I'm not excusing any of this, especially when it's completely uncalled for by the victim, but I'm long past being surprised by any of it. And no, even this idiot doesn't deserve death threats. But now that our personal information is there for the entire world to see, anyone can probably get anyone's personal info from something as innocuous as a gametag.
I sure wish I had an answer, short of "changing human nature". Something something AI will surely solve this problem... *handwaves*
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It's not the videogames themselves that are "toxic", it's the players.
People can be assholes in multiplayer Solitaire, too.
There's a reason multiplayer games include a warning along the lines of "online interactions are not rated by ESRB".
That's because the interactions among players are not, and cannot, be under the control of the game publisher - and it's ridiculous to expect the game makers to be responsible for the actions of the players.
I wonder, do these same people blame the cell phone company when they get a rude phone call or a telemarketer?
... to create this mess by getting rid of game ownership and stealing control of software out from under gamers since the internet has made fraud and software theft easy as just keeping the software they've produced at their offices.
Dedicated servers and the lack of forced matchmaking would do wonders to de-toxify gaming instead of forcing everyone to play together without any admin tools or ability to run dedicated servers like ye good old days in the 90's.
So I will cry no tears for corporations and their idiot managers for creating this mess.
Uh, wrong? MANY schools, theaters, parks, restaurants, malls, homes, outdoors, indoors are full of trollish teenager-tweens who try to out-edgy eachother and think/act like they're all gangsters. To pretend this isn't the case makes you a visible-on-map dumbass, nothing more.
Everyone has a score, every time someone blocks a player (who they have interacted with), their score is reduced, every interaction they have that doesn't result in a block increases their score. The amounts that are raised and lowered would be subject to tweaking. All players are ranked in order, players can set a percentile cutoff for people who will be able to communicate with them.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
of course. we just had Williams Classics when i was growing up. that was enough. Defender, Robotron, etc. the sort of cool ones were Food Fight, Asteroids, Galaga, Joust, DigDug, Donkey Kong, then C64 was LodeRunner, Stellar 7...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what about swatting how much flat does MS have? the EULA may save them from an $$$ civil payout the but there may be some criminal stuff.
You can play lots of videogames that are not internet connected. No single player game has the kind of crap they are describing.
But anyone looking at chat websites knows that when you connect anonymous people on the internet you get a crap-storm.
The gaming aspect is not relevant, it is the anonymous, apparently temporary communication afforded by the internet that is the problem.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
People can only get what you give them:
1. Limit what you make available.
2. ALWAYS use a VPN, if not a multi-hop VPN.
3. RECOMMENDED use a TOR Bridge or Proxy.
4. NEVER post addresses, numbers, pictures or personal information online.
5. Get off social media and delete social media accounts.
6. Use a good Firewall / IPS IDS solution.
7. Monitor your logs continuously.
The XBOX sits inside your network, so if you're not monitoring it, you don't get to complain about what it's making available..
Counter example: Nintendo's online stuff. Seems very resilient to trolling. No idea how they do it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The largest ISP's go to great lengths to publish accurate information to geo IP services, like MaxMind. Because of the nature of online gaming, peer to peer, it's relatively easy to capture the IP address of the people in your game and then use a geo IP service to locate them down to the city block.
So it's like slashdot with graphics?
Is there a single reason why your game console, let alone random people on the Internet, should know your real name and home address?
I would not share such information with a toy. Heck, even the people with whom I play racket sports in real life don't know more than my first name, and there is no reason why they would need to know more.
...while TK'ing everyone and making Hitler jokes
No police report, no proof, flimsy backstory, it's another Smollett story. There is no way to get an IP and fully doxxed in a matter of minutes from playing Xbox. All traffic travels through the server, P2P traffic is minimal if at all existent so most likely you have to hack Microsoft servers; then you have to hack the ISP, cross reference the address with various (hacking into) cell phone providers databases before making an untraceable phone call all in under ~10 minutes for some lulz? And no adult thinks this is illegal and highly concerning.
WaPo is getting played by their own side like a narrative fiddle in a desperate attempt to get a story out.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I was hoping someone here would address just how that info was obtained and those seem like very real possibilities.
The only other possibilities I can think of are that they took your IP address and managed to get past your poorly secured network and just found all that info...or they already knew the person in real life. Or they have access to Microsoft's XBox User database?
Getting an anonymous death threat from some idiot on the internet wouldn't disturb me that much. Getting the death threat and then their proving that they know who I am, where I live and calling my phone would.
I would definitely call the cops. I'd start with local and work my way up to the FBI until someone took it seriously. Or maybe I should try that in reverse order. At the very least there would be a record of it so if I did turn up dead they might have a clue as to where to start.
Good thing I don't have an XBox...
This isn't limited to gaming. This happens in online forums as well.
You're absolutely right.
You can play lots of videogames that are not internet connected. No single player game has the kind of crap they are describing.
Indeed there are. The last game I played was Rogue. No really, last week I was bored and found it online. I played it about 30 minutes before I was bored again.
I usually play much newer, but still single-player games.
I do play one MMORPG, but it's kind of a joke. Only about a dozen people still play down from a total membership (not active all at once) of about 12,000. I'm the highest level, but my rival has better stats. There's no point in me attacking any other active players (not worth my effort) and there's no point in them trying to attack me either (they can't beat me).
I guess that's an MORPG...nothing "massive" about it at all.
But it barely takes any time. It's really boring. It's all about not letting the other guy "win" now. We don't bother trash-talking. We just slog on.
The funny thing is if either of us quit the other one would enjoy a moment somewhat like Montresor did in The Cask of Amontillado.
I said, "for the love of God!" But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud -- "Fortunato!" No answer. I called again -- "Fortunato!" No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so.
Or rather the heart grows sick at the realization that you're now alone in the game and so what? Now you can have both the best stats and the highest level! Was it worth it? I'm sure the only reason he has better stats is because he pays for them.
But to really make that work, I would have to quit and NEVER login again, not even just to see if the other guy was still playing. Or he would.
"You can play lots of videogames that are not internet connected....
Not much that's been released within the past 10 years. Game publishers are putting out the same FPS or MMO over and over, and selling the user-generated "social experience" as the draw, instead of developing single player content. Artists and programmers are expensive, screaming preteens are not. Of the games that are still single-player, they are getting progressively more dumbed-down and not worth the time. See the Elder Scrolls for a perfect example encapsulated in one series. But the problem is industry-wide.
Lolcow? Lollercoaster? Comedic gold here, folks! And he's got more life advice than Dr. Phil, to boot. Please, proceed with telling me that we have to accept death threats because anything else is censorship. Then we can add political philosophy to your list of accomplishments.
Something really stinks about this story - there's a lot of important missing details.
1. Most big ISPs use dynamic IP addresses, since the world ran out of IPV4 addresses long ago. Anybody with a static IP probably pays extra for it so they can run a server. As a consequence, knowing a user's IP address will generally only get you a real-world location associated with a facility of the ISP rather than the location of the user. This is likely to be miles away from the actual user's location in most cases. Without extra info, an IP address will simply not expose a user - something that has greatly frustrated the multi-billion-dollar music and movie empires in their anti-piracy fights; If the MPAA cannot easily locate a pirate with an IP address, how are we to believe a mad teenage gamer can do it, and why has the MPAA not hired this mythical teenageer who is so powerful in seeking revenge for events in a video game?
2. Even if the so-called victim is using a static IP address, that's not going to automatically expose his real world location, nor his name and phone number and certainly never going to also expose a cell phone number of a relative.
I therefore presume that, assuming the story is true, the so-called victim must be one of those complete morons who is all over social media with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and possibly other accounts and probably posted so much personal info on himself and his friends and his family that a typical angry teenager who hates him in a game could easily find all that stuff, in the short time that such an angry frustrated jerk might be willing to expend. Did this fool use a gaming ID that matched his social media ID? Does he also use the word "password" as his password on all his accounts and will we soon see a newspaper article that recounts his being the victim of identity theft?
Where is the Reddit post?
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
it's the online effect, there will always be some rotten apples in the bunch.
there have been many small, great indie games that had to stop their online part because of abuse by a small part of gamers.
if you want to avoid that, play single player games.
but then people think they are boring, like rdr2.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I first read the Smollett story and thought it sounded like pure BS. He didn't call the cops for 45 minutes, his manager finally called them for him and when they showed up to his place, over an hour after the attack (remember he didn't want to call the police according to the story) he still had the rope noose around his neck. Pure BS. They should have known it and asked more questions before running the story right there.
The Coveington story sounded like pure BS to me too. They HAD the video to prove it was BS and ran the story anyways. Now they get sued for $250 million, they WILL lose that lawsuit, its only a question of how much money.
I am not a journalist. I have better journalism instincts than the WaPo? Nope. The WaPo has a narrative to meet and facts that might get in the way are just ignored as they go into print.
National Enquirer is more likely to print a truthful story than the WaPo at this point. Judge should just award the kids the full $250 million and cause the WaPo to shut down. Country will be better off then.
More likely this brain trust blasts his gamertag all over social media so a simple FB search would give you everything you would need. My guess is this nitwit went full retard, spamming shit like "n*gger/faggot/filthy jew/etc" until people got tired of his shit and one simple FB search gave them everything they needed because dumb fucks like that? Yeah not the brightest bulbs in the box so his gamertag is probably on everything from FB to Instagram.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Video games are a particularly obvious subset of the worst offenders without supervision, which even as lacking in the real world is obviously not present at all in Call of Duty. You're a moron. Call of Duty is full of morons like you.
Basically you're agreeing with me, that trolls exist in video games. Count yourself among them, it's pretty obvious.
Apparently, trolls exist on Slashdot too...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Now I'm curious. What game is that?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
No more than I wanted Obama to. If you think one party is any worse than the other at this, then you're very naive.
Just another day in Paradise
Uh, do you not understand sarcasm? Why else would I use so many memes in so few words?
I'm not actually in favor of bullying to any degree, but I do think we're over-sensitized to it these days, especially while enduring the current 'Administration' in this country (U.S.). Was there any actual credible evidence to these 'threats', or was it just a bunch of misbehaving kids online pretending to be all big-and-bad? I'm not 100% sure, how could anyone be sure?
Real sorry if anyone took what I posted too seriously, it really was just sarcasm. Guess I should have used "</sarcasm>" on it.
This is modded funny, but it really isn't. There are so many trolls and whatnot on slashdot that it may as well be the same thing. The first posts of almost every single story is usually some kind of racist or other bigoted idiocy.
It's to the point where I've configured my settings to hide any comments rated 0 or less, and if an AC responds to one of my posts, there's an 90% chance that I won't even look at it.
I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to put up with this nonsense. I also enjoy playing games, but I flat out refuse to play multiplayer games.
From Xbox -
Turn on the Share my real name option to select which friends you want to see your real name:
Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
Select System > Settings > Account > Privacy & online safety.
Select Xbox Live privacy > View details & customize.
Select Profile, and then scroll right to You can share your real name.
Idiot shared his real name on Xbox........
... it doesn't matter much.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Okay, but don't expect much. It's just clicking links.
http://wastelandwar.com/regist...
(If you use that link I get 2 fuel!)
It's a wasteland for sure. No https, but no ads either (well, 2 static images with links to "visit our sponsors").
If you do happen to sign up send me an e-mail in the game (player #7417) and I can hook you up with weapons and armor.
If you want to mess with them, script your gameplay and see if the admins are paying enough attention to ban you. I think there's only 1 left and I don't think he's paying much attention at all now.
Yeah, random people are assholes. Invite some random strangers from the street into your house to watch tv and lets see if half of them aren't assholes. This has nothing to do with video games.
This is why you stay out of the chat, kiddies.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Oh I agree! Nobody could define roulette satisfaction, but my husband says it is some, but I do understand that it isn't about it.