Nice, though the colors made me hope that somewhere amongst the lines, there would have been a, "Taste the rainbow."
I gave up playing with people I didn't know at that point. You either do that or turn off voice chat. Then you don't have to suffer for other people's idiocy (in terms of multiplayer FPS, at least).
I haven't played a lot of online FPS over the past few years, but I don't recall ever hearing anyone use in-game voice while playing Bad Company 2 or Battlefield 3 on the PC. Never got involved in organized play, and I'm sure it's different there.
It made me expect the dark gray and black messages to be more depressing, but they were just as positive as the rest of it. Weird that they would include black in a rainbow in the first place.
The nice part about the 360, and the way it organizes voice chat, is that once you're in a group, all you hear is your group. It broke that mech game, but it makes the Halo Duties a much better affair.
Great study. Since they transcribed all the convos it would be interesting to do a futher analysis on the words used; it would be interesting for instance to see if feminizing (?) terms like "pussy" were used more or less often with the male-voice player, and if gender specific demeaning terms like "bitch" occurred more often than, say, "asshole" to the female-voice player. Just to get some more depth in the motivating demeanor rather than just positive/negative/neutral.
I wonder what girls say to each other in a competitive-yet-anonymous environment like this? Do we also use more gender-specific terms ("dick" vs. "bitch", for example)?
Has anyone here ever been insulted by a girl who wasn't part of your group via voice chat in a multiplayer game?
this seems appropriate to post here. Note that this is not an edit. That's the ingame music. And she's a great hero that I enjoy a lot, so you can imagine my pain. luckily I'm not good enough to win a lot, so I won't see this too often.
Yeah, I just got an email from Hi-Rez yesterday highlighting this character. This was the included artwork:
also while she looks, um, mature, she talks and acts in game like an airheady 15 year old. It's quite offputting. Which is a shame, becuase she's an amazing character gameplay wise.
Once during one of the QT3 group nights playing MAG, we came across the most foul-mouthed trash-talking gamer dame ever. "Motherfucker! Come back here and try to knife me again motherfucker! I will fuck you up! I will GODDAMMIT SOMEONE COME OVER TO THE BUNKER AND REZ ME!"
My ex's girlfriend typically doesn't have her mic on unless she's talking in party, but whenever she plays multiplayer (or even single player on some occasions), some of the most puerile, vile, vulgar trash tends to come out of her mouth, often revolving around the word "faggot". She's an outlier among my female gaming friends to be sure, but she's not a terribly sporting gamer. It makes me pretty uncomfortable sometimes.
I just call everyone a bag of dicks. I also don't tend to do anything multiplayer unless I know who I'm playing with, so really, "bag of dicks" is a term of endearment.
I'm pretty sure the worst is if you're a lesbian or trans gamer, because then you get to routinely hear both misogyny and gay slurs.
As I've mentioned before, I like to go for things that are a good mix of unusual and confusing. Lately I'm fond of "cockmonger", just because it has tones of medieval workmanship to it. It really skips over the sexuality connotations right into personal/business habits. Like the offending person is out there just collecting and occasionally selling cocks (in a stall at the town market, no doubt). Maybe pathologically hoarding 'em. For egregious events, "cockmongering shitface" is great, because it confuses the target into silence for a moment as they interpret it. Gendered/sexuality/misogyny based insults are for rookies.
Hearing the word "faggot" spewed ad nauseum in pick-up multiplayer games really genuinely bothers me. I use the word myself -- in favored company, usually directed toward gay friends who enjoy and employ it as a caustic term of endearment, and having no reservations about the intent behind my use of language. But every time I hear it dribbled in the company of strangers, I lose a little more faith in humanity. Trash talk is fair play, to be sure, but I really fear for the mindset of folks who are capable of loosely throwing around words like "fag" and "nigger" and "Jew" as if they're perfectly kosher in public. And you are in public, asshole. I don't care if all we see of you is an avatar with a gun exhibiting more bravery than you would ever fathom face-to-face. You are in a fucking room with strangers. So it should be little shock that female gamers are often subjects of abuse, because a feminine voice suddenly gives those same people an identifiable mark to latch their anonymous social inadequacies onto. I tend to take it all personally -- even not being directed towards me -- more than I should. Or maybe I don't, because I'm a good polite Southern boy who gets increasingly upset watching ignorant rudeness become the normative in some circles. I'm not adding anything insightful to the conversation, I'm just raging because I don't fucking get it.
ME3's multiplayer is amusingly mute whenever I play it. I don't go up past silver when I'm just fucking around by myself, though, perhaps gold suddenly turns it into Slurfest 5000.
Oddly, ME3 has been an exception in my case. I think the co-op nature and wildly different userbase from Halo of Battlefield Duty helps that a lot.
World of Tanks, you have to enable voice chat in the options menu, and defaults to off. I think that might actually be for the best.
I started playing team FPS with Counter-Strike and learned very very very quickly to use a male sounding handle and not talk. Merely going from LadyGuardian to Cutman got me invites to join groups and such immediately. My score never changed, just my perceived gender. TF2, though I picked it up late, I never had the same issues. I was LadyGuardian, was too lazy to use a mic since I could use character chatter to say what I wanted most times, and it was fine. New CS:GO? Oy. I was one of the complainers on the forum annoyed that I couldn't change my in-game handle without changing my whole steam name. In beta everyone was too busy bitching about the poor movement and recoil to notice the three girls around, but these days I tend to play with bots or just not play simply to avoid the headache. I know I could mute all chatter, but that removes a critical layer of the game. To be fair, I've not played in months and would like to try going at it again with a headset and seeing what happens. Hilariously, the game that people screamed at me the most in? Ghostbusters, 360. Some people just could not handle that I was godly at it. Even more hilarious? The MP puts everyone on the same team!! So me carrying (and constantly reviving) their asses got them rewards, too. Just no pleasing some people.
CS:GO has probably the worst voicechat cretins I've ever encountered. I've never been in a game that didn't have somebody screaming at the top of their lungs nonstop or piping in obnoxious music or noise. The racisexihomophobuttwipes can scarcely get a word in edgewise (though, from time to time, they do).
To be fair, Cutman is awesome: I wonder if there is a study out there related to perceived performance and player name. Also, one for gender and race as related to player name.
Steam handles are often telling of how a match is going to go. People with xX____Xx or adding 420 somewhere in their name usually aren't too horrible to play with. Anyone with an altered curseword to get past the filter is going to be 12 or at least act like they are. Anyone with permutations of 'bitch' or 'rapist' or 'tapirhunter' (more common than you'd think) and I might as well just quit and save myself the /headdesk pounding to come. Of course Cutman is awesome! Also my has part of my last name in it, which is why it was my go to male-sounding handle. And I have a cutman hoodie that I love in an unhealthy way.
It is pretty funny to me that "Sjofn" reads as male to most people I've played with, given it is the name of a goddess. It's the lack of vowels, I am sure of it. It may also be the real reason no one yells at me in TF2, no one knows how the fuck to say it!
