How we can navigate Online Toxicity

Last updated on 26 May 2025

In the last couple of issues we talked about Virtual Photography and how you can use it as an entry point to getting more comfortable with sharing your gaming experiences online.

However, a big factor to why players avoid online is because of how toxic gaming communities have become.

Online gaming has always been kind of toxic, but back when it first launched you only had to deal with that player for one match where in most cases you were able to mute that player which thankfully is still possible. Unfortunately with the advent of social media, the majority of players and even the dev studios have started using external services like Discord and Reddit to garner communities, that toxicity has escaped the confines of the game.

Okay yes, I know forums were popular back then, but it was so much easier to just avoid those sites and everything associated with them. While it's also possible to avoid social media, your news outlets, friend's posts, and the mad ramblings of a stranger are all mixed together making it a lot more difficult to reduce your exposure to the negativity.

"The big difference now, which is horrifying, is the amount of threats and rude behaviour that people in the studio are getting from some really shitty individuals within the community," Johan Pilestedt, Arrowhead in reference to Helldivers 2.
- Quote pulled from gamesindustry.biz interview

I know a large amount of players are comfortable using in game chat, jumping into a Discord server, or interacting with others on the internet in general, but it's honestly something that I don't miss in my games because of the toxicity and elitism that often exists. Pushing away new players and even preventing experienced players from returning to the game.

Developers need to create more non-verbal/text chat communication systems

For those reasons, I greatly appreciate when developers take the time and effort to create intuitive communication systems that don't require chat. I will say that I am terrible at Apex Legends and the nature of competitive games will bring a lot of super serious players who are just rude towards lower skilled players. While that may not be the reason, the developers at Respawn spent time playing the game without chat and ended up developing the impressive pinging system the game uses.

Fun fact: We playtested for a month with voice comms off and fake names to simulate playing with random people, and that allowed us to feel things out in an authentic way. Awesome to see folks using and enjoying Smart Comms! https://t.co/biRUBQ1l3o
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) February 6, 2019

Developer post about Apex Legends' Smart Comms system.

I'm sure there are other examples of non-verbal, non-text communication systems but the Smart Comms system in Apex Legends is the one that I personally have experience using and it should be used as a starting point for a lot of developers.

Many games implement emotes or set messages which are fine for what they are but emotes take you out of the action and the messages require you to shift your focus off to the side of the screen to read it. Because these messages are pre-made, they don't always fully speak to what you're trying to do.

Games like Monster Hunter allow you to change these set messages, but that means you have to take some time to make a message for every situation when in reality a ping/marking system is far more effective and faster to comprehend. Especially in games that rely heavily on teamwork and fast thinking.

Verbal and text chat is just one element

I've been rambling on about communication in games, but there's another variable...griefing. Unfortunately this one is a lot more difficult to handle. Most games allow you to report players for griefing among other offences like cheating. Of course you have people who are just sore losers and report people because they're mad and it makes it difficult for companies to determine if they're legitimate claims or not. Which as much as the big guys would hate me to say this, but companies need to invest more into moderation but we all know they won't do that.

I'm not saying we need to get rid of voice chat or external gaming communities, because there are great communities out there, but the novelty of voice chat in games ran out along time ago and it seems like every month you see an article or a study about toxicity in gaming. We need more variety and safer ways in how we communicate in the gaming sphere.

It isolates players, ruins experiences, and much worse.

If you're new here and discovered Gaming Alone/Together through this issue and don't completely know what this is all about, you should go back and check out this issue.