Author: tomgoldrick
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“It’s Just a Game”: How to Avoid Annoying Your Online Audience to Death
Understanding how your online multiplayer game may be used to abuse your player base by bad apples is a key component to keeping a healthy audience of friendly, inclusive, and happy players. If you find your audience begin to skew more toxic and angry, take a look at your game and what elements may be specifically abrasive when played by someone who wants to ruin the fun for everyone else.
Games are not meant to be taken too seriously. There’s a reason that little league baseball diamonds have signs to warn parents against getting too heated during their child’s game. That being said, it is human to take something one is passionate about to heart. Telling folks that “it’s just a game” is often an unhelpful dismissal of the experience that person is having, especially in instances where the game design itself is to blame for the player’s frustrations. Keep in mind, a developer’s job is to evoke specific emotions: it is not the player’s job to be in the right mindset or react appropriately.
Giving players the chance to chat with one another is becoming increasingly unnecessary as accessibility features progress rapidly. Context specific pinging systems, canned alerts, and emojis offer plenty of chances for players to interact without the chance of them throwing slurs and insults at one another. Let folks communicate through their favorite VoIP application with people they like and keep in-game communication as an options for players to opt in for instead of having it as a default setting.
“I love being an annoying prick in online games, especially when I’m better than my opponent. Do I think that’s a particularly pleasant personality trait? Hell no!”
Bad actors can use more than just communication tools to troll and goad other players; specific game designs can often be abused, if not used as intended, to annoy and frustrate opponents. This is an established tactic in all competitive games, but there is a reason that competitive poker players are limited in how they can interact with the other players at the table. A good litmus test for whether a mechanic could potentially be used as a psychological shiv against others is for designers to playtest with competitive players rather than with other developers. Letting more invested players beat your ass by wiping your mental stack and making you want to punch your monitor can be an effective way to iron out these kinds of tools.
Animations, aesthetics, and sounds can also be used by players to annoy and frustrate others. Anyone who has played a particularly spicy Jigglypuff player in Smash Bros. knows how old it gets to hear them taunt repeatedly from across the stage. Costumes and cosmetics can be specifically tailored to vex opponents just as easily. Mortal Kombat’s fatalities are infamous for causing players to turn off their game in anger. Were they just as bad back in the arcades? Probably, but being online only exacerbates the issue.
There is a long precedent of both games that lean into aggressive behavior and avert negative play experiences through clever design. Mortal Kombat 1 is an example of playing both sides: players can brutally disembowel each other post-match but attempting to tea-bag one’s opponent will result in an innocuous taunt instead. NetherRealm Studios also made the baffling decision to let players chat over VoIP by default. Apex Legends does a stellar job of encouraging interaction between team mates without requiring them to communicate verbally or through chat. Most games don’t even allow randomly matchmade opponents to chat with one another, but even canned messages and emojis can be abused. At the end of the day, there is nothing to replace community moderation, but developers have plenty of tools in their repertoire to avert a player’s influence over others’ emotional wellbeing.
Each piece of your design can and will be used against other players by bad actors if you let them. I should know… I love being an annoying prick in online games, especially when I’m better than my opponent. Do I think that’s a particularly pleasant personality trait? Hell no! There will always be a place for people like me in online games, but it should be a result of intentional design and not an accidental byproduct of innocent intentions. Keep in mind how players will play your game beyond the boundaries of your expectations and help avoid tensions among players by resolving those pain points before they become cudgels used to beat your audience into submission.
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Real-Time Strategy Expectations Versus Reality
Player expectations can vary depending on a myriad of variables too varied to count. As a child, I was drawn to the “sexier” elements of real-time strategy games like Starcraft, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empires, such as building a giant army and watching it clash against my opponent’s. Without a clue as to what competitive gameplay looked like and high on passion for the more simulation-style elements of the genre, I struggled to grasp what made these games tick. Watching high-level competitive matches of Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne as an adult has exposed the vast chasm between my expectations as a younger player and the reality of winning an actual match online.
How to Play Terran – Starcraft: Brood War
I was originally drawn to the cowboys-in-space fantasy that Terran represented; lining tanks up and bombarding enemies with nuclear bombs seemed like cool enough tactics to make the game worth playing as a Timmy/Johnny hybrid. Siege Tanks are undoubtedly one of the most important units in the Terran arsenal, but my least favorite unit has now become the one piece I rely on most in 99% of my own matches.
The Vulture is an unassuming hovercycle with a grenade launcher and the ability to plant land mines that chase nearby enemies and provide surveillance of the surrounding area. Without much armor and a short attack range, I originally thought that they were primarily a scout unit without much extra utility. Watching any competitive Starcraft: Brood War game with Terran will quickly reveal just how important they are to the race’s game plan. Not only do they provide lightning-fast scouting, but their mines are some of the best area denial and vision abilities in the game. In small numbers, Vultures are vicious harassing units and they also pack quite a punch in larger groups.
Warcraft 3 is Not an Army Simulator
Although I played a lot of Starcraft, Warcraft 3 is my favorite game of all time and played a significant part in my childhood entertainment. That being said, none of my Warcraft 3 “ladder” matches involved any of the key components of competitive Warcraft: micro, efficient creeping, harassing, and unit diversity. My goal was often to mass a specific unit and smash my head on the keyword in an attempt to appeal to the almighty random number generator. Not only is high-level Warcraft 3 more about leveling Heroes, but armies are often small, varied groups of units that play off of each other’s strengths.
I now realize that heroes that are generally considered great choices are completely opposite to the ones I liked most and for completely different reasons. Splashy and dramatic spells pale in comparison to the ability to summon “more dudes” to fight your opponent. The Farseer, Firelord, and other summoners dominate the competitive landscape together with heroes who provide passive benefits to their armies like the Death Knight and the Keeper of the Grove. Having more boots on the ground in a game about small skirmishing armies makes sense to me as an adult, but it was completely lost on me as a child.
There was a reason I played more custom games than ladder matches, but as an adult, I now fully appreciate the value of a Circlet of Nobility. Minor stat benefits aren’t often attractive to Timmy or Johnny, but I’ve aged into being more of a Spike in my early 30s. Despite Blizzard’s downfall and the demise of Warcraft 3: Reforged, I suspect I’ll be playing Warcraft 3, Starcraft: Brood War, and other real-time strategy games in the future.
Speaking of which, I just helped fund Zero Space, a new RTS game that seems to land somewhere in between Starcraft, Warcraft, and Warhammer: Dawn of War. Check it out on Steam and Kickstarter.
tommgoldrick.com 