The rise of videogames in the current technological age has been a great boon to many aspects of society, from creating a new industry of jobs and opportunities to providing a source of fun and relaxation to millions of people worldwide. The ability to connect people through games throughout the world, from the comfort of their own homes, has ushered in a new age of communication; unfortunately, not everyone who participates in this newest medium of play does so from a place of good faith. In fact, all the prejudices that are alive and well within society today are just shuffled to a newer medium, a more anonymous one with extraordinarily little accountability or quantifiable rules and regulations.
When one thinks of a gamer, the most common stereotype to pop into someone’s head is that of an anti-social white male, usually on the younger end of the age range. Now, this does not mean all gamers fall into this range but rather that this demographic is the one most prevalent and accepted in media representation. This is the group of players most easily observed in positions as streamers, content creators, and professional esports players. The lack of representation within the gaming community has drawn increasing attention over the years, with women and people of color becoming voices of change as they attempt to carve out a living in an environment that has shown hostility at the upset of the aforementioned status quo. Perhaps the most critical catalyst behind the rampant toxicity within online gaming is the accompanying anonymity, the ability to utter the most repugnant phrases and epithets, with the sole identifier being an online username. The lack of recourse available to victims of verbal abuse not only can dissuade people from gaming but also implicitly sends the message that these types of behavior are acceptable, or at the least, will not be penalized (Kowert 2020). In turn, the lack of accountability contributes to the formation of a culture that embraces cruelty in the pursuit of laughs, a culture that instead places value on how effectively one person or group can ‘trigger’ another, with a twisted emphasis placed on how humorous the abuse is for an audience. Furthermore, the verbal ire eventually becomes targeted at the ‘others’ in the community, such as female and person-of-color outsiders, especially when perceived with the threat of upsetting the current hierarchy. The targeted harassment based on characteristics such as race, gender, or sexual orientation can cause individuals to seek out certain coping mechanisms when playing, for example, not using voice chat to mask one’s gender (Ratan 2020, Kowert 2020). Consequently, they are at a disadvantage when playing the game itself, a disadvantage they are forced into tolerating when the other option is constant verbal abuse that may be accompanied with in-game sabotage; either way, they remain at a disadvantage for nothing more than being who they are in an environment that seeks to shut them out.
Gaming companies have attempted to address this growing problem in their games, especially in recent years where tensions have reached boiling points around race, gender, and sexual orientation. Many of these actions include statements denouncing toxic behavior while promising to create a safe and inclusive environment for all gamers within their community; recently some studios have implemented new recording of in-game voice chats to enforce guidelines more accurately. Regardless of the potential privacy concerns some groups have raised on this issue, this tactic ultimately is not as helpful as one may believe. While someone may be rightfully disciplined for verbal abuse after the fact, it does not do much to prevent the abuse in the first place. In order to meaningfully reform the gaming community, change needs to be instituted at the player level, the individual level. Research has indicated that playing games as a group can help provide opportunities to model appropriate behavior as well as contributing to creating a ‘upstander’ culture, a culture where players actively intervene when hearing abuse, as opposed to passively standing by and contributing to the normalization of abuse (Ratan 2020). Fundamentally, lasting change will only be brought about by the community itself when enough people decide to dismantle the toxic structure in favor of creating a more diverse community which welcomes all people from all levels of society who have the common desire to enjoy games and each other.