Original Xbox Designer on Toxic Behavior: 'This Wasn't the Future for Xbox Live We Envisioned' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 March 2022 / 3,510 Views
Original Xbox designer Seamus Blackley via Twitter has reacted to a video of streamer Grenade Queen being harassed in Halo Infinite. He condemns the toxicity and says players, developers, and console manufacturers need to come together to stop this problem.
Blackley does admit he knows this problem isn't anything new and seeing this video has motivated him more. He says it is possible to clean up the toxicity.
"This wasn’t the future for Xbox Live we envisioned," said Blackley. "As a community and with the help of Microsoft this needs to be highlighted and stopped. It will take teamwork between players, devs, and console manufacturers to change this and it’s time. It’s past time.
"I know this isn’t new. I know you’re angry because nothing has been done for a long time. You’re right. It only motivates me more. It’s possible to clean these environments up. Let’s do it."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This would be more interesting if the guy said "Fuck yeah, we wanted to create a cesspool of toxicity. Looks like we succeeded."
Toxic behavior exists in every aspect of life. All gaming platforms, all competitive events, all sporting events from the beginning of time. It exists in the work place, at home, in schools, in politics, in movies, in music and literature. It exist in war, in governments, even in the church. It is a part of human nature and also exists in animal nature. It can't be stopped, ever. It sucks. This is a losing battle that can't be won. Stupid rules can be made to make us feel like we're bettering the world, but it is still an illusion, and the means to circumvent said rules will always be found.
Even with chat off, I've been sent shitty messages after bad matches like "UR Trash". I'm a pretty decent FPS player, and I still get stuff like that. I'm a grown man, but what if I was a 10 year old kid playing my first ever online match? How would that make me feel?
In fairness, I've also received some "GG" messages after matches. Those happen more often than trash talk. But, not often enough to make it reasonable to put up with the bad ones.
We all passed through it when we were small kids, either in arcades, on friends house or playing online, nothing new. But now it started being something that needs to be fixed to be a welcoming environment to the people that didn't really help the industry grow from nothing.
Not so much in arcades. Trash talking to someone’s face the way they do online is a good way to get punched in the face and ejected from the arcade . People tend to be braver when they know that they’re not going to have to back up their mouths with their fists.
Perhaps in arcade would be more tame, dunno. Perhaps different countries. In Brazil even while playing soccer on the street we do a lot of shit talk and taunting either with friends or when having dispute with people of other streets/blocks. Taunting and shit talking is part of human behavior and were with us since ancient time, this tirade to censor and control speech because the new public can't deal with it is quite silly.
And altercations and brawls were indeed very common in here until let's say people started carrying knifes and firearms. Any given soccer play or arcade challenge would likely have a fist fight at some point in time.
Shit talking with your friends and neighbors, in a place where they can kick your ass if you go to far, is normal. It is even arguably a good thing. Shit talking a person that you don't know in a forum where they can't do anything to stop you, is a totally different thing.
Exactly, the online environment isn't specially aggressive against woman (I would bet it is more mild than against regular men), gay, black people or other recognized minorities (sure there will be people much more offensive against any of those due to their own prejudices), it is more like we hear just so much how they are minorities and need special concern that people tend to put the same offense in different weights due to that.
They should be banned to teach them to be better and to set an example.
It's good they apologised but still... Not good enough.
Rule number one when dealing with a large group of humans. Expect the worst and don't be surprised when the group surpasses your expectations are surpassed and humanity reaches a new low
Yea this stuff is normal. I remember I saw it reach a new peak when I was playing street fighter. I was being reported and all kinds of stuff and I never even talked to people.
If a campaign was too hard they added an easier mode, if it was too easy they added a harder mode. Some online competitive games now have beginner, intermediate, and advanced modes for skill.
Why not have a legitimate separate zero toxicity tolerance mode? Like legit. Not what they call zero tolerance now.
I'll take a guess, and say it's not there because only a few would use it, and would then simply complain due to the lack of matchmaking. Leading to them returning to the regular mode, complaining about the toxicity anyway.
Something about the cure being worse than the disease might be relevant here...
bullying trash talking whatever this is forever exist everywhere,
nothing we can do about it!
I'm one of the first people to experience this and thus, stop using microphones while playing online because of it... but I completely disagree with him when he says that it can be stopped. You can't stop it. As long as people are allowed to interact anonymously via microphones, there will always be jerks screaming at people. It's just the way it is.
Of the few things no human could possibly ever change, human nature is among them; Any attempt to do so is and will be absolutely futile, even more so in the long run.
Didn't know people would get this low online. But not surprised, the worst talk comes from american kids.
Definitely American and Canadian kids are the worst that I've experienced (as judged by their accents). But, it definitely isn't limited to kids or North Americans.
I told you so emoji representing smug grin?
Just an excuse for more censorship. Nothing more.
The Xbox audience is a bunch of based chads and alphas. This is the only way it could end if you want a successful platform.
The polite betas are playing JRPGs.
The downvotes show how based my comment was.
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I am reliably informed that your down votes were 20 comprised of 10 each from Nintendo and Playstation fans but those twenty down votes were partially offset by 10 yes votes by Xbox fans who misread the post.
Na, permaban isn't the option. A good week though while halo is still relatively new and they want to keep up the grind should be enough time for them to think about it.
I would say almost every game ever created for competitive will have trash talking on the chat, and actually women usually are threated better, it is only that trash talking and stuff will be said on things that the person saying thinks will bother the one reading so it is expected on what type of offense will be said against women, as we know what is expected to be said against male. And we all had to cope with it for like 4 decades without much issue, but now it prevents players from entering the game.
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