A mature discussion about toxic racism - NWI, please weigh in.

NWI,

We have had several threads in past about instances of toxic racism and related bullying in-game. You responded by setting clear community guidelines and allowing for vote-kick. It seemed to help for a while, but now instances like these are on the rise again and consistently found on the public servers.

A personal solution would be just to mute the offender. However, there are times when it's not just one person, but a group of 3-6 ppl who will start talking about "killing N****" and other such toxic BS. Attempts to engage politely by affirming that such talk has no place here often lead to increased toxic chatter, including purposeful teammate killing & shot blocking, toxic verbal assaulting, and vote-kicking people who object to a de facto openly racist banter on this platform. To be clear - I'm not speaking of questionable use of words by a young kid who doesn't know better. I'm talking about openly racist dialogues that encourage violence towards people of color.

I play another tactical shooter, Squad, quite often, and rarely run into any such behavior. I think one reason for this is that tactical shooters (like Sandstorm presents itself) attract a generally more mature audience. Another reason is that many of the Squad servers I play on have an explicit and immediate lifetime ban for any racist behavior. It's written out clearly and for everyone to see, and it is enforced.

The purpose of this post is to spark a conversation of what a mature approach to addressing this would be for a gaming company. I understand there are various competing factors to contend with from the company's perspective, but at some point you have to stand for your values and ask if you are doing everything you can to address this issue.

NWI, do you feel ready to make such a statement? What I would propose is this, state a clear company policy visible in-game on the public server load screens. If a complaint is submitted, and upon review of the video was deemed credible, the offending person would get a one-time warning and possible suspension if violation was considered severe. If they are complained about again, and verified, they get a lifetime ban.

I hope it is not the case, and yet expect there to be some vile responses to this thread. Similar to when such behavior is addressed in-game. What I am interested in are responses grounded in an understanding of the issues at hand and ideas of how it can be addressed beyond personally insulting the person who brought up the issue.

Thanks.

last edited by Aslan14

If you record such behavior and send it to them, they will take action!
The difference with Squad is that the servers are run by clans, who rent the servers and have own in-game admins who enforce policies and rules.. But deffo record this kind of thing and send it to them! 🙂

@Aslan14 said in A mature discussion about toxic racism:

What I would propose is this, if a complaint is submitted, and upon review was deemed credible, the offending person would get a one-time warning. If they are complained about again, and verified, they get a lifetime ban.

I think this is more than reasonable providing NWI has the resources to pull it off. If they don't, they need to come up with some kind of solution. I'm generally not a fan of censorship, but some of the toxic shit I've heard on Sandstorm absolutely deserves to be censured.

first off im cringing at your wording "tOxIc" and telling NWI what to do lmao , use toggle mute if you dont wanna hear people talking shit, that has been part og gaming always, because youre butthurt doesnt mean others should be locked out a product they purchased , mute the person and move on with your life holy shit

last edited by Lenol03

@Lenol03 You're response to someone calling openly racist or homophobic behavior "toxic" is to cringe, but your suggestion when someone says "killing N****" is to "mute the person and move on with your life holy shit."

Umm, yah, ok. Because that's reasonable /s

@Lenol03,

@MAA_Bunny has it right. Nonetheless, I would like to acknowledge the one good point you made. It is indeed redundant to call racism toxic. It's like calling water wet.

That said, every other point you raised was addressed in my initial post, including the difference between muting one player vs a server full of toxicists, and my expectation of receiving replies such as yours. What I am looking for is a mature discussion, interested?

@Lenol03 that would work in a game like COD and BF. ISS is team based game, everybody mute each other and its a guaranteed loss.

Agree with @MAA_Bunny on this one. Also I'm usually in favor of less censorship as a general rule, but more so in the political/government sphere. A private company has every right to censor an obnoxious minority in order to make their product more enjoyable for everyone else.

last edited by LawDog

Not sure I've seen this kind of thing. Then again, I'm not black.

Attempts to engage politely by affirming that such talk has no place here often lead to increased toxic chatter

I suppose this is to be expected.
If people tried blocking my shots I would just shoot them in the head 😕 at least then you can get kicked and find a new server. Forgot the devs made it impossible to teamkill after 1 teamkill.
Maybe try finding a group to play with, so you can kick anyone you don't want to play with.

last edited by echtecke

permanently muting+text someone as an option in-game would be sweet and would solve this across all games online as far as I see it (then ignorant ppl can't give u a unfair punishment by stacking and similar, and their infidel souls will be banished from ever performing haram again)

@KingFormaggino who got time for that, and why should NWI use a timesink solution that drains cash from fixing bugs /performance issues?

@Lenol03 The post from @Aslan14 is taking up a legitimate concern and only NWI can adress it. Even if u can't wrap your head around it.

@MAA_Bunny the review can never be credible because of stacking or u can also do "bad stuff" to frame people that way and as u mention it eats resources - Why not permamute text/speech instead? Easy solution with no innocent victims as you are free to mute whoever u want regardless of others subjectivity.

ban violent video games like insurgency, you play as insurgents and it encourages encourages violence towards american soldiers

What NWI could do without GREAT resource and time investment.

Allow the player to ban specific players which would never put them in game with you.
Optionally allow second level soft ban which is "always mute" specific player.

Eventually they won't be heard or assigned to games as often (and will wait longer for the match). Simple and effective.

I think you should look at the square behind the game box, realize you are too young to play it and go play Minecraft. Don't complain on the forums that people communicate. It is so rare anyone speaks at all and now you are trying to get the whole chat feature removed. The whole point of multiplayer games is to interact with people. If you cannot take the bad language, mute them and if you cannot live with the fact they said a bad word go play a single player game.

I think it is a very dishonest move of you to try to appeal to the values of the devs. You are trying to basically threaten them with bad sales and publicity to get people censored. I don't like your tone and I think you should wait until 18 years to play multiplayer games.

@MAA_Bunny What is your problem. How thin skinned are you that you take serious offense when someone says something shocking in the net. Of course you move on with your life. It is absolutely no matter of yours when someone says something to get a reaction out of you in the internet. I really despise you with your attitude.

@Alilolo that is just dishonest. You are lying that the devs start banning people because of toxicity.

The communications is not used very often to call out. When you die you cannot speak to the people still alive so you cannot call out the enemy. And the only call out anyone has ever said to me is: "Go to site".

@tangosucka said in A mature discussion about toxic racism - NWI, please weigh in.:

ban violent video games like insurgency, you play as insurgents and it encourages encourages violence towards american soldiers

So, you're alright with violence against Arabian people but have a problem with violence against western people? That's a bit hypocritical.

@ilari117 We're not talking about people being mean, rude, or simply assholes here. My concern is with people who are openly and bluntly racist, homophobic, or sexist. I can tolerate assholes, I can mute them and move on, whatever, sometimes they're even funny. My problem is things like:

"You sound like a fucking nigger. Are you a nigger? I'm gonna kill me a fucking nigger."

"Lowest number of kills is a dick-sucking faggot!"

"Why are you playing as woman? Woman aren't allowed in the military, they're weak cunts. You should go change your character to be a fucking man. This game is supposed to be realistic. I did two tours in Iraq and never saw a woman. You keep playing like that I'm gonna frag your ass."

This is the kind of shit that really gets under my skin. It drives people away from the game. It makes people feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. It makes them not want to play. Not only should people be expected to abide by some basic rules of decency, tolerating people who activly drive away other players is a bad game decision.

@MAA_Bunny well, that just means that maybe you you should change your character to be a man in real life and stop getting offended over nothing. People as thin skinned as you should be banned from ever visiting the internet.

Also the female character voice lines are just bad. They sound terrible, really terrible. The terrorist women and CT women sound pretty similar, also some CT men and terrorist men. People shouldn't use these because it makes playing harder for your team and makes it easier to enemies to flank.

Also Bunny. Tangosucka meant that if you are so offended why not just ban the whole game.

@ilari117 You're clearly not capable of participating in what the title of this thread requests.

@MAA_Bunny the title is very infuriating. It tries to be so better than everybody else. And what has the adult conversation devolved into? Well, you don't have to answer because I know the answer. It has devolved into manlets like you crying about """"""racism"" and """isms""""" and "ists"""". You would probably instantly get turned into dust if you would have to complete a whole conversation in real life.

@ilari117 I'm not the one throwing insults around. If this is how you conduct conversations in real life, I feel sorry for everyone you talk to.