It’s sad that toxic game culture is so prevalent cuz like. As someone who has ended up in random matches with kids before, I can attest to how fucking easy it is to reverse and un-teach shitty attitudes in kids.
Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.
I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.
The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:
A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.
B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.
tl;dr: The kids are alright. Adults are shit heads.
I cant agree with this post more
The thing. The thing about kids. The thing about kids is that they learn a) very quickly and b) CONSTANTLY. Their brains are super flexible and they don’t have decades of experience – the latter meaning they have both fewer preconceptions and less perspective. It makes them both extremely vulnerable and extremely adaptable, and if you, An Adult, deliberately or carelessly use this to encourage them to think the world is a nasty, cynical place…well, then, that’s a self ful-fuckin’-filling prophecy, innit?
Because that kid, in the short term, is gonna feel bad, and they’re a person, and making people feel bad cos you can’t be bothered not to is Evil. And that kid, in the long term, has that much more likelihood of being nasty and cynical, and passing that on to other people, and so on and so forth.
Be good to kids, whether you like them or not, both because it is the right thing to do, and because it will cut down on the number of assholes you have to put up with when you’re old.
Some light in the darkness that is Gaming news right now
gaming is SO IMPORTANT for so many disabled people (myself included). There’s not many hobbies that have the range of interactivity and engagement that gaming has, while still being something someone can do with little movement or motor control.
I’ve met a few people who were very disapproving of my gaming hobby (was literally told to “go read a book” in a snooty way by one of them) and it frustrates heck out of me that they can’t see how important and fun gaming can be. Gaming isn’t passive like a lot of other hobbies recommended for disabled folks. Gaming is something to get pumped about and something that you can get better at! You can improve your gaming skills and feel accomplished!
if it weren’t for video games I would be a much, much more unhappy and unfulfilled person.
This is why its SO important to make gaming accessible to disabled people.
This new ‘trend’ of strobing when hit [Destiny/Assassins’ Creed to name a few] is very detrimental to anyone with a seizure disorder that is effected by strobing. A lot of people with motor disorders often have visual disorders too.
Developers really need to make flashy visual effects optional or toggled on/off in menus; not left as a fixed point.
Gaming is SO important to help with my motor skills and comprehension skills and making it inaccessible to some audiences is really detrimental.
^^^Really important commentary
video games are sometimes the only thing that will help keep me sane.
I’m crying : ’ ). Videogames are important for all ages and degrees of abled people. My grandma definitely has kept a somewhat sharp mind since she plays golden sun and pokemon feverishly, though apparently she was stuck at the Sky Pillar in Ruby for two months (arthritis problems).
i just wish we could get more games that relied less on violence and fighting but Diablo fuckin rules and i’m so glad this person found a way to make it work for them.
we need to make sure all the disabled have the tools and support they need to live the lives they want to.
There is a charity called Able Gamers that helps people with varying disabilities and gives them the chance to play video games. They work both with caregivers, gamers themselves and video game developers (both indie and mainstream)to help make video games more accessible on a software level as well as through assistive technology like Ken here is using. I urge everyone to check them out and donate if possible or spread the word about their foundation!
The thing that gets me about most arguments against accessibility features in video games is that they’re not just grossly ableist, they’re also hypocritical as hell. Video games have always had accessibility features: we just documented them poorly and called them “cheat codes”. Indeed, having a robust library of difficulty-modifying cheats was considered a mark in a game’s favour! The only difference is that a cheat code is theoretically a secret, which allows it to be framed as elite knowledge, even though it’s functionally identical to having an “infinite lives” switch on the options screen.
Here’s a thesis for you: the Konami Code was the first well-publicised accessibility feature.
being bad at video games is a disability now?
I’m going to assume you’re not being disingenuous here and take this as a serious question. In brief, very few people are generically “bad at video games”; in most cases, difficulty engaging with interactive media stems from one or more of a wide range of physiological conditions, including:
visual deficit (including colourbindness; colourblind individuals often have difficulty identifying threats in action games because they don’t stand out from the background for them)
repetitive strain injury in the hands, wrists or forearms (common for anyone who performs manual labour for a living)
arthritis and other degenerative joint conditions (both those due to age and those comorbid with many autoimmune disorders)
dyslexia (a common symptom of even mild dyslexia is the inadvertent mirroring of sensory-motor responses under pressure, e.g., moving your hand left when you meant to move it right – which is a big problem for action games!)
sensory processing disorders (delayed reaction to visual stimulus is a common symptom)
spatial processing disorders (see above)
chronic pain
propensity for motion sickness
This is, of course, only a partial list. Many of these issues are individually rare, but taken together, we’re looking a huge chunk of the population – up to 40%, by some estimates – who have at least one condition that would impact their ability to play the shooters and action-platformers that are held up as the gold standard for hardcore gaming.
hot tip: if your disability makes you bad at a thing, maybe either put in the extra effort to get good at it or just don’t do it instead of demanding people make the thing easier?????
Here’s the a better question: why is it an issue for you? Accessibility features in video games are entirely transparent to those who choose not to use them. Your experience of play isn’t affected by their existence in any way whatsoever unless you deliberately turn them on. Complaining about the mere existence of such features is like claiming that your viewing experience of a movie is being ruined by the fact that the disc has a subtitle feature on it, even though you haven’t actually turned subtitles on.
(And no, don’t try to frame this as video game developers somehow being victimised by unreasonable demands. The vast majority of developers are more than happy to include accessibility features in their games – and quite sensibly, because, you know, they’re businesspeople, and they want to sell things to as wide an audience as possible. The popular backlash against accessibility features is entirely on the player side.)
honestly, yeah you have a point there, i will concede that. the only problem i have with them is if you still get the achievements and shit with all the disability accomodations on, like with that game Celeste that you were talking about earlier, which is basically tantamount to buying one of those hastily-assembled dodgy steam games that exist solely to give whoever buys them a million steam achievements the moment you boot them up. Like, play your own game however you want, but don’t claim you performing a feat in a significantly easier version of the game is worth the same achievement as performing said feat in the standard game.
Well, if we’re going to frame it as a question of fairness, we’ve got to ask: fair in what sense, and to whom? Let’s flip it around: is it fair for you to receive exactly the same credit for performing a particular in-game feat as a disabled player, though they faced greater obstacles in practice than you did? Should we demand that players who’ve lucked out in the genetic lottery and enjoy above-average coordination and reaction times be obliged play with special handicaps in order to keep things fair for the rest of us? Whose level of ability are we judging fairness against?
listen if i wanted to struggle with some dumb task and fail a dozen times for bullshit reasons only to get some underwhelming reward once i finally get it right i would just live my actual life and not play video games smh
pls love urself
Oh and if you want to play something like Dark Souls? Don’t feel bad for using guides or looking up walkthroughs. I’ve done that to find specific items, or when something is so bullshit and obscure that I need help for it (I’m pretty damn good at it, too.)
And guess what? My experience didn’t diminish at all. If anything it helped me.
Use guides. Use cheats. Use item duplication glitches. Clip through the floor going 30 miles a second. Just have fun
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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