Have public gaming communities always been terrible or do I expect too much?
So, I have my group of IRL friends, and we have a Discord, as I'm sure many people do. I spend a lot of time there, and we've all played games online together since we were in middle school.
Well, now that we're all in our mid to late 20s, real life has caught up with most of us. Scheduling is hard, having free time is hard, having energy is hard, and now we've all found our genres we like, which all adds up to none of us ever playing much together anymore. I'm sure many of you can relate.
I ventured out into LFG groups trying to find a community. I'm not into competitive games, I prefer more cooperative and casual experiences (Satisfactory, NMS, and Snowrunner are my big 3 at the moment). That makes finding a group difficult as is. Finding a group that is primarily my age is harder. But nonetheless I persevered.
I've tried a number at this point, and it's always one of a handful of issues.
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The group is hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of members big. Everyone gets swept in the masses and there's little individuality. These usually also have problems 2 and 3 due to their size.
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There's just blatant -obias in the chats. Incels, toxic masculinity, racism disguised as "humor."
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Supposedly I'm in a group of people who are 21+, but the maturity level might as well be a 14+ server.
At this point I feel like I'm losing my mind, that I'm being gaslit by the online Discord community. There is no way I should be feeling "too old" for this kind of thing, I'm only 26!
This has been my issue with Discord for the longest time.
They're not communities. They're little servers of popularity contests and shitposting. The old Clan forums we used to host in the 2000s on Forums used to be excellent ways of having a chuckle, laugh and organise a game and that was that. But Discord often just descends into memes, shitposting and oneupmanship.
Gaming communities have been targeted A LOT by Alt-Right groups over the past 10-15 years. Innuendo Studios has a great Youtube series called "The Alt-Right playbook" and he's got a specific one about your gaming friends starting to say shit you don't want to hear.
See my first point. The worst is when you get on Voice Chat and you end up hearing 30+ year old men and women making noises like they're 12 year olds. Let alone cursing, snark, "Haxxors" and the bullshit you've explained above.
There's got to be some solid gaming communities out there. But I haven't found one since the early 2010s and I haven't looked post-Covid for the very reasons you've got listed. Discord being the biggie.
I'm 35. I am too old and too tired for the immature bullshit. Growing up is part of that mate and 26 is where I started to recognise that some of the behaviour is just crap. Maybe you're growing up and want a calmer environment? You won't find it on Discord!
But if there's a few of us, maybe it's worth a Tildes Steam Group or something? I'm like you by the way... I play very quiet, calm and relaxed games (Civ, Everspace 2, Rimworld, OpenRA and other city builders. Sometimes I just want to unwind playing a game and have a laugh with some mates shit talking about things that aren't games.
I'd be down for something like that!
Some time ago there was a Tildes discord (probably still here?) but I left because it was completely dead and I'm in far too many discords (people in the know, feel free to let me know if this changed).
I think you're being a little unfair about Discord. There are millions of people using the platform and since communities are completely insulated from each other, there can be (and there are) Discords for basically everything. I fully agree with your cynical take on the problems of public gaming Discords (which I do not frequent) but there are plenty of good or useful ones too. You don't have to do the whole popularity contest and shitposting in order to make use of the underlying service.
I think this got shit canned at some point? I remember reading something about drama?
Honestly? I've never seen a Discord that doesn't work as a very "we're in school popularity means everything here!" attitude, if it's not explicit then it's certainly implied with how people converse with each other.
I've been on big servers, small servers, gaming and non-gaming alike. But it always feels like it's very focused around transactional conversation OR how insanely quick do conversations move on.
There was the /r/stoicism one that I enjoyed for a bit. But it just felt like the same faces got to talk and anyone new became crowded out very quickly because they didn't have the clout. The only way to get said clout was to basically have weird bickering matches with Mods OR shitpost.
There's two different ways to use discord. private servers for special interests, niche topics, or more intimate groups tend to be exactly what it sounds like people would like to seek. But by design they aren't just out and about. In the realm of games, imagine they are less "game discord" and more "guild for game discord". And from there the guild is as civil or as toxic as the few people in it. Much easier to sample, either way. I also have discords that are simply groups of former co-workers used to quickly catch up on life. They tend to be very quiet unless something big is happening and we're making plans.
Then of course we talked about public discords. public discord for popular things tend to be just that. Even if a discord is 99.9% good, in a discord o 10000 people that still leave 10 bad apples.
But quieter public discords, or discords based around a more technical craft tend to be okay. They will be quiet (some argue dead) but that's a good thing in my mind. I was worried about constant buzzing when I first used discord and it was a relief when I saw some places didn't have 100 messages firing per minute.
The people behind the Discord, which was unofficial, went off to make Beehaw since they were dissatisfied with Tildes.
It was never really official so I think it got petered out? I hope so anyway, it seems weird to keep an unofficial Discord server for a site you chose to move away from.
@Gaywallet still participates here so perhaps they know more.
I found it, it's just hella inactive.
There's a link in this post: https://tildes.net/~games/18r5/tildes_game_nights_discord_server#comments
There's actually two Discord servers, the Unofficial Tildes Discord which is the one you're talking about, and the Tildes gaming discord which got set up a few months ago.
I have the same issues with Discord servers; if they aren't a cult of personality around the founder(s), they're popularity contests. I tend to gravitate to small ones where people have shared interests and generally behave themselves, so you're not constantly fighting to stay above the noise.
I think some of my attitude is aimed at some of the younger (and usually American) Discord occupants. They seem to exude the kind of selfish-popularity contest attitude, even on servers that it isn't welcome.
I used to belong to an archery one, had a lot of European / British users. We had a random influx of Americans who INSISTED on talking and posting photos of their latest hunt with their dad, often you could see animals had suffered needlessly because the kids bow wasn't powerful enough / kid wasn't skilled enough... and it ended up in moral slap fights.
Or the gaming server I was on being taken over by a collective of about 25 children who decided that Overwatch is all anyone was allowed to talk about and used bots to enforce it.
Gets really tedious. Again I said elsewhere that there's plenty of mature folks on Discord who end up proving the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory spectacularly. I've tried it time and time again, I can just never get into it.
Most of my server denizens are Canadian (like me) or European, so I haven't seen too much of that myself, but I can see why it would be an issue. It seems like the size of a server is proportionate to the amount of bullshit you have to put up with/deal with.
I'm 31. They've always been terrible.
I think that they're measurably better now. I see far less homophobia, and even the racism is often caveated and at least attempts to wear a thin disguise, whereas before it was more plain.
There are good gaming communities out there. You just need to keep searching. Go niche — some streamers have their own communities that they curate and police carefully — or go local. Massive gaming communities that you can find easily by Google search are going to cater to the lowest denominator.
I'm a member of a big, local SF queer gaming community and I like it a lot. They do all kinds of video and board games.
I'm also in a well-populated Discord belonging to a Rust and JS/Jamstack evangelist that has a big gaming community component to it. They're also very nice.
"Public" is the keyword here. Yes, and it's not limited to gaming, although "hardcore gaming" is one that's a bit biased towards men, and immaturity. That being said, there's something to be said about a "community" needs to advertise itself on an lfg subreddit.
You'll have to find smaller, more insular groups. Unfortunately, it's a catch-22 there, as the part that makes small communities good is precisely that any random schmo can't get in. So it'll be a process. Asking around IRL friends is a possibility. The other is to just play multiplayer games and try to catch on with someone.
But there's no easy answer, because if there was an a easy answer, it wouldn't be a good answer anymore!
Yeah I've thought about meeting someone in-game and seeing if we hit it off, but the issue is the games I primarily play are single player focused with multiplayer elements as an extra, not open lobbies like a competitive game. 😅
I have a big gripe how difficult it is to meet people online organically with how gaming is set up today. It's also very large and you hardly see the same people twice even if you do have conditions set up to see the same person. It's really not enough to form a natural bond with a person.
I was thinking a lot about this lately. I'm 44 here but have games online since the 90s. In my early 30s I was starting to feel really alienated from most gaming forums/groups where as in the past I almost always joined a clan/group for whatever my game I was heavily into. Honestly for many of them I didn't find people to bond with, but it was more personality rather than wrestling immaturity.
Interestingly I got incredibly hooked on mount and blade warband at the tune and it was a rare situation to meet people organically. The game was niche at the time and the multiplayer was even more niche. The US servers in particular had half the population of EU servers it seemed so even less played. But it was structured as servers and there were not many to pick from, which was a downside.
However, I saw the same people over and over and you get to know them by how they play the game and carry themselves. I met a few very good people must from playing in game and having great fights with them and that being the ice breaker. I realize that reaching out bridges the gap but it's never been easy for me, so I struggled a lot in today's gaming environment.
It's only a few comments but it's interesting that approaching 30 is a turning point for not wanting mean humor anymore. I don't know of its just youth gone or more empathy from experience that does it.
I guess it's a bit of a ramble here but this was recently on my mind as I was going back through some old videos feeling nastalgic.
My gameplay right now is with 1 person that I met gaming in the 90s and we are both in the same headspace to play chill coop after work, currently 400 hours into a satisfactory save. We use discord, but we are the only two on it.
I'm 29 now for context, so I remember gaming before the advent of online gaming and voice chat. There's always been a lot of toxicity, but something that folks miss about the older days is the sense of community that built up around self-hosted servers.
There are good groups out there, sometimes you've just got to make your own and carefully seek folks out. I've had good luck specifically seeking queer friendly groups. Turns out bigots aren't hanging around them.
When Dead by Daylight saw something of a renaissance several years ago, my friends and I made our own community bc we were unhappy with how toxic others were. We ended up making a pretty tight nit community there for a while. The server did die out when there was a rift between the more casual players just wanting to fuck around and the more serious players that wanted to sweat, it didn't help that I never really cared for the game, but I still see folks from there on my Steam friends playing together.
A couple years back I got into Final Fantasy 14. I'm no stranger to MMOs. I've actually had good luck just changing into friendly guilds across several MMOs, though also some of my most toxic interactions were with randos in MMOs. My bestie put together a raid group from some folks in our guild and also recruited through TikTok and the main FF14 raiding discord. We made it pretty clear we're casual, queer, and seek to make a safe space for queer folk (but welcome all). And even though we pulled in random folks, I consider them dear friends now. We've met up several times in person, they all came out for bestie's wedding, and a couple are about to move across the country to be with us because we feel like their home.
There are good, mature people out there playing games, but they often aren't speaking up in these huge groups for the reasons you listed.
As for gaming with your IRL friends, I found as I got older that sometimes I've just got to play a game I don't care for to spend more time with them. I care more about spending time together, so it isn't that big a deal to me.
The two ways I do multiplayer gaming:
I run a Tildes MC server. If you like Minecraft I'd definitely recommend checking it out. Everyone is chill and there are always some regulars that you can get familiar with.
I play DayZ. It's probably different than what you're looking for, but on the better servers (Day One, DayZ Canada) you'll have a reasonably good maturity level. Once in a while you'll run into some immature sore loser/sore winners but there's a surprisingly good amount of random interactions with strangers who want to help you succeed and go on adventures with you. DayZ does have a bit of a barrier to entry, though. It will take at least 50 hours to get a small level of familiarity and hundreds to feel somewhat competent. But you'll have a lot of fun. Honestly it's the most fun in the early days, especially because people are most interested in interacting with newbies. If you're interested I'd love to give you some tips on how to get started.
Generally I think any online (and many in-person) groups that will accept anyone will quickly devolve into a toxic disaster. You want to find the small in-groups that will require time and effort on your part to join.
That has definitely been my experience too. I've managed to find a few communities through friends of friends. But actually going and looking for LFG groups is an awful experience.
I can offer something that might be helpful - try looking at a modding server if there's a popular one floating around for one of the games you like. It is going to be much smaller, for one, but for two it's likely going to be a place where folks with in-depth knowledge congregate, which means more meaningful conversation around the game, as well as potentially more opportunity to play together (especially if folks want help testing things). It's not usually a requirement that you've made anything, but it helps to get some attention.
Using myself as an example - I really like Morrowind. I've made mods for that game and built my own weird little version of it. The larger servers for TES are terrible for talking about any of that, because they're just too big. There are too many people saying too much shit for me to really land on anybody and discuss something substantive. The Morrowind modding server, being much smaller and more focused, was a place where I could pick out folks and have good conversations. And from there I was invited to some specific modders' servers, where the atmosphere is much closer to that "group of friends" vibe than anything I've mentioned. It was through the modding servers that I actually started making some connections and finding folks to do stuff with. Takes some time, discretion, and effort but the reward for me was some groups with tight moderation and enthusiastic fellow players, aka The Good Shit.
If you watch twitch at all your favorite streamers might have discords to find people to play with. One of my personal favorites has a bunch of people that play those games
I was going to suggest this as well. Youtubers/Streamers that produce content for the games you enjoy might very well have a discord. I have had luck in the past with this. I have played with some friendly people that are just there to play whatever game and have fun. It's worth a try.
If the game is smaller/niche, your chances are probably even better of it working out.
Plenty already has been said, but the public ones rarely have been all that great, in my experience. Unfortunately, I also don't have an easy answer for you. I am in my late thirties and struggle with the same issue you are facing. To be clear, it isn't that there aren't any good communities out there, it is just extremely difficult to find them and a lot of communities don't stay active. This last bit has mostly to do with the popularity of games coming and going.
Where I have most success is with those types of games where people can self host servers and where the game does include server browsers. This allows for server hopping, getting a feel of the culture on servers and more often than not the ones with a decent community do have a reference to a discord somewhere.
So whenever I am picking up a new game that falls within that category, I just tend to do a lot of server hopping both in game and for all the discords. Basically for discords I generally always look out for things like:
This mostly in the first few minutes of joining and if something is off I generally don't bother and leave the discord again.
The last game I applied this to was Hell Let Loose, which in itself is also a game that heavily relies on communication and did land me in a decent discord server where I had some fun times for a little while.
Unfortunately, it is also a game that requires the server to be full for it to be fun, meaning there need to be a 100 people. As there is an actual command structure with a commander, squad leaders and squad members you actually do need a majority of people to use microphones, listen and coordinate. This means that while I could play with people from the discord community, other random joiners on your side still did have a heavy impact. This wasn't a problem until the developer ran a series of promotions on steam which caused a heavy influx of new users. Which had that eternal September effect of having masses of new joiners constantly joining and just not realizing what the game was about.
So basically more of the regulars stopped playing, causing a downwards spiral.
Anyway, what I mean to say is that for me, what seems to works best is to not try to find permanent communities.
I also do realize that for the sort of games you have listed things are a bit more challenging.
The only community that is worth is theone you build yourself. I don't play competitive at all and when I want to do some coop, I try and talk my friends into it. I don't go into random people game because of the problems you describe. That said, along with that I'm not native English speaker and I'm from Europe (consider ping and timezones), I'd love to play Satisfactory coop (on Steam) although I don't play the game that much.
In my opinion, the way to find Discords/groups where the chat is civil is to look for "family friendly" in their description. The only public game I really play is GW2, but there's a distinctly different tone in the squad chat/guild chat/Discord of the "family friendly" guild we are allied with and that of my own guild. You're not even allowed to curse in their squad and a lot of us joke that "Oh no, we'll have to be on our best behavior we're running with ____ guild lol"
Long story short, fully open public gaming groups will probably be toxic. But join a specific community, turn off your open world chat and only have your guild/party/whispers and you'll be fine. A lot of gamers are parents who play with their kids, and they build and enforce polite communities. At least in GW2.
If you're a woman I can recommend a group! (You're welcome to PM me)
I am not, but thank you anyways.
Ok! I hope you find the right group. If I come across any I'll keep you in mind.