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
I witnessed something similar with my younger brother (this was when he was In fifth grade so bear with me here) and his friends. The teacher assigned for them to build a somewhat accurate spanish mission in Minecraft because their school had gotten some iPads and she needed to assign them something other than a PowerPoint.
Now here’s the thing. Most of these boys, my brother included, have ADD/ADHD. About a week into the project all they had in their shared world was chaos. Somebody filled the place with tnt and lit it up. Holes everywhere. Whenever one would attempt to try and build something (mostly wood huts and not the actual project) it would be destroyed within minutes as the boys began to insult each other heavily and complain that the design was ugly.
I brought my own ipad with me and decided to sit with the boys while they continued their reign of terror. I joined the world and built a hallway out of brick at the very center of this war zone. Immediately one of them tried to destroy it under the impression that “it looks bad”.
“Well, what should I make it out of?”
“Diamond.”
The ten year old mind is a mystery to me…
Anyway, then I showed him some pictures similar to these:
I reasoned that it would be easier to sway this kid toward another pretty block than trying to get him to stick to the materials of the time, so I asked him if he would like to help me replace my brick design with quartz (eh, it’s white).
Bam! One of the ten year old anarchists is dutifully building me a glittering gem hallway for our insanely rich monks.
The other three are off somewhere still yelling at each other and setting off explosives, but we have something built. Much to my surprise the kid asked if he could build the church next because he “wanted to build the most important part”.
Here’s where I learned something important. I don’t have ADD or ADHD but as I said before my brother does. When he gets fixated on something, he’s really gets into it. Once a few minutes had passed and this kid already had four walls up I decided to grid up the entire mission. One gets the church, one gets the farm, etc.
After playing the game with them for an hour, I had a pretty good idea of where each kid should go.
Church kid, I found, was very particular about materials and shape(hence his hangup over the brick). I gave him free reign over the outer walls of the mission and showed him the reference pictures to get him started.
My brother liked the farms most (he was building dirt domes over the cows don’t ask me how I made this connection it just worked, okay), so he was in charge of building pens for the animals.
Another kid was, at first glance, very loud and bossy when it came to decorating (constantly said we were making chairs wrong). Turns out he likes interior design, like putting benches and beds in the little rooms, so his bossiness was just frustration with my brother’s artistic sense I guess.
Another was very good with placing trees and plants around the exterior (I guessed this because he covered the place in a ridiculous amount of trees and I asked him if he would like to know where they are supposed to go). He got to make a vineyard for us and organized how the crops should go.
So how did it turn out?
Actually very nice!!
So what did we learn? Kids actually like to play games and be praised for their creativity and intuition. If I had just told them to stop messing around rather than direct their attention to areas within their interests, they never would have gotten anything done.
After an hour of gaming they:
Mirrored my language; “thank you!”, “which part are you working on?”, “I like this block.”
Realized each other’s strengths; “hey [kid name] can you help me with the roof?” “How do you make the big trees [kid name]?”
Were able to articulate exactly what they did or didn’t like without using force; “that looks good!”, “how about we put it there?”, “I don’t like that block, how about this one?”
On the plus side, since we moved the game file to my device for safekeeping, I now have a cute little souvenir of the time I played Minecraft with four ten year olds.
This is a really long post, but it’s super important. In games like Fortnite where you’ll find lots of kids, it’s important (if you can) to steer them away from toxicity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into kids who talk like toxic adults and the act of just being nice to them completely turns them around.
Remember. If you’re a jerk, people won’t want to play against you. And if you have nobody to play against, Magic isn’t very fun. True, it’ll probably never get to the point where everyone knows your MTGO name, your LGS, etc, but why let it even start down that road at all?
You might not be able to please everyone, but you don’t (typically) need to be a jerk to anyone. Magic is a community. Don’t make your part of it toxic.
One of the most important parts of mastering a skill is learning how to teach it to others effectively.
That is an excellent example of the distinction between good and bad players.
I got into Magic way back in the dawn of time when it first started. I had poured way too much money into it, and when I finally got out, I sold my complete set of 1st edition, and Arabian Nights for a hefty sum and used that money to get the hell out of dodge and try to find myself in Florida (it didn’t work.)
When I finally came back to Magic, it’d been several years and may different iterations and expansions of the game had gone by. I was at the local game store, just kind of hanging out, when a group of people were trying to get a game of Emperor (I think that’s what it was called) going and they were looking for one final person. I said, sure, provided that they understand that a) It’d been at least five years since I last played and b) they’d have to provide me with a deck.
Everybody seemed to be on board with this so I sat down and proceeded to play. Things went okay for the first couple of turns, until I drew a card that had an ability that I didn’t recognize, and that wasn’t explained on the card. So I leaned over to my partner and asked him what the ability mean.
The leader of the other team (the Emperor?) just slams his fists on the table and just yells at me, face beet red, “NO KIBBUTZING AT THE TABLE!!!” I’m like, “Dude, chill I’m just trying to figure out what this card doe-” “NO KIBBUTZING!”
So I just quietly nod, reassemble the deck and give it back to the guy who lent it to me. I thank him for letting me play, give the finger to the dude with anger management issues, and I haven’t picked up a physical copy of the game since. Sure there’s good players out there, but sometimes all it takes is that one asshat to ruin it completely for you.
Game idea: You play as a humble peasant who must fight off waves of adventurers who feel entitled to just waltz into your house and loot whatever they please.
LET GO OF MY CHEESE WHEEL YOU JERKFACE
Humble Peasant kills adventurers that enter their home
Humble Peasant keeps their weapons, magic items, and hold
Humble Peasant realizes that stronger and stronger adventurers are coming to claim their growing pile of loot
Humble Peasant builds traps and fortifications to keep them out
Humble Peasant procures exotic pets to help defend their home
Humble Peasant continues to amass more and more loot and attract stronger and stronger adventurers
Humble Peasant has to keep building up and fortifying their home, traps, and pets to keep the adventurers out
Humble Peasant suddenly realizes that they have accidentally built a dungeon. It’s a fucking dungeon now. It’s fortified and full of traps, monsters, and treasure, and the Humble Peasant is the boss.
Humble Peasant realizes that adventurers will never leave them alone now.
Humble Peasant hates adventurers.
Humble Peasant accidentally becomes major villain.
I’d play it
10/10 would play
I would totally play this
i mean, this is actually how a lot of kingdoms and early city-states/poleis began. A bunch of humble farmers and/or pastoralists kept getting raided by their nomadic neighbors so eventually they started a bronze age arms race, the peasants fortifying their villages into forts and building permanent, specialized armies and getting all the horrible shit that goes with that like rulers, the nomads capturing cities and becoming settled themselves and becoming less egalitarian among themselves until they both evolved into the horrible leviathans we now know today as states.
Look,if I’m a humble peasant I’m not gonna keep all that stuff for myself. What am I,an arrogant peasant?! I’m gonna buy Magda down the road a donkey so she doesn’t have to pull the cart herself. I’m gonna buy some grain for Tomas up the valley because I know they had a bad harvest this year. I’m gonna hire a gang of my fellow peasants to shore up my irrigation ditches and overpay them shockingly – I don’t need more than a few gold pieces, they only attract adventurers anyway. And maybe I can get some of these damn broadswords and cuirasses off my hands while I’m at it. Maybe we can get together and teach each other how to use them. Before you know it this entire valley will be adventurer-proof.
