Dan Luu
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Online games after a 20 year break
🕑 Added 2018-05-06 22:59:57 +0000 UTC
I started playing modern online video games again after a 20-year or so break (I used to play an obscure video game called "subspace" in the 90s, and would sometimes drop in for the next decade, but I basically missed what happened in modern games post quake 3).
The most striking difference between then and now is how much meaner people are in random pub/"pickup" games. My recollection from 20 years ago is that, in competitive play, there were some teams that trash talked as part of their "brand", but that trash talk was generally pretty rare. In subspace, which had 95 person games, most games wouldn't have any trash talk. But it's surprising if I play 10 games in a row of over Overwatch without people trashing folks on their own team as noobs (ten games = 110 other players, but with repeats, so probably a similar number of players, but much less in the comparable unit, players * time). And when it happens, the trash talk also seems meaner, although I can't tell if that's actually the case or it just seems that way because you can hear how angry or disdainful people are over voice in a way that's not possible over text.
Something that surprised me is how this is just considered totally normal. Of course someone on our team is going to get angry and blame their teammates for their shortcomings! Twenty years ago, most of the people I played with were kids or teenagers (just like me), and that kind of tantrum would be considered weirdly immature. Today, well, that kind of thing is still considered immature, but it's expected that people are going to be immature, even though there are a lot more adults in the playerbase than there used to be.
I'm sort of sad that I took such a long break from video games because I missed this change and I think it would've been interesting to see.
The other big change is that there's now automated matchmaking based on something like ELO. This seems like a net positive and, despite people being meaner, probably makes for a better online experience. One thing that skill-based matchmaking removes is an obvious feeling of satisfaction from improving. Every time I figure out a new tactic, that works for a small handful of games, and then I'm thrown into games where (on average) I'm average, again.
The combination of people getting upset at their teams for being bad and skill-based matchmaking seems pretty funny to me. If you're always on teams with bad players, that's a pretty good sign that you're bad! Maybe you're not bad in the same way, but there's something holding you back and keeping you on the same teams as these other people who are obviously bad.
Anyway, games seem a lot better designed than they used to be, but communities also seem a lot worse!
