Why players are always fractious? See this:
Toxicity is a relatively new concept when it comes to describing behaviour and communication practices. It is now widely accepted as a denominator for aggressive and abusive interactions or relationships, both online and offline. However, toxic behaviour in videogames remains an elusive topic. Despite many research initiatives, and the implementation of numerous new features in games to discourage disruptive behaviour, toxicity continues being a part of players’ everyday experience with many online games. The goal of this article is thus to identify key causes and factors that may lead to toxic in-game interactions according to players’ perception. We studied the Dead by Daylight (DbD) (Behaviour Interactive, 2016) community, using a content analysis of players’ conversations on the game’s official subreddit to help us better understand how they perceive potentially toxic behaviour inside of the game. More specifically, we analyzed how and why players intensify or counter behaviour they view as toxic. We were able to identify five key aggravating factors for toxicity in DbD : 1) Role identification, 2) Ambiguity in objective setting, 3) Individual gaming experience, 4) Task repetition, 5) Rigidity of norms. These factors are interrelated, in that they may echo and amplify each other. Nonetheless, categorizing toxic behaviours remains difficult because the process depends on consensus-building within each videogame’s community (or communities).
Originally: http://gamestudies.org/2004/articles/deslauriers_iseutlafrancestmartin_bonenfant