The Strange World of the Online Sandbox Game

One of the most interesting genres that I have seen come to the forefront of gaming is what I like to call the ‘Online Bastardry Simulator’. Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) that aren’t just based around the RPG genre but on other styles of gameplay as well. In particular, survival games get strong representation here, between Rust and DayZ, two of the most popular implementations of the OBS.

Why do I like to call these games Online Bastardry Simulators instead of MMOs? The reasoning is simple. For some reason, it has become very commonplace in these games for the players to be absolute bastards to one another.

I have experienced much of the nastiness that humanity has to offer in these games; being tied down and forced to drink bleach or hunted by players with high level gear for nothing other than fun. I’ve seen many instances where players who get the best-level gear in these games camp near the spawn-points for newcomers, just so they can give them a fitting welcome to the game by blasting their brains out for no reason.

Not only that, but the community is toxic as well. I’ve been told many awful things in my experience with Rust. I can’t even repeat what has been said to me in these games. Players seem to treat these online playgrounds with a sense of moral abandon, and it is an interesting thought experiment to look at these games and imagine what will happen when the mask of humanity and social acceptance fall from the faces of the depraved.

Of course, playing such games one has to take human nature with a pinch of salt. As tempting as it is to point at examples like DayZ and cry that humans are the real monsters, the truth is that human interaction is a lot more complex than what we allow ourselves to do to each other in game worlds. We have to remember that much of multiplayer gaming, since its inception, has been focused on killing each other. The very nature of online gaming is that in order to be winning, someone else has to be losing.

But one thing that I found strange was just how quickly and commonplace online nastiness became in these genres. DayZ is one of the pioneers of this genre, and it was notable from the start just how nasty players were to one another.

Zombies weren’t the risk, but other people were much, much worse. Instead of engaging in meaningful player interaction, people quickly became known as ‘KOS-ers’, the acronym standing for ‘kill on sight’. Rather than risk any kind of player interaction that might turn negative and cause a loss of resources, people would simply much rather put a bullet into the brain of whatever unfortunate soul would come near them. It became the winning strategy in DayZ, beyond shouting ‘friendly’ down the mic whenever you saw a hint of movement in a township, which would often succeed in giving the KOS-er a direction to shoot in.

Grand Theft Auto Online is possibly the most mainstream example of this kind of game. Placing players into a sandbox world where chaos reigned, it was only natural that players would be nasty in the GTA universe. But what is shocking is just how nasty GTA is. Worse than DayZ or even Rust, GTA Online has many horror stories of nasty player interaction.

Hacking and cheating is rampant in GTAO, as is trolling of every kind. Sticky-bombers patrol the streets of Los Santos, looking to blow up any unsuspecting passerby with any kind of nice-looking vehicle. Stolen jets race through the skies, raining down hell-fire on anybody unlucky enough to come into their field of vision. Tanks roll around the hills running carelessly into players, looking to cause as much damage as possible. Worse is the aforementioned hacking; some unscrupulous gamers have taken to hacking in millions of dollars of currency, only to ‘gift’ it to other players in hope of attracting the Rockstar banhammer to those unlucky souls.

I have played the game, and while at its best, Grand Theft Auto Online is a hilarious and fun experience, at its worst it is a damning indictment of the gaming community. One example where I beat a player at a deathmatch started from an unprovoked KOS of myself, the player proceeded to ask me why I had descended upon him with such ferocity.

I explained that I was one of those that liked to punish people who would just go around shooting any other nearby player without engaging in the game, I received a horrible, profanity laden response using slurs targeted at just about every group that could be offended, the underlying message from the player, between the curse words, was that ‘this game is all about being a twat’.

The Online Bastardry Simulator stands as an interesting insight into the state of the gaming community, and into human nature itself. While such an environment is inherently toxic and I wouldn’t recommend that anybody play such a game without a suitably-thick skin, I think that the genre needs investigation.

It offers an interesting window into the toxicity of online gaming at its most exaggerated, where the mask of humanity has truly fallen from the faces of most of its players. These multiplayer games are interesting because they are the exaggerated endpoint of how toxic online gaming has become. I do find myself wishing, however, that we could just all get along.