Playing an online competitive game as a latecomer just downright sucks. It is the gaming equivalent of opening a door to be punched in the face by a boxing glove that was rigged as a trap. Trying to get into any online game after its main hype has passed is a difficult and grindy experience. Many new players will get soul-crushingly destroyed by the hordes of skilled and practiced players who understand the ins and outs of every map and have even begun to peel away at the layers of metagaming.
One of the most prominent example of a game with a severe gap of skill between newcomers and experienced players is Overwatch. It truly is a shame to see that there is a game out there made with so much accessibility in mind to be one of the most harrowing online multiplayer experiences one can face as a newbie. Despite the amazing premise of the game and the wonderful character and charm, it is impossible for me to get into Overwatch because I simply can’t stand how I get destroyed in every match with no hope of a win as a new player.
The biggest problem with gaming’s accessibility is gamers’ general disdain for newbies. Many can relate to the experience of being referred to dismissively as a ‘casual’ or ‘noob’ and treated like a second-class citizen as a result. The ‘git gud’ culture is pervasive throughout all genres of videogames and is a sign of a more toxic attitude behind the scenes of gaming. This is not a sustainable situation and this is precisely the kind of behaviour that turns off non-gamers from the medium. We have created a strange kind of culture where new players are specifically made to feel unwelcome.
While everybody loves to be good at games, and most gamers offer little more than snorts of derision to the lesser-skilled, I believe that this is one of the biggest problems with online gaming and gamer culture to date; a gaming culture that alienates rather than includes. This has caused major problems with how gaming is viewed by outsiders looking in.
On the other hand, there are big problems with marketing a game with accessibility in mind. There is an image of games that cater for ‘casual’ gamers as being of ‘lesser’ quality. In fact, many commenters on more toxic gaming sites will happily deride the more easily accessible games as ‘for casuals’ and will treat such games with disdain and even anger.
A happy balance needs to be struck between maintaining a game’s hardcore appeal but also in allowing more accessibility. Currently, the balance seems to have shifted towards the ‘hardcore’ gamers, with Overwatch and Dark Souls dominating the gaming world, and a typical walled-off mentality to any would-be newcomer to gaming. But if gaming is to continue to grow we need to examine how we are treating our player bases. If we continue to alienate, gaming culture runs the risk of continuing to be alienated by other media cultures as a childish pursuit.
More effort needs to be made to make online competitive gaming a more friendly place for all. We are nowhere near a level where we can call online gaming an all-around ‘good’ experience. Between toxic tryhards and angry trolls, it is difficult to find any online game that hasn’t been tarnished terribly by the toxicity of gamer culture. Perhaps the difficulty of integrating into an online competitive game is the most practical example of how gaming’s community problems are stacking up.
We need more games that will try to level the gap between new and lesser skilled players and the more experienced, hardcore gamers that practice all day long. Perhaps this can be done by better separating the two; so far I have seen an extreme deluge of games where hardcore gamers are placed into the same playlists as new players and often exploit such matchmaking systems to create easy matchups for themselves. It’s clear that matchmaking algorithms as they are today are not sufficient for keeping the skill gap at an even and fair level.
On the other hand, perhaps we also need more games like Mario Kart, where newbies are allowed to feel like they have a chance to win, with powerups and other gameplay difficulties dynamically adjusted to allow the lesser skilled to even the playing field. Hardcore gamers will cry foul at this idea, but perhaps this could be done in conjunction with a ‘hardcore’ multiplayer mode that turns off such adjustment, to appease those that want to play purely through skill, as fair or unfair as that can be.
In any game, there are winners and losers, but the real challenge is making losing fun, or making the losers feel like they had a real chance. Gaming has been far too unforgiving to the losers. In order to help gaming culture continue to mature, and for the medium to continue to grow, we need a shift in thought and a shift in design ideas to allow those of all skill levels to play online games on a relatively even and enjoyable field, such that new and less experienced players can enjoy a gentler introduction to games they’re trying for the first time, and that hardcore gamers can still get that purely-skill based level of eSport that they deserve.
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