This is already my favorite story of the day. As our resident behind-the-scenes queen Allison recently pointed out here at BG: There are a lot of asshats online. In fact, you’re lucky to get through five matches without coming across either a sexist, racist, homophobe, or some combination of the three. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where developers are now citing gamers douchebaggery as a cause for drastically decreasing sales.

Case in point: A Microsoft employee who recently worked on the somewhat underrated Shadowrun summarized the problem very nicely:

…the online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales, and continues to stunt the growth of our industry.

Fulton points out that the acts of several gamers who don’t engage in the verbal abuse often do things in-game, such as team-killing or glitching, dissuade many gamers from going online. Not out of fear of who they would come across, but out of a desire to avoid any kind of what we at BG refer to as “fucking idiots”.

The four-page write-up on social design in online gaming is a truly fascinating read, and rather than try to explain it all for you (sans the small part above), I implore you to read it for yourself. It’ll definitely get you to think about both how online gaming is evolving socially, and about your own “fuckwadism” online.

via Gamasutra

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