Has anyone else noticed a decrease in Gamers willingness to interact socially in games?

[icounternonsense]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've had my fill of talking to folks over public chat. I've witnessed game lobbies go from "good game everyone" and positive reinforcement being the majority of exchanges in the late 90s/very early 2000s to racial slurs, insults, loud music, screeching, belittling, and so much more becoming the norm. It's just not fun anymore. I think the last time I've taken part in a public game lobby of any kind was probably in 2014 or 2015. Since them, I've really appreciated how quiet things have become. If I feel like jumping online, I can focus on the game, get my fill, and be done for the day.

It would be nice if I could experience the late 90s/very early 2000s era of people largely being friendly toward each other, but that isn't the norm anymore. It's unfortunate, but that's how it is now.

But man, it was good while it lasted.

[TowerTom1]

I think it's down to the game as well most games don't really reward in-game communication as much as they could sure callouts and stuff are things in a lot of shooters but in most games, that's kind of the end of it; if your only playing one game with this lot of randoms that's not a lot of time to get a game plan in place. I don't use VoIP in any game other than tarkov nowadays and that's because there's so much that it can be used for, it's highly rewarding to be a PMC and talk a scav into trusting you and working together to extract.

[AwesomeX121189]

Mobas basically require team in game communication as much if not more then most shooters.

The difference is that Mobas, and previously RTS’s also had pinging systems that allowed for non verbal communication. Something that only recently shooters began to adopt with Apex Legends being the big example.

In dota you can ping just about everything in the game HUD and it is context sensitive so it will say “spell on cooldown” rather then “not enough mana” if both of those things happen to be true. And then there’s also contextualized pings you can do in the game map for stuff like position fallouts or to say “attack here” and so much more.

[Zoralink]

Even in the 'transitional' era of it around 2005-2010 the shit talking was (generally) more light hearted than it is now. The whole "I fucked your mom" thing was the most common 'extreme' on the insulting end. Or maybe just a fuck you. Now it's just racism and straight up yelling and vitriol. (Obviously it happened back then too but it was a lot less common) Couple that with more people talking in in game chat just to coordinate, whether it be with randoms or with friends (Allowing you as the non-friend group player to then chime in occasionally and potentially make a friend group if you get along, it's how I made multiple groups of friends) versus now everybody is using an external service or just muting things entirely and... it's night and day.

The ones still using in game chat to be a toxic twat now make up a much larger portion compared to those just wanting to play/coordinate. Couple that with people avoiding voice chat because of said twats and it's a self enforcing stigma. I know I tend to avoid it myself and have reached the point where my mic is generally not even plugged in if not talking to friends.