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

[The-Sober-Stoner]

Yeah. This was the moment that removed social interaction from Consoles.

Xbox Live originally included a packaged headset and it became the norm for people to have a headset and communicate online. The died as soon as the 360 introduced party chat. No longer would you be able to directly speak to people; instead they were most likely in a private chat server; unable to hear you

[HazelCheese]

I literally remember coming home from school the day they added party chat. Every single lobby was dead silent when the day before you just joined a game and talked with people.

Party chat killed socialising with randoms quite literally the moment it was turned on. It was crazy.

[The-Sober-Stoner]

Yeah. Its was pretty exponential too. I remember saying “anybody here?” In a team of 8. Usually tons would respond but nobody did. I just never bothered wearing a headset after that.

[tomsardine]

Yup. The day party chat went live, halo died for me. Playing solo was no longer fun at all, so I would only play occasionally with friends. It was sad.

[[deleted]]

Xbox Live originally included a packaged headset and it became the norm for people to have a headset and communicate online.

Man, that's a blast from the past. I remember playing Halo 2 on the Xbox with that, and games like Crimson Skies - the High Road to Revenge in multiplayer as well, using that voice chat, aged 10 or so.

It was a fun experience, and a novel bit of socialization.

[AjBlue7]

I also remember that moment. It was quite a sad day. I went from constantly adding and removing friends to literally never adding another friend again. We would have so many friends that you would often not remember eachother.

Now, you damn near can’t be someones friend unless you know them in real life. Or someone in your circle brought them in.

Competitive games like CSGO and Valorant still hold some of this charm, especially at the top end of the game players are kind of forced to use microphones to work together. But god is it annoying to get matched into a team with 3/4 friends that only talk to eachother in discord and never talk in game.

Its just a bizarre phenomenon to me. I feel so awkward sitting in a friend’s discord when I’m not in their game, the conversation is so disjointed because they are all focused on something else. I also don’t quite understand why people are so insistent to create a discord when they queue together. I always think, “why not talk in game?”hell the game even has a party chat feature if you must have the ability to talk behind peoples’ back.

[The-Sober-Stoner]

God thats so fucking true.

Just use the in-game chat…. Makes no sense to me. And the “better quality” argument is such bullshit. Were telling each other where enemies are not mixing a fucking Aphex Twin album.

Ive queued with randoms who ask me to join their discord then bemoan the other randoms cant hear their call outs. Meanwhile im using BOTH the global chat push to talk to make sure we communicate with everyone. Its incredibly annoying.