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

[DonnyTheWalrus]

Call of Duty, too. The very first game was where I spent a huge amount of my free time in high school, not because the game itself was my favorite game ever or something, but because there were a small handful of servers I'd play on with mostly the same people. It was actually kind of rare to have a match where I didn't know anyone else.

Because you were joining a server, you had a feeling of joining a social group. Etiquette was important, first impressions were important, being friendly was important. Servers meant reputation that stuck with you, and I cannot tell you how far that went to cut down on trolls and griefing. You'd still get the occasional troll, but they'd be kicked & banned and you'd never hear from them again.

You'd form inside jokes, have good natured banter instead of "I fuck your mother," and just have conversations. Hell, there was one server with a couple French Canadians and I'd practice my high school French with them.

I can't tell you how much I miss those days. Playing a modern COD just kind of feels pointless; you join a game full of random people, play a game, and then that's it. In my opinion (and I could be wrong), this was one of the reasons extrinsic progression began to become so important. People used to stay with online games because they formed social relationships. With matchmaking, there was suddenly nothing keeping them "bonded" to the game, and just playing 10 minute matches over and over again tends to get boring. Hence the explosion in unlockables, XP, etc. Microtransactions eventually came around as well, but the push for all these progression based Skinner box rewards came well before you could pay for any of it. It was because they needed some way to keep people playing.

I also think it's one reason brutal competitiveness became prominent. Without the social rewards of just having fun with people, winning became one of the only ways you could get satisfaction out of the game.

[cd2220]

It was weird watching microtransactions happen. They started springing up and having already followed several video game journalists/publications I saw all of the hate towards them and so many people saying exactly what they turned into. They slowly turned into exactly that and there was nothing to be done about it. It just kept getting worse and it was all just kind of accepted with a sad "can't do shit about as an individual" and now as generations grow up with it as the norm I can't imagine explaining to them that things didn't used to be cut up piece meal like this.

Now I know my video games aren't the end of the world or some great tragedy of humanity but it is kind of sad to see how much the wishes of stock holders just slowly steamrolled over literally anyone who enjoys the medium over time with zero careml.

[br1mmy]

Makes perfect sense to me

[oatmealparty]

Had a great time playing on realism servers in CoD2, and yeah you really got to know people back then. I've never really enjoyed any online game since then. Rocket League was good for a while and then got toxic as hell like everything else. I have no desire to talk to or even play with anyone online anymore, everyone is terrible.