Blizzard Addresses Toxicity Within Overwatch
Blizzard has posted a new video about the latest developer update for Overwatch, and it’s a little different than usual. The video is titled “Play Nice, Play Fair” where game director Jeff Kaplan fires back at the level of toxicity within the Overwatch community.
Jeff Kaplan discusses what Blizzard is doing to combat the “rising tide of toxicity or bad behaviour in the game.” Blizzard has now released the player-reporting tools that have been available for PC players, for the consoles. Although they aren’t perfect, it’s a step in the right direction and Kaplan says that they’ve already taken action against over 480,000 players since the game’s launch last year. Approximately 340,000 came as a result of this player reporting.
Regardless of what fixes are put into place to try and prevent the bad behavior from happening, there are those that will continue to add to a toxic gaming experience. Kaplan explained, “There is not going to be a moment where we have a magic patch in Overwatch that makes bad behaviour go away. But it is a continual process that we are very dedicated to fixing and improving.”
In competitive, players that constantly leave their teammates stranded get placed in games with similar players. Unlike competitive play, Blizzard will not be tolerating the behavior, and players that are jerks will not be put with similarly-minded players, but instead will be unable to play Overwatch. Kaplan stated, “Our highest level philosophy is, ‘If you are a bad person doing bad things in Overwatch, we don’t want you in Overwatch. Overwatch should be an inclusive game space.”
While Kaplan believes that the problem stems from a few different areas, including the anonymity of sitting behind a headset and TV/computer, however he urges everyone to be nicer to one another. This in turn, would allow for Blizzard to spend more time on game development instead of on creating systems to combat toxicity. “The bad behavior is not just ruining the experience for one another, but the bad behavior is actually making the game progress in terms of development at a much slower rate.” The take away here of course is that if players want more new content (maps, characters etc.) then they need to try and decrease the level of bad behavior within the game.
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