Hate the game designer, not the player
Hate the game designer, not the player
Hate the game designer, not the player
By James Lautens
March 12, 2023
Summary
Poor game design, especially among competitive games, is causing a severe wave of toxicity within the gaming community.
The game design of Halo Infinite is one of the most recent iterations of poor game design leading to toxicity.
The game developers decided that in order to foster a sense of competitiveness, they would modify the weapons used in the game so that all weapons would function more or less equally - barring the rocket launcher and energy sword.
Bully Hunters is just one example of the toxicity that results from poor game design.
CS:GO itself, from what I hear from my peers and from the cursing-filled videos I've seen, is a game mired in toxicity due to its design elements that heighten stakes and thus promote winning at any cost, like having only one life per round to kill your teammates, it's no wonder that such a toxic atmosphere surrounds the game.
Game design can also positively affect a game community, like in Deep Rock Galactic.
While it is fundamentally a different beast in being a cooperative game instead of a competitive one, DRG's design makes it inherently a less toxic game than CS:GO. Games like the original Overwatch - that was a blend of competitive and cooperative - were still riddled with game design issues that made it supremely frustrating.
Reference
Lautens, J. (2023, March 12). Hate the game designer, not the player. The Varsity. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://thevarsity.ca/2023/03/12/hate-the-game-designer-not-the-player/