I feel like Hearthstone is a good example of the maximum amount of communication two strangers can have on the Internet. You can choose 6 pre-made things to say to your opponent; Thanks, Well Played, Greeting, Wow, Oops, Threaten. This might be too much; I have definitely seen people get mad from their opponent using the voice lines too much.
My thought is that this significantly reduces the richness of the in-game interactions (implies less engagement, implies less revenue), but doesn't need moderators to keep the game from being used for illegal sexual encounters, which is nice if your game targets kids.
One of my favorite games ever was Journey, and what I loved most about it was how communication worked.
The game was online-multiplayer, where two players would work their way through a series of puzzle-like rooms together. But they would match you with a random person and you would have no idea who they were, not even a screen name.
Then, the only way you could communicate was by making a little chirping noise. Tap the button and you make a little chirp. Hold it down and release for a big chirp. If you weren't looking at the other player you would see a faint glow in their direction when they chirped, so they could grab your attention. And that was it.
There were times when I would miss something and start to continue forward, so the other player would chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp to say "Wait, look over here!" I had no idea if they were pissed at me or being friendly about it, but given how cute the whole thing was I would assume the latter. It just felt nice, like I was meeting a new friend every time.
I've gone back to that game several times over the years, but sadly nobody seems to be playing it anymore. My first time playing feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience that can never be replicated. Really great game.
Thank you for reminding me about Journey! I didn't realize it was multiplayer the first time I played it, which speaks to how well it was implemented (no matchmaking, no waiting, no usernames, etc - you're just playing the game and someone appears).
I still have fond memories of traipsing around the ruins in that game with complete strangers. The restricted communication made it more memorable for some reason. Plus, just a great game overall.
The latest re-release of it was for pc I believe, might have a better chance replaying it on there (waiting for a sale on your platform of choice may help).
Yes, essentially communication is a tool and any tool in a multiplayer game will be abused. Without playing any multiplayer Hearthstone, I can guarantee that some people would use "Well Played" after a mistake to insult players. Just like how in Rocket League people spam "What a save!" after an embarrassing miss.
I totally agree that it removes the richness. You lose out on any meaningful, even if small or quaint, connections, and might as well be interacting with an AI that triggers a "Well played!" at the end of the game.
There's no right answer here, it's an intractable problem since the beginning of the internet.
It reminds me of the Aesop's fable of the scorpion and the frog a bit. The problem is human nature projected into the internet.
> A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "It is in my nature."[1]
I think it's just an aspect of competition, and people's ego. In most competitive games, human psychology is just as important as any other aspect, and trash talk has been around since forever in order to tilt a player.
I don't personally view this as a negative.
It's the team-based games where kids are constantly yelling or berating their teammates for missteps that are far more annoying and negative.
The scorpion and the frog is my favorite fable, but I have no idea what the moral is supposed to be. It just seems like a hilariously nihilistic shaggy dog story.
As a kid, I remember it being spun as "don't mess with evil."
But as an adult, it seems like a rare (and perhaps valuable?) counterpoint to "don't judge other people" or "don't judge a book by its cover." Sometimes... those behaviors are adaptive.
It is weird because the scorpion, of course, dies too. And the frog was just doing him a favor.
I think the moral is supposed to be: "Some people are just irredeemably awful to the point that they'll self destruct and take you down with them if you try to help them" which... I guess is true but pretty jaded for a children's story, haha. Although, old fashioned fables do tend to have that dark aspect.
I came here to say this. In Hearthstone specifically, players were abusing "Thanks" by saying it after their opponents made a blunder.
Though, compare that to Facebook which knowingly allowed white supremacists to organize deadly attacks against BLM protesters, let ISIS recruit on their platform, and facilitated a genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Hearthstone is doing pretty well compared to that.
Elden ring offers 20 or so templates for messages and the ability to chain 2 templates with conjunctions for example: “Beware of {noun}” where noun is one of 200 or so whitelisted words. Kids still find creative ways to insult other players.
But if FromSoft cared to moderate the messages they could; there are a limited number of combinations that can be made. FromSoft instead encourages the behavior (e.g. by always having a few dead NPCs hanging over a railing with the butt facing the player), which is fine because they make games for adults.
The annoying thing about Roblox is that they're really not trying to experiment and figure out what could work, instead hanging on to a chat model that kids definitely can hack around.
I think Among Us quick chat is actually the best example of this. There are hundreds of combinations of messages you can send along specific templates - “The body was in (location)”, “(player) was chasing (player)”, “Vote (somebody)”.
It’s enough to have a full discussion in the emergency meetings without any possibility that I can see for abusive communication. The only weak link is the player aliases themselves.
This works well with games like hearthstone because the game itself is well defined. Whereas sandboxes such as Minecraft, Roblox and MMOs such as Runescape, World of Warcraft would be greatly neutered by this restriction. An an example of this, the Minecraft community is currently up in arms about Microsoft's new chat reporting.
There's also an entire category of games games (2nd life) and non games (omegle) which are built on communication with strangers. For some people that's part of why they play these games.
I get what you are saying but I see this as pretty dystopian. It's easy to measure the harms that happen, but what about the other side of the coin? What about the friends you never met because you couldn't speak to other people? What about the legal sexual encounters? Maybe even love?
Especially during covid lockdowns when people were meeting much less in person than normal, social connection through games was important.
"I feel like Hearthstone is a good example of the maximum amount of communication two strangers can have on the Internet."
Hello stranger on the internet .. don't you think, you used a bit more than
"Thanks, Well Played, Greeting, Wow, Oops, Threaten" here?
I still understood you, though. Which is my point, I had awesome communications with many strangers on the internet. Whether in games or forums.
But yes, the average online communication is quite low and toxic. And I had to learn to walk away or ignore most of it. So for small kids it is maybe a good thing, if their games do not have chat enabled. Which means pretadors then can only contact them through whatsapp, instagram, facebook, tiktok,...
Pandoras Box is wide open already and blocking it all, means isolating your kid.
In Age of Empires: Age of Kings/The Conquerors this was called/known as taunting. You could either do this by pre-defined voice taunts ("Start the game already!") or in the pre-game chat and during the game.
Rocket League's quick chat could be comparable (even though there's also freeform chat) - however it's very easy to piss people off via quick chat as well (e.g. spamming What A Save during a missed save)
My thought is that this significantly reduces the richness of the in-game interactions (implies less engagement, implies less revenue), but doesn't need moderators to keep the game from being used for illegal sexual encounters, which is nice if your game targets kids.