Although there will always be some degree of immature behavior in online, competitive play, developer Bungie knows that game makers can do a better job of stamping it out. Human nature will continue to get in the way, but when it comes to the upcoming AAA shooter Destiny, the developer is hoping to create a more positive environment and not one that leads to people crouching over every corpse in sight.
“If you look back at online multiplayer gaming for the last ten years I think the dominant thread has been adolescent males shooting each other in the face and squatting on each other’s corpses,” said Bungie technical director Chris Butcher to Edge. “And that emerges from design decisions which… some of which were intentional, some of which were not, but the community gets attracted towards that, and that is popular to a lot of other people and so it kind of tends to exclude others.”
Many consumers are instantly turned off from a game’s online component due to poor reception from the community. It’ll take new tools designed to prevent these types of incidents to at least make this a less prominent issue, and Bungie is willing to put in that time.
“I don’t think you can ever design toxic behavior out, you can’t ever stop players from being toxic but what you can do is prevent them being able to ruin other players’ experiences,” Butcher continued. “You give people these tools that encourage them to interact positively with each other and then if someone is interacting negatively with you, well, they can’t ruin your experience.”
Expect to see Destiny try to change the online world on current and next-gen consoles early next year.
