Video Games are Real

Tag: Deindividuation

  • Why Do Videogame Fanboys/girls Want to Fight You?

    Why Do Videogame Fanboys/girls Want to Fight You?

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    Today I’m asking, what is it that turns a person into a “fanboy” and why are these fanpeople so eager to make outrageous claims and fight you?

    Fanpersonism is an affinity for a brand or entertainment IP over another that is so strong it inspires aggressive defense of the thing despite its flaws.

    It’s the reason I pre-ordered Fallout 76, despite all signs indicating it would be terrible.

    It’s the reason that as I played it I tried convincing myself that I was having fun.

    It’s the reason I told myself, after I stopped playing it, that I would return when the “minor” bugs were fixed.

    It’s the reason I call those bugs “minor.”

    But why am I a Fallout fanboy? And why do I get angry when other people don’t appreciate the beauty of Fallout? And what does this have to do with sexism in video games? You didn’t expect that last question, did you? I zig and zag, people.

    Right away, I must say that this video might upset you. The very nature of investigating fanboyism or fangirlism means that I’ll be telling you that the things you love might not be that great. So, even though we may all be fanpeople, let’s agree that console gaming and PC gaming are both great, Apple and Android products are both great, XBox, Playstation, and Nintendo consoles are all great. And we are all human and therefore all susceptible to the various psychological mechanisms that make us act in strange ways. Don’t try to convince me that you are better than everyone else. You are not.

    To understand fanpersonism is to understand choice-supportive bias. This is the idea that once you’ve made a choice about something, you’ll naturally look favorably upon things that support your choice and will downplay or ignore things that don’t. Said another way, it’s trying to avoid buyer’s remorse.

    One experiment shows this well. Psychologists Robert Knox and James Inkster went to a horse track to ask the gamblers about their confidence levels in the horses they bet on. They asked some gamblers before they placed bets and others after. Knox and Inkster found that gamblers had much stronger convictions about their chosen horses after they’d placed the bets. Meaning: people don’t want to believe they’ve made a bad choice.

    So, why is it so hard to change direction, to change affinity, to admit Fallout 76 sucks?

    To acknowledge that you’ve made the wrong choice, specifically one so tied to your own sense of identity, requires an enormous lack of ego, a degree of egolessness that I find most humans simply don’t possess.

    But more than that, our choices, especially brands and entertainment IPs, and perhaps especially in the realm of geek culture, are closely tied to our very identity as a person. When I wear a Fallout t-shirt, my identity becomes intertwined with Fallout, and with Bethesda, and with being a gamer. I want people to see me as a Fallout fan, as a Bethesda fan, as a videogame fan. I have what consumer psychologists call “high self-brand connection.”

    Fanpersonism dovetails with the concept of deindividuation that I discussed in a previous video. Deindividuation is the process of taking on the motivations of a group as your own personal motivations diminish. Once deindividuized, you’ve committed to a group and reflect that group’s motivation. Then fanpersonism kicks in and it becomes hard to turn away or criticize the group that you’ve committed to.

    This brings us to the sexism I mentioned earlier.

    It’s no secret that women gamers have suffered over the years, for nothing more than simply being women who play games. One person in particular, Anita Sarkeesian, made a name for herself by bringing to light a lot of the hurtful depictions of women in videogames. This unfortunately resulted in a wave of anger from (I assume mostly) males that ranged from simply calling Sarkeesian a liar to death and bomb threats. Did simple sexism cause this? Most certainly. But sexism alone probably doesn’t account for all the anger.

    Sarkeesian criticized something–video games–that many people consider part of their identity. To acknowledge sexism in videogames is to acknowledge both our own ignorance of and our approval of the prevalence of sexism in videogames. For an egotistical species, that’s a big ask.

    This isn’t to diminish the hatred Sarkeesian unfairly endured. She’s right to call out hurtful depictions of women in videogames. I’m glad she does. I just think the power of “high self-brand connection” and choice-supportive bias, no matter the role they played in Sarkeesian’s plight, is incredibly interesting, and Sarkeesian’s plight does give us a powerful case on which to apply such a lens.

    We are the things we buy and the clothes we wear and the games we play. To attack those things, even only a portion of those things, is to attack us as individuals. And it hurts. But we’re a strong, adaptive species. And with this awareness I am ready to comfortably say “Fallout 76 is not good.”

    And once again, read “Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People who Play Them” by Jamie Madigan.

    Also, for a deeper, personal dive into the world of sexism in video games, specifically from the perspective of a game developer, I highly recommend the memoir “Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate” by Zoe Quinn.

    Mentioned and Further Reading:

  • Why Are Some Online Gamers So Mean?

    Why Are Some Online Gamers So Mean?

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    I stay away from most online multiplayer games. My aversion is a symptom of my introversion. Introverts require less stimuli to be mentally satisfied, and because of this they prefer to control as much of an experience as possible. This explains why crowds are scary and why public speaking can be especially frightening for an introvert. The dynamic nature of people in an online multiplayer game diminishes some of the player agency that I want in a game, so I stay away from most online multiplayer games.

    But why are online multiplayer game players so dynamic? More specifically, why do some players turn into angry trolls the moment other players are introduced? Are those people sniveling beasts in real life?

    The word to focus on is deindividuation. Deindividuation is the process where a person’s identity fades as group dynamics take over and begin to influence the person’s behavior.

    Deindividuation is what causes a generally rational and non-confrontational person to become a terrible, rude, reference point for when parents and lawmakers tell us online multiplayer video games like League of Legends and Call of Duty are turning our good kids bad.

    This happens in two ways:

    1. Reduced social accountability, or the “you can’t see me” effect
    2. Reduced self-monitoring, or the “I can’t see me” effect

    Reduced social accountability in terms of online multiplayer games boils down to anonymity. As Jamie Madigan says in his book “Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them,”:

    “We feel reduced accountability from those around us because we’re in a group, because we’re anonymous, and because there are unlikely to be repercussions for our misdeeds.”

    Additionally contributing to reduced social accountability is the transience of our connections with other players. Meaning, we’re only interacting with our team members and our enemies temporarily.

    In 2010 Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft–a huge MMO; massive, if you will–tried curbing this effect by requiring users use their real names rather than made up screen names. The idea being that if users no longer had the ability to hide behind fake names, they would feel more accountable to their actions. Players were very unhappy and Blizzard changed course just three days later. In 2013 Google tried the same thing with YouTube commenters. That policy lasted a much longer, but still ultimately temporary, eight months.

    Reduced self-monitoring, the “I can’t see me” effect is, in my opinion, much more interesting than the “you can’t see me” effect. This is when a person adopts the motivations of a group as justification for her own actions. The “everyone else is doing it, so it must make sense,” mentality.

    Competitive games are perhaps the most obvious example here. When playing on a team against other teams, it becomes very easy to foster hatred for all teams that aren’t yours.

    Probably the most well-known study involving reduced self-monitoring is Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment where college students played as guards and inmates in a mock prison set. The idea, in short, was to see how the each student would adapt to their roles. Very quickly the guards began to abuse the inmates and the inmates accepted the abuse. The experiment was abandoned within six days.

    So, how has knowledge of reduced social accountability and reduced self-monitoring affected how video games are designed? The Player Behavior Team at Riot Games, creators of the incredibly popular League of Legends game, implemented a series of changes to positively curb the effects of reduced social accountability and reduced self-monitoring.

    Some examples are:

    • Players were granted the option to mute obnoxious players on the other team.
    • Riot Games introduced “priming” messages on loading screens designed to prime positive behavior. For example, one message read “Teammates perform worse if you harass them after a mistake.”
    • Riot games also looked at team composition. They found that if at least one pair of friends were members of the same team, it had a positive impact on reports of toxic behavior.

    So it’s our own human psychological makeup that allows us to become monsters when we play online multiplayer games.

    But, humans are also capable of learning and reacting with intent. So next time you’re playing games online, be nice. And don’t take it personally when some rude player tells you to eat a weiner.

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