WomenGamers.Com - Articles - The Nice Girl's Guide to Gaming Etiquette

:: The Nice Girl's Guide to Gaming Etiquette

AUTHOR: JennyLee | PUBLISHED: April 14, 2000 | COMMENTS (56)

PAGE: 1 | 2 | 3

There are certainly times when it's satisfying and fun to brag about your prowess at a game, or to throw a friendly taunt at someone you've just fragged. It's when that taunting degrades to insults designed to make someone angry, accusations of cheating, or all around tasteless flaming of other players that it takes the fun out of the game. And games are supposed to be fun. That's the concept behind playing them, last I checked, and that's why we play them. I wondered what I could do to avoid that entire aspect of gaming, and realized that my options were either to deal with my own reactions somehow, or leave the game. I can't hope to change the course of multiplayer gaming by myself, after all - that's definitely a group effort. Not wanting to quit a game I enjoyed playing, I went on a quest to learn how to deal with my own reactions to smack talk, since that's the only thing I have ultimate power over.

The first thing I did to try and keep myself from reacting to the insults that were being directed at me was take a close look at who they were coming from. Most often, the deliverer of the too-cool-for-you comments was portraying immaturity in every way imaginable - accusing someone who is a good player who continually beats them at the game of cheating, questioning a player's parentage, whining and complaining about their connection speed, or your connection speed, taking stabs at your team if you have one, and so on.

I found that, with this sort of situation, there are a few basic options. If you want to play their game, egg them on some more and really get them riled up, call them kids - a lot of them seem to really hate that. If you're more creative and can insult them intelligently it might confuse them, but be ready for retaliation from that because it will most likely just make you more of a target. If you're up for the insult game and not taking it seriously, then by all means go ahead, although I don't think that this really helps my personal campaign to put an end to smack talk, so I'm not 100% willing to sanction this particular method... but sometimes I'm having a bad day, and being polite just doesn't cut it.

Another choice, and the advice I was most often given when I asked for it, is to ignore them completely. Don't react, don't respond, don't even acknowledge their existence. They will get bored and find someone else to target, if they really need to have someone to bully so that they feel more powerful. I seem to remember my mother telling me to ignore bullies back in grade school, and it didn't work then, but I think the effective difference is that the only way an online bully can know if they are bothering you is if you respond actively - getting angry and talking back to them - where in school at recess they could keep following you around and harassing you. Most of the bullies in public school grew up, though. I'm hoping to see the same in gaming communities.

PAGE: 1 | 2 | 3

Articles on WomenGamers.Com solely reflect the experiences and perspectives of the author(s). Feel free to agree or disagree in the accompanying forum thread.