“Going outside is highly overrated.”

Anorak's Almanac, Chapter 17, Verse 32, from Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

How does that quote sound when I tell you it’s about video games? Pretty accurate, or does it induce Zuck-fuelled fever dreams that make you long for cottage core?

Ready Player One is a novel about a future in which the world has gone to waste and people spend most of their time in a metaverse called the OASIS. When the creator of the OASIS dies, his avatar reveals that his fortune and control over the OASIS will go to the first person to find an Easter Egg he left in the game. What ensues is a neon-purple adventure filled to the brim with obscure 80s references to unfurl the mysteries that lead to the egg. Life outside the game has lost most of its relevance.

Today, the video game industry is the largest entertainment industry sector worldwide—worth 145.7 billion USD in 2019, in comparison to the 42.35 billion film industry and 20.2 billion music industry. The OASIS level of video game immersion seems far off still. Although this, too, depends on who you ask and how you define “a gamer”. Researchers estimate there were between 2.81 billion and 3.24 billion gamers worldwide in 2021—that is between 36% and 42% of the world population.

Minecraft is the most-sold game in history, with more than 238 million copies sold: roughly one copy for every thirty people on earth. Popular gamers attract audiences to watch them play via streaming services like Twitch. A whopping 1.2 billion people are viewing video game content globally. Becoming a professional gamer is becoming a valid career option in South Korea, where tournaments are attended by football-level audiences in even more impressive e-sports arenas. 

WWW

Unsurprisingly, the effects and influences of the biggest entertainment industry are under scrutiny. Some debates are philosophical in nature, like when does escapism pose a problem? Others concern social issues: how can video games perpetuate gender stereotypes, and what to do about cyberbullying? Meanwhile, the persistent, yet scientifically contested, idea that playing video games leads to real-world aggressive or violent behaviour has been going strong since the arcade game era. Like any new technological medium, from the printing press to the radio, video games raise new issues and concerns for societies and governments to think about.

Under the anonymous guise of an avatar with no danger of a real-life confrontation, tons of vitriol are spewed toward strangers online every day. Especially massively multiplayer online games (MMOs)—where players move around and interact in a shared online environment—run the risk of breeding unhealthy environments. Shocking examples and top-tens listing the most toxic gaming communities are easy to find online, and the scientific community is paying attention as well. Video game company Unity found that seven out of ten players has experienced toxic behaviour online, including “‘sexual harassment, hate speech, threats of violence, doxing”, and other abusive chat or insulting voice activity.

Fortunately, there is more to gaming than the worst parts of it. The sheer numbers of players does not paint a picture of a niche pastime nobody cares about. People love submerging themselves in different worlds, breaking their heads over puzzles, or throwing tortoise shells at one another from a go-kart.  

A 2020 survey among women gamers by internet company Frontier found that three out of four women said that gaming had a positive impact on their life, while only 5% experienced a negative impact. About half of the 1000 respondents said gaming constituted an important part of their social life. All of this despite the fact that 82% reported having experienced negative treatment while gaming because of their gender. Toxicity of other players ranked second in frustrations while gaming, after low internet speeds. So, what makes a video game and its community a good place to be?

WWW

When researching online, it is difficult to ignore the obvious. Animal Crossing—a game where players play cute animals living their life on cosy islands—appears time and again as a wholesome game with a welcoming community. One Redditor described the community as one where players were happy to have the latest version of the game delayed if it would give the developers a healthier work life. 

Animal Crossing features no grand objective and has an “everyday pace” since it runs in sync with the real world. Other animals in your village go to sleep when you do, and it snows in winter. On social media, players share their experiences, trade items, and offer each other help. They can also visit each other’s islands, say, to celebrate a birthday.

Or what about putting yourself in the shoes of green aliens called “Kerbals” who want nothing more than to go to space. In the game Kerbal Space Program, players are challenged to develop a space programme from scratch in a hyperrealistic, but otherworldly, physics simulator. 

Like Earthlings, the Kerbals are having a hard time getting off the ground. The game is known to be difficult and frustrating at regular intervals. Some experienced gamers have developed their alien technology to perform incredible feats, yet according to a Redditor, every time a beginner posts their progress online, “everyone cheers and encourages them and gives tons of advice. I love it.” 

In a touching Ted Talk, e-sports event organiser A.C. Williams recounts the story of Poko, a fellow gamer from Japan who fell sick. Williams met Poko during the events he organised around Splatoon 2, a third-person shooter that is all about squirting your opponents with playdough-coloured paint. Your objective is to cover more area of the map in your colour than the other team does.

A couple of months after the two met, Poko was diagnosed with a brain tumour. People from the Splatoon community started reaching out to her, sending her kind messages and even fan art. “Everyone began adding two hearts to their username,” Williams says, “in Poko’s favourite colours: green and purple. These colours flooded Twitter and community timelines, and it was impossible for Poko to miss how loved she was when she went into that final surgery.” The surgery, which was known to have a low success rate, didn’t succeed. Poko passed away and left behind a grieving but united community.

Video games often spill over to real life. Take Stardew Valley, a pixelated farming game where you play a character who left their horrible office job to take over their inherited farm. The game builds on themes like taking care of the land and building up friendships. And people seem to take the game’s message to heart by talking about mental health online and even taking up gardening themselves, like the game’s main character.

WWW

So far, the games discussed are suspiciously non-violent. While many online multiplayer games with toxic reputations contain violent elements—from Call of Duty to League of Legends—there are plenty of exceptions. The football game FIFA doesn’t have a particularly graceful stature, and neither does Rocket League—a “football” game where players are rocket-powered cars that can fly.

In the survey of women gamers mentioned earlier, five games from the top ten most positive gaming communities contained violence and two contained "fantasy violence". The latter is also called “cartoon” or “mild” violence, and applies to “non-realistic” games like Minecraft and Roblox. Violence is not a defining factor when it comes to gaming communities. In fact, toxicity seems to relate more to competitiveness in a game than to its violent contents. 

According to social scientists, toxic gaming cultures emerge out of a wide range of circumstances and mostly apply to online multiplayer games. For starters, gamers tend to act out more when they feel invisible and anonymous while playing. Once a gaming community has gone sour, its toxicity is perpetuated by players following the new norm. Personal psychologies also play a role, with factors like a sense of inferiority, depression, and sadism predicting toxic online behaviours. Worryingly, younger gamers seem to be more accepting of the toxic behaviours they witness and participate in while gaming.

As close to half of the world’s residents are playing video games, paying attention to its negative effects on people is essential. But recognising the pleasure, purpose, and values that people obtain from video games is just as meaningful. Humans love their favourite games, the stories they tell, and the people they meet along the way. They talk about them online, watch other people play, or cosplay as a character they adore.  

Like any online space where people interact, humans are figuring out what works and what doesn’t—a painful and slow process in a supposedly frictionless and fast epoch. Digital worlds are becoming more pervasive and immersive, so we should take care of them as we do—or try to do—of the real world. The future will not look like Ready Player One’s dystopia if we keep paying attention to the bad and the good, while acting where needed. There may be side quests along the way, but nothing the gamers of the world cannot tackle.