They’re Cracked Bro, They’re Cracked
Communication within the world of online gaming is one of the most difficult things to explain. The reason for its difficult explanation is that it can be either good or bad. The community for the game that you are involved with can make it so. Communication for multiplayer games has become a necessity. Without the ability to communicate within the gaming community could lead to a number of things.
Reasons for multiplayer communication being a good thing are the abilities to effectively relay information to the other players in your game. This information could be vital for another player to complete the team’s objectives. With communication, you can establish a connection with the other players that could last a lifetime. This would lead to the player having a new found enjoyment in the game. The other players make the game a more fun and enjoyable experience. This also leads to the community being a more positive experience for the players. Now, within this experience comes the reasons for multiplayer communication being a bad thing. There is a time where you come across players who only look to troll other players. To “troll” someone is simply annoying them to the point of being angry and borderline violent. You have some players that start arguments with players that are doing better or worse than them. There are even players that play loud music through their microphone. This hinders a player’s ability to receive the needed information from players playing the objective. This makes the game a nightmare after dealing with this for a period of time and can lead to players turning off communications with players completely.
The community in which you are playing and communicating in is either a toxic or non-toxic environment. There are several games that have a section that is filled with toxic players. Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc. just to name a few of them. There are hundreds of games that have a community of toxic players. Personally, I do not think that there is a completely non-toxic community within the world of gaming. There are too many people on this Earth that have time on their hands to try things out, all while gaming. Hacking the game’s files is one of the problems within communities. If it is not possible to complete the objective just based off of skill alone, the game becomes less enjoyable. With this type of background for a game’s community, this leads to players not wanting to have effective communication with other players.
The need for communication within multiplayer games is very important. As stated earlier, effective communication within the game of choice is needed to get the objective completed for the player and/or their team. An excellent example of needed communication would be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s Warzone. This is a multiplayer battle royale mode. In this mode, you have to communicate with your team to take out the enemy teams and win the game. Communication would be things like letting your team know where an enemy is and if they have teammates nearby. If you have pursued the enemy and have taken shots at them, you can let your team know that they are weak or if they have no armor left to survive another immediate attack. Hints the title. This is valuable information that could help the team greatly. Without this type of communication being shared this could lead to a number of things being misconstrued. Things like the location of the enemy, if they were downed in the heat of battle, the number of teammates that they have, how far out the enemy is, the location that you want to move to for better positioning, etc. Without this information you would run around blind to what is happening. Enemy teams could sneak up on you and your teammates and get the drop on everyone if you can not relay the message of spotting them earlier. Granted, this particular game has specific actions to sort of help out with this problem, but if you have a team that does not pay attention to visual signals and cues, then it will basically be the same as not verbally letting them know what you know.
Within these multiplayer games comes a list of names and sayings that are used to help you locate specific things and the state of something or someone. This would be banter, phrases, and action communication, as I briefly mentioned before. These things could lead to better communication with your teammates and even random players that you’re meeting for the first time. Saying things like, they’re cracked, he’s one shot, rez me, downed one, going to blue pyramid, enemy at apartments, etc. are things that could make the relationship with your teammates better. Just all around good communication.
Nice post!
You just took me on a trip down memory lane. I used to play World of Warcraft. Okay, let me rephrase that… I used to eat, sleep, and breathe World of Warcraft.
You are 100% correct about how communication can be a big deal in the gaming world. For instance, when I was playing WOW, I would raid with my guild. The chat would be an okay form of communication, but if you were right in the middle of doing something, having a headset and calling out to each other when and if you needed help, well, it was way more effective. The same goes for when I was in a group working to defeat a boss in a dungeon.
If that communication isn’t there between members of your party while you are gaming, it can mean life or death for your characters. It can also mean success or defeat. AND nobody likes to be defeated because someone didn’t hear that we weren’t going to clear the whole room at once.
Communication is definitely key in gaming today. I made a friend in 2009 via an online multiplayer game and we are still friends today. My husband and I pay for him to come to visit once a year from New Jersey. Without the ability to communicate via audio chat we would have never made such a friendship.
Games aren’t the solo experience they used to be. Practically everything involves some sort of co-op or online mode these days. And, yeah, whether you’re in a WoW raid or a CoD shootout, the most successful parties are those that communicate with one another in order to coordinate attacks and strategize. I, unfortunately, rarely engage in these online chats because, like you mentioned, some gaming communities are rather toxic places filled with trolls. I’ll admit, this fact has turned me off chatting, a bit, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from botched WoW raids it is to c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-e!
This is a neat topic. I have never been much of a gamer, unless you consider old school systems, so a lot of this is foreign to me. I really enjoyed the part of your blog where you broke down some of the codes and would have liked to seen more of that with explanations. For example, what is meant by “going to blue pyramid?”?
Overall, this was an enjoyable read. Thanks!
I really enjoyed this article, and the pictures you were able to place in here, as well. I think communication in multiplayer games is almost essential. However, the caveat you presented us with being toxic players. As on social media, there will be toxic people there to ruin progress, or straight up just to be miserable individuals. It makes interacting with those types of people draining. I wonder what, in multiplayer games, these toxic people are trying to accomplish? Is it just to hack the game, or is there something deeper within these individuals?