Communicating in Online Multiplayer
When you play multiplayer video games you can interact with people known as players. With those players you can communicate with them around the world but the thing is you really don’t know who they are in real life (IRL).
These days people are turning to online multiplayer video games to have fun, make friends, and communicate about strategies. But what about the negative side of online gaming while communicating with them? Let’s take a look at this issue. There are a lot of negative people in online games because they are either bored or they just want to have an excuse to talk trash because they are not good at the game. To start off communicating with online friends, is to talk about what games are interesting to that player. Or talk about other things like what is going on in the outside world to better the communicate. That also increases your friendship and bond with that online player. It can be people that are shy that are not good at talking a lot, but sometimes that shy person gets comfortable communicating with your friends online. Talking to your gaming friends also helps them communicate with people in real life, as I explained before about communication with friends online or meeting new people online. It helps a lot with your communication skills, that is the positive side.
From my experience in online communication, it’s really cool. When I’m playing games with friends we talk all about the game if we are playing as a group. If one of us doesn’t know how to play the game we ask that one friend how the game works. When I’m playing the game by myself and playing online, I don’t really talk to people online because I don’t know them. It’s very rare for me to make friends online. Like I said, it just depends on if they have the same interests in common with me. If they do, then we play games like Call of Duty, Destiny , or NBA 2K.
In one article I read, it discussed shy people communicating online. Zac Seager. He said, “to compensate or overcome their shyness”. They concluded that real-life shyness “is a predictor for the number of online gaming friendships.”
I didn’t know IRL was a “thing”. So I looked it up and found this short funny video about it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbmUe4DkOHY. I think it would help to explain what IRL is and to discuss more about how online communication is different, and how we can be cautious communicating online.
I’m not a gamer but it’s weird to think that when you’re playing online you never truly know the person you’re communicating with. That part seems a bit scary to me that they might not be good individuals.
Some of the best friends I have are ones I have never met in person, but met while playing games online. It is also how I keep in touch with one of my best friends.
I love this article, as a gamer, I can relate to your comment about creating new friends around the world. I started playing with a guy a couple of months ago and it turned into us setting up discord and playing together every night talking about life, where we’re from, and just getting to know each other. I’d say 90% of my friend group are from these online multiplayer. I know that every night I get on I have someone to talk to that will ask about my day, With covid going on we don’t get to interact with people every day and it’s nice knowing I have that through gaming.
As a pretty avid PS4 gamer, I can say I’ve met a lot of people that I intend to game with for years to come. I’ve met a lot of people that I’ll never know IRL – people in my clan in Destiny 2 and random players that send party chat requests after a scintillating game of Dead by Daylight. Covid definitely put a damper on my social life there for a while, but I don’t really feel affected anymore considering I get to sit back and game with everyone online.