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'One in Two' Young Online Gamers Bullied, Report Finds

posted by martyb on Friday June 02 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the bullies-are-wimps-with-bravado dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

A study carried out by an anti-bullying charity found that 57% of the young people it surveyed had experienced bullying online when playing games.

In addition, 22% said they had stopped playing a game as a result.

Ditch the Label surveyed around 2,500 young members of the virtual hotel platform Habbo, aged between 12 and 25.

One 16-year-old gamer, Bailey Mitchell, told the BBC he had experienced bullying while playing online games since the age of 10.

"If you're going to school every day and you're being bullied in school you want to go home to your computer to escape," he said.

"So if you're getting more abuse thrown at you it's going to put you off doing anything social - it has for a lot of people I know, me included.

"It's regular, every other game you're in, there's always someone who has a mic or types in chat. They'll call you some random abusive thing they can think of."

Indeed, young gamers should stop bullying old people in online games.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:14PM (#519517)

    Yeah, but it seems like all the games these days with the most hype are social/online ones.

    I'd like to point out that you were complaining about "best" games. "Most hyped" is an entirely different category. That also applies to movies, books, music, etc.

    Yeah, but how many of those are top-billed titles, rather than tiny little indie games? Don't get me wrong, I think there's probably some great little single-player indie games in there that would be great fun, but those aren't the ones that get all the hype and marketing, and teenagers are much less likely to seek these out instead of the AAA social games that all their dumb friends are playing.

    Sigh. First, don't forget that in the 80s, compared to today, the entire computer game industry was "indie". Second, AAA goes to the least common denominator. Those things are expensive as hell, and you don't get a lot of income with "good" games; for that you need flashy graphics and lots of marketing. Also see: Hollywood movies, pop music.

    Also: "Tiny little indie games"? "Great little single-player indie games"? Off the top of my head, here are several quality single-player indie games that have enough content for several thousand hours of gameplay: Dwarf Fortress, Terraria, Star Ruler 2, Grim Dawn, Minecraft (before Microsoft bought it). Not to mention that with crowdfunding and early access even indie games can raise millions of dollars for development...

    I'm not, I'm dismissing social games which seem to be all the rage these days among game-players

    No, you've specifically stated that "modern games were crap", not that "social games were crap". Social games represent only a tiny percentage of all games. Not to mention that this is not a "these days" thing: social games have always been all the rage, especially before the computers. How many families have spent evenings playing that crappy AAA social game, Monopoly?

    You know, between your complete dismissal of indie titles and your total focus on "social games which seem to be all the rage" to the exclusion of the overwhelming majority of other stuff out there, I wonder if I should just get off you lawn now :)