There seems to be a rising trend within the gaming community to insult and shun gamers who may be new to a particular game or genre, whether it’s a new release or an older title. Some people do it because they think it’s funny, others do it because they’ve been playing a game longer and feel a sense of entitlement. Whatever the reason may be, hating on new-comers is unnecessary and just makes the person saying “noob” look like a tool.
It’s gotten to a point where it’s annoying, sometimes beyond annoying, simply because you hear it every 3 to 5 minutes. “Newb!” “No, you’re a newb!” “Shut up, newb!” “Go back to Halo, newb!” – You get the point. I’ve never understood this, and I’ve been playing multiplayer since the days of SOCOM 2 on the PlayStation 2. It’s gotten much worse with the release of this current generation of consoles because multiplayer is the big thing now. I think everyone forgets that everyone is new to a game, or even a genre, at one point or another. I’ve always been the type that if someone’s having trouble figuring it out, than I’ll give them a few tips.
The word “newb” is only just the beginning. It just seems to me like the hip thing to do over the voice chat is to just hurl insults at each other and distract everyone who’s playing to relax after a hard day’s work or to just escape the reality around them. It’s a little different when a 12 year old kid thinks it’s cool to curse up a storm because Mom is in the other room, just mute him. It’s totally different when you have 2 grown men hurling insults at each other over a video game. It’s even funnier when the team ends up losing; maybe if you didn’t spend all your effort trying to insult the other player(s) you could’ve actually captured the flag and maybe won the match. Am I right?
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The sense of community is gone and it’s something we’ll probably never get back. Online multiplayer is starting to become very stale because of the simple fact that you can’t enjoy yourself without having to hear an earful of terrible fame wars and two 28 year old guys calling 16 year old kids “newbs” because they think it’s funny. It’s not. It never has been, never will be. It’s also not fair that I should have to stop playing the game to bring up a menu and mute these idiots, which could in turn cost me a life or even the game.
What happened to saying “Hey, those don’t work that well that way, you should do this and it’s really effective,” and turning that person who maybe be new to the game into a total B.A. and an asset to your team? It’s not hard, and I promise you it makes the game a whole lot funner when you have a team who’s communicating, calling out, and actually playing the like a team.
This is something that hope one day dissipates and becomes a past memory or at least just a rare occurring that you wouldn’t hear 1000-times per night. It would be nice to actually be able to enjoy online multiplayer again. I guess I can be thankful for Xbox 360 having a party chat function so I can communicate with the ones I need to and not have to hear the clutter of insults. I guess this all just comes back around to an age-old question: Can’t we all just get along?
