Natasha Miller, desarrolladora de investigación en la compañía, afirmó que esto se debía a las dos nuevas funciones sociales que Blizzard introdujo en el juego el año pasado: el sistema de endorsement y la búsqueda de grupos.
Overwatch, like pretty much all competitive games, still has its fair share of toxicity—or as Blizzard calls it, “disruptive behavior”—but during a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Blizzard research developer Natasha Miller said it’s down a whopping 40 percent since last year’s addition of two new social features. First, there’s the endorsement system, which lets players reward each other for communicating effectively, playing respectfully, and calling shots. Then there’s Looking For Group, which lets players hunt for others of certain endorsement ranks, hero roles, or communication styles.
“It’s a difference between physical and online communities,” Miller said. “If you’re constantly tardy and you only do the bare minimum at work, you’re not going to get promoted. You have to watch someone else who does the work get the raise... In online communities, there are usually no consequences for bad behavior and no rewards for star players. We wanted the community to have their own reward system.”
“The system makes people nicer,” Miller said. Since endorsements launched, there have been questions about whether it’s real niceness or fake niceness born of a desire to win and watch numbers go up. But either option is better than everyone being nakedly toxic swamp people, if you ask me.
