The Elder Scrolls Online: Lack of Moderation Equals Toxic community

If you have ever played any online multiplayer gamer, you know that communities around these games can get very toxic; to the point of being inhumane at times. The Elder Scrolls Online is no different than the other gaming communities.

The phrase toxic masculinity is one that comes to mind for me when thinking of online gaming toxicity. Toxic masculinity is used to describe certain behaviors that are considered the norm of masculine and these same behaviors are generally associated with harm to society and to the men themselves.

Unrealistic expectations of what masculinity is produces "toxic" effects like; violence (including sexual assault and domestic violence, verbal abuse, overt serialization, excessively risky and/or socially irresponsible behaviors including substance abuse, and dysfunction in relationships; especially online relationships, like those developed in gaming. And traits of toxic masculinity can be seen in our gaming culture and is not restricted to men. Women can partake and contribute to a toxic gaming culture as much as they are victimized by it.

The fact is that many people seem to forget this is just a game. The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game. Say it with me.

The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game.

Let that sink in for a minute... or an hour if you need that long.

Most mature guilds, ones that have been around for a while and are successful, especially those that make money off dues from their members, regulate their text chat and handle toxic gaming culture in their guilds, sometimes harshly. They do this to protect their micro-community; to provide a non-toxic place for their members to communicate, share and have fun.

But this is where the safety net ends. If you leave the safe harbor of a guild, it is the wild west of text and voice chat. Think of this region of the game's communications area as if it is Somalia meets 80s Homophobia meets 90s Porn, meets A Clockwork Orange meets Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face."

Anything goes and nobody gets admonished for it.

THE PROBLEM:
Lack of Zenimax moderators in public area chats (both text and voice) is the main source of the issue. The old saying, locks only keep honest men honest holds true. When people are provided a relatively anonymous way to verbally assault one another with zero moderation (as it is with the whole of the internet), the gloves come off and they usually stay off.

Today we have people, or bots, advertising gold for sale in the game, which is a direct violation of XBox terms and conditions. We have bot farmers clogging up quest areas, we have hate speech and racism being spewed across Tamriel and Zenimax is doing nothing to change it. The fact is, by not taking action to stop it, Zenimax is in fact supporting the hate, misogyny and racism as it provides a moderation free platform for it occur in.

Early in the game there were moderators, known as Game Masters, as seen above, but the last time I have heard of credible report (credible meaning a screen shot) of a Game Master was the 2014 Bot Cleansing. Not only would these Game Masters cleanse those exploiting new features, bot farmers and such, they would moderate the game chats (both area voice and text when it came available). People were kept in check; Game Masters were the locks that kept people honest. But now they are gone and the community has regressed to West World Status.

Today the zone text chat and area voice chat is rampant with racist, sexist and rapist remarks, foul language (no I'm not a prude), threats of assault (including sexual assault), and harassment (yeah, this is where I call out a douche-bag named Ruby). I won't say his whole gamer tag because this is not about throwing shade at individual but Ruby is a real world example of toxicity in the community. People like Ruby are allowed to run around stalking people he feels did him wrong, even with an Xbox account block in place, when in fact he was the one that screwed over a lot of people, including:

• Bragging about stealing from a guild bank that wasn't his own 
• Going into someone's house and moving all his stuff under ground and outside the boundary of the house 
• Stealing guild members from former guilds that kicked him for stealing from their bank
• Misogyny towards female guild members 
• And openly racist remarks in voice chat.

And again, while a lot of the issues I have experienced involve men, women are not excluded from it. I have ran into some very toxic people on both sides of the binary gender line. One woman, who I will not name, but instead reference her as MS. M is known throughout the community for accusing men of trying to have sex with her and then saying she is going to kill herself and then ghosting the community (not just in Xbox, but in Facebook communities as well) leaving everyone to wonder, "WTF?"

While the rest of us try to have some fun, the Ruby's and Ms. M's of the game continue feeding the toxic culture and get away with it; time and again. Ms. M is still in the game, under a different name. Ruby is still in the game with no name change. Some people just want to see the world burn and Zenimax allows these people to roam free setting all the fires they wish to, unchecked by game moderators.

THE ZENIMAX SOLUTIONS:

1. Clearly publishing guidelines everyone has to accept providing what is unacceptable public area communications; anti-bullying, anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-hate, etc.
2. Having Gamemasters in the game would help enforce these community guideline and drive down on this behavior, not just by eliminating it, but by preventing it. A police car in the neighborhood cuts down on property crimes, traffic violations and violent crimes. We need a Gamemaster in the game to act as this police car. We need a lock to keep the honest people honest as it were.
3. Have a reporting mechanism in place. Realistically, Zenimax can't have someone online 24/7/365, even though I think it would be feasible given the money we have all paid them over the last three years. But they could put a reporting mechanism in place so that, for an example, if someone is behaving poorly in zone text chat, typing things racist things, bullying, threatening or otherwise harassing people, that text can be selected, just as it is now, with an extra option at the bottom of the Whisper, Travel To, Invite to Group, etc. options menu, to report that specific text to Zenimax moderators.

THE COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS:

1. Do not feed the trolls. We as a community need to stop engaging the toxic elements of our community as this added negativity just feeds the trolls and rewards their behavior; it given them what they want and encourages them to continue.
2. Until Zenimax puts tools in place to address these community issues, if you find the behavior of another individual violates Microsoft's terms of use; no harassment, threats, abuse, hate speech; Take a screen cap of the activity (hard to do with voice chat, and it is known that Microsoft can't act on things said in voice chat, unless you capture video evidence of their behavior that contains their voice, but they can when it is typed in text chat) report them to Microsoft.
3. And finally block them via Xbox live, which blocks them in game voice and text chat as well. Without an audience, they have nothing to feed from. If nothing else removing this negativity will greatly improve your personal experience in the game.
4. A good guild cuts down on your exposure to this. In the case of Ruby; when his behavior was reported to and validated by our guild, he was kicked out of the guild, a guild he had purchased a (500k) lifetime membership to. They did this because a good guild will not tolerate the Ruby and Ms. M personas of the world.

There are a lot of great people in this community. Hell, I hang out with some of the best, most helpful people in the game. There are some fantastic guilds that don't allow these behaviors from their members. ESO as a community is not all bad, hell it's not even in the top ten most toxic game communities, but the community is getting toxic and it has its toxic elements and those elements are just as bad at the elements in the top ten. There are some awesome people out there; I wouldn't be where I am in the game without help from an outstanding group of people. And it people like you, like the people I hang with in the game that can make a difference. It's not too late for us to clean it up now and prevent it from getting worse.

Let's get this fixed Zenimax. Make the community better and you will retain more members and recruit more... that means more ESO plus subscriptions, more crowns being purchased and more money for in your shareholders... because we know that really what you care about.