Couldn’t have said it better. We really need some official terminology for this.

No, because the former is like a co-op game in which everyone’s competing for the most points, but where you’re still very much on the same team – you might want to get the MVP rating, but you won’t get that (or win) by betraying your teammates. Whereas the latter is like a PVP game that wholeheartedly encourages griefing, backstabbing, and lying.

(Also known as “Why I don’t play Eve-Online”)

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the (sadly now defunct) City of Heroes, or Warframe. Or Star Trek Online or Guild Wars 2 (I don’t play them anymore, but I tried both for a time). Or Overwatch. Games where teamwork is essential, where the toxic griefers are a definite minority, and where players are actively encouraged to cooperate and support each other.

1: City of Heroes actually had a very large player population, spread out over a dozen servers (with myself mostly playing on the Virtue server, the unofficial RP server). Warframe is still very much active and continues to grow, not only in terms of players but also in terms of gameplay and added features. Star Trek Online is also still very much around, though I haven’t checked in on it in a long time. And Overwatch… I have encountered maybe a smattering of toxic players out of a very, very, very large pool of awesome and friendly people. It actually sounds as if the reason you seem to find toxicity wherever you play is because of the common denominator in the equations.

2: you’re now reduced to arguing about the specific examples cited for a metaphor about an original topic, as if by proving that gamers suck you’ll somehow win the argument without having to address your inability to grasp the difference between Adam Smith’s capitalist theories (grounded in a judeo-christian moral framework that emphasized that no one was supposed to starve in any fair system) and Ayn Rand’s objectivist insanity (filled with insane rationalizations about selfishness as a virtue and declaring that anyone who disagreed with her deserved to die, along with their children). Add to that the crack about communism, which means you’re dumping on all the positions… you aren’t even offering a remotely coherent argument here. You’re just bashing on whatever you can, for the sake of being negative and toxic.

1: Apology accepted.

2: Not necessarily. I used to play a game with a very tiny player base – never more than a few hundred players on at any given time. The main reason for that was because the veteran players were a bunch of repugnant jerks who actively harassed newbies, and a number of the moderators were good friends of said veterans. I spent a while running a group to help newbies get into the game, and I was subjected to an unbelievably vicious harassment campaign as a result. It’s not the size of the player base that counts, it’s the game mechanics that encourage/discourage specific behaviors (in City of Heroes you could only PVP in specific areas, and when you were PVEing you were teamed up with players who wanted to play a game about being a SUPERHERO, which means they were looking to play nice guys by default).

3: You’re the one who won’t stop harping on the negatives. I HAVE seen people behaving negatively in Overwatch and elsewhere (hell, I’ve behaved badly in the past – and greatly regret it. Nobody’s perfect). But the vast majority of players are awesome and decent and friendly. I’ve seen that in Overwatch. I’ve seen that on City of Heroes. I’ve seen it in Warframe. I did see a preponderance of toxic players on LoL, which is why I uninstalled it and spent my time on more pleasant pursuits. I encountered griefers and pirates on Eve Online and so I told my friends “sorry, this is not for me.” But a tiny percentage of unpleasant players in a community does not a toxic player population make.

4: I have NEVER seen a player tell another player to kill themselves. Even on LoL, the closest I’ve ever seen to that were a few idiots telling other players to quit and then uninstall the game. You can mute those idiots. And you can report them. And harassment on that level tends to get you banned from play.

Furthermore, cooperative teammates win a lot more than the selfish jerks. When I hear a selfish jerk on my team, I know we’re at a disadvantage – but when we’re all working together (as we generally do), we pull it off nicely. The same thing applies in capitalism, btw – the successful businesses tend to be the ones that treat their employees well, respect their customers, and behave in an honorable fashion. That is why Valve has had such a success with Steam, and why EA’s “Origin” system fell apart, and why when EA threatened a hostile takeover of Valve the employees all offered to quit and go work for Gabe Newell at whatever company he started up next.

5: I didn’t say “good capitalism” and “bad capitalism,” I said “capitalism” and “objectivism.” Capitalism is a system that has existed in one form or another since the dawn of civilization, and works best when contained within a strong code of ethical conduct. Objectivism is a bunch of inane crap dreamed up by a train fanfic author when quoting the child murderer she had an adolescent crush on. You’re engaging in a logical fallacy, that of misrepresenting my argument and the facts and then attacking the misrepresentation. Also known as “strawmanning.”