> There are wide swathes of the video game community which are absolutely toxic, in every possible way you can imagine and some which people of good will would

> There are wide swathes of the video game community which are absolutely toxic, in every possible way you can imagine and some which people of good will would have difficulty imagining. I wish game companies did a better job of market-based approaches to limiting this. Microsoft tried an approach with Xbox Live on the 360 where gamers could segregate themselves into different communities. Recreation, Family, Pro, Underground. The hope was that the toxic players would stick to Pro and Underground, but there just essentially zero policing for the scale Xbox Live came to be, so trolls would enter the other areas too. Any community enforcement is doomed to fail, because too much of the community really are a bunch of idiots and jerks. Friends lists and isolation are the only good counterpoints, and Xbox Live is a much friendlier, but much quieter place, since Party Chat came about (which lets you talk to your friends only). I don't ever use my headset without Party Chat now, and most others don't seem to either. Xbox Live was much cooler back in the Halo 2 days, you'd meet new people and have fun, before it hit it's own Eternal September.