I think some of the more niche games/genres tend to make its community more open and inclusive, since it's a bunch of people wanting more people to enjoy the things they do.

The moment you get competitive, shit goes downhill hard. From my anecdotal experience with World of Warcraft, a game that caters to both tryhards and casuals, the latter are much more likely to hang around and help you out, or ask for your help, while the former will actively try to make the game worse for everyone, especially those of the opposing faction, ganking low level players that cannot fight back "for the lulz".

Also, anyone that has ever played in a LAN like setting, with your buddies literally within punching distance, knows that everyone behaves better and are less likely to go full apeshit

The scientists then looked specifically at players of shooter games, a genre often associated with military themes and violence. They found that shooter game players were also more likely to hold inclusive values regarding gender roles and equality compared to the general public. Their views on social tolerance were not significantly different from the average American.

Across every model tested, the authors found no evidence that playing video games broadly corresponds to an increase in exclusionary values. “The average person should take away from our findings that video game players are not some monolithic community,” Pauley told PsyPost. “While exclusionary and vocal segments of online gaming communities certainly exist, and we certainly do not want to downplay that, our findings suggest that on average, video game players hold slightly more inclusive values than the general population.”

So, the same problem that has plagued the internet since its inception: the loud idiots are too fucking loud

This guy skewed the data, pretty sure:

This is much more obviously true in the table-top space, but I suspect the obvious expansion of diversity in gaming culture was exactly what all the awful reactionary gatekeeping crap was about, and why they continue to peddle the myth. I’ve seen similar arguments made that comic books are only for young white cishet men and that publishers are deluding themselves by not only catering to that market, despite the fact that the comics market in the US has pretty much collapsed while the more inclusive Euro and Japanese markets are doing very well thank-you-very-much.

I mean, I'm an old gamer.

I feel like we are one of the worst groups for inclusive language but actually pretty damn good at inclusive behavior.

There's no way this is actually true. Maybe it seems like it because companies want people to look at them and their games more positively but literally every competitive game and then others isn't.

Here's my personal anecdote that supports this.

I live in Pennsylvania, which is considered a swing state, but it did vote for Trump both of the times he won. Pretty humiliating.

AGDQ this year was in Pittsburgh so I got to attend a couple days. It is by far the most inclusive crowd I've been in locally, where people can just let their true colors out without constant fear. I think it's the only crowd where I've heard "trans rights" exclaimed and met with cheers. And it's truly inclusive in both directions. I'm a big old bearded straight cis white guy and nothing made me feel out of place either.

Between gaming communities and FOSS/linux communities, I think it's we nerds who are so inclusive!

Truly the most oppressed class of people 😢

/s if it wasn't obvious

Metal heads and punks are also really inclusive despite society viewing them otherwise.

Unless that game is csgo

Source: I play csgo

From my quick read through of their methods it seems like they didn't account very well for the types of games, platforms and demographics. The decade in question saw a massive explosion of gaming as a hobby into the mainstream and, importantly, a strong growth of women in the gaming population.

So as a whole you have games becoming more mainstream to younger ("woke") audiences and more accessible while the inclusive-biased demographics also blew up. It's not at all shocking that you'd find more inclusivity there.

A much more interesting study would be separating the gamers from the Gamers. Show me how people playing Splatoon and Animal Crossing compare to the neckbeards living in LoL and HoI4...

makes sense,maybe the less inclusive/racism thing comes from your view not the video games you play.

Yeah, they are thinking of 2000s xbox live chat. It's been a while since then.

All the people who complain about games being woke don't play any games.

let me point you all in the right direction: people in general are more inclusive than the general public is led to believe

Direct link to the study: https://www.psycnet.org/doi/10.1037/ppm0000672

Unfortunately, its paywalled, but I'd be curious about the methodology and population.

Maybe - hear me out here - engaging in stories tends to make you more empathetic? Movies, books, games, they all give you stories about other people. If you're shown how to imagine what it's like to be another person, you will probably end up being a better person.

I play a lot of multiplayer games and I find that gaming constantly teaches me that no matter what, it always comes down to the quality of the community.

Every other aspect of design is a comparatively merely a detail.

Just don’t hang out with Madden or COD players and you’re probably fine :D

From what I've seen, a lot of the pushback against "woke" games revolves around whether they're good or not. Almost no one cares about a good game being woke, stuff like BG3 was widely enjoyed by a lot of people despite having gay characters/etc.

However when a game is bad or mediocre, people are quick to blame any "woke" content in the game. There's a mentality of "they were putting effort in pushing a political/social agenda I don't agree with, while not putting in enough effort on the stuff that actually matters".

Of course, now you have a lot of people assuming whether a game will be good or not based on how the perceive it. But if it comes out, and is actually a good game, that's enough to quiet most all of the complaints it seems.

If someone calls you a slur, or whatever, in a game, chances are they don't care about the aspect of you they're badmouthing - they don't know you enough to care. To me, it's usually either saying shit just for the sake of it, or it's like a subconscious test of whether you have a stick up your ass, and if you actually get mad or offended, you've failed the test.