The wider Gaming Community has a toxicity problem and today I wanted to specifically talk about how, in my opinion, Deep Rock Galactic’s developers stump out the embers before they could turn into a wider issue and how the game encourages cooperative play and essentially just fun rather than stoking the flames of competitiveness and hate.
In my experience, Deep Rock Galactic is one of the most wholesome yet awesome online gaming experiences out there, and the community is one of the most universally kind and creative.
Yes, of course, even then, you can play the game solo, as Naithin from TimeToLoot documented a while back… but the game sort of is still intended to be played with others – and as someone with a lot of friends in other timezones with busy schedules, I’m often surprised at how well an open lobby with random people just works out, with a hivemind-like structure and reaction (more on that later) where everyone, newbie or veteran alike, just thinks in very similar ways. It’s wild.
That said, this post is mostly about how Deep Rock Galactic “fixes” toxicity and sets a good precedent for how cooperative online experiences but also multiplayer games in general can foster a good community that isn’t overly negative if not even hateful.
It also functions as a review of sorts because the game is great and I love it and if you like class-based shooters, you’ll probably love Deep Rock Galactic. The gameplay is amazing.
There is not as much to say about that though that hasn’t already been said, so I believe that talking about the community aspect and the elements of the game that create a non-toxic experience in a multiplayer setting and this day and age’s political climate is much more important, now than ever.
Note: The screenshots featured in this post are purely decorative and just some that I took some ages ago.
What is Deep Rock Galactic?
Deep Rock Galactic is a class-based mission-based shooter set in space with fully destructible environments where you step into the role of a dwarf to embark on various jobs for the titular company to mine resources, kill alien critters, retrieve objects, and come back alive.
There are four classes in the game, the Gunner, Driller, Scout and Engineer (all pretty self-explanatory), that each feature some damage dealing capabilities, a mobility tool, some utility, and a bunch of fun voicelines. Each class has a primary and secondary weapon, as well as a grenade, each featuring two alternative weapons that can be unlocked over time. On top of that, since you play as dwarves, you naturally are well-equipped with a pickaxe to mine resources with or dig a path out.
Missions range from retrieving alien eggs or destroying hives and killing their bosses to mining a specific amount of ore or other objectives. Each comes with a bonus object, and along the route, you may find other ores, necessary for useful upgrades.
It’s very humouristic in its nature, missions can be incredibly quick and easy but you can dial up the difficulty on a bunch of different levels, on top of having to deal with some degree of procedural generation and various run modifiers that make the game harder to deal with, not to mention the various environmental hazards and the fact that friendly fire isn’t all that friendly after all.
It’s a good time with a lot of content. I highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t yet! The community is really great and it’s just a blast!
“We’re rich!” – On Rewards and Team Contribution
Deep Rock Galactic is cooperative in nature. Of course, you can play alone, with just one or two friends, or with a full lobby, but at its core, it doesn’t make much of a different, except for the difficulty increasing or decreasing based on how you play the game.
The various classes, each have their own tools to deal damage or traverse terrain. Hence, since any class can be played solo, a full lobby doesn’t need to cover all the different classes, and scouts are just not needed. I believe in Driller supremacy. (this is a joke, you may laugh)
As such, any player can play any class they like the way they want to and they’ll most likely still have a great time. Players are less inclined to look at others and heavily encouraged to bring in their best of behaviours.
This is due to the fact that each individual in a squad does their best to mine resources and contribute to the mission’s objectives.
At the end of the day, it’s not like one players gets more resources whereas another gets less. Each player gets the same amount. If you get kicked from a lobby, you get a share of the resources but it’s not as much as a full mission’s worth. You’re hindering yourself. So, if you want to sabotage your team, you’ll only sabotage yourself in the end. Similarly, if you’re upset at one person not mining enough, you simply just have to do more yourself. Rather than being upset at one person getting carried, be insightful, give pointers, be kind, and perhaps take pride in carrying a greenbeard. One step closer to greybeardism!
Since resources are paid out the same to all players at the end of the day, and since there are bonuses for dwarves making it to the escape pod drill thingy, teamplay as encouraged and rewarded. One person doing it all is discouraged.
As I mentioned, friendly fire is a thing, and it’s not as friendly as the name makes it sound.
Between explosives, flames and gunfire, you can deal a lot of damage to your teammates, intentionally or not, and as a result, this adds to the challenge and difficulty but it rarely leads to deaths, in my experience.
Reviving a fellow dwarf helps you and your team. Doing your utmost to make sure that no dwarf is left behind gives you a monetary bonus at the end of the day, too.
Yes, there may be a person who wants to troll and sabotage the game, perhaps a leaf lover in disguise, but for what it’s worth, they’re only wasting their own time doing so and sabotaging themselves. Not to mention, that the game has an abundance of lobbies. If you don’t like a person or host or whatever, you can join another within minutes. The community is incredibly active, and always happy to have another dwarf on the mission!
This in turn also means that kicking a leaflover isn’t all that uncommon. Some people act out of line. It happens, even in a community as great as the DRG community, and those people get kicked out from a game by their annoyed teammates. It’s an easy fix to a problem that doesn’t inconvenience your time in the slightest, really, and the offending party who gets kicked is at fault themselves.
Again, you still get resources when you get booted and even I have been kicked at times, mostly because of me perhaps stepping away for a moment and the mission already having started, so I was afk for a bit, and in that case, I’d get 25% of the collected resources which is equal to a failed mission.
If you don’t like getting booted from a lobby that you trolled in or that you were flaming, don’t be a troll or don’t be toxic. Better luck in the next lobbies. Again, there are always at least ten games going on per planetary zone, depending on the time of day and weekday.
“Look at this beautiful dwarf!”
What further adds to the experience is the fact that most of the content isn’t driven by a ranking system or any sort of endgame that fosters a competitive spirit. Rather, the endgame in Deep Rock Galactic consists of ranking up your level for a fashion statement, collecting cosmetics to look dapper, and unlocking new modifications for your weapons to optimize your build or do very silly things.
The end goal of the game is purely self-driven (more on that later). You can make the game what you want it to be.
You can have a dance party and just hang out with others in front of the bar ontop of the ship. You can kick some barrels, get wasted, have a good time playing soccer in the pit or prop hunt with your fellow dwarves… or you can just go on casual missions or chase ever-increasing difficulties. The choice is yours. Play the game how you want.
If someone dislikes what you do, they may communicate via chat, but in the grand scheme of things with the many bugs running at you, projectiles being shot, the UI being bright and busy, the text chat window is not people’s primary choice of communication.
People communicate via pings for the most part or non-verbally by going in a direction and others joining in. Even when folks don’t ping, you’ll know what they do. The non-verbal communication in DRG reminded me of the way that thatgamecompany’s “Journey” managed to connect two players to each other and having them create a language of sorts with just one button.
Let’s talk more about pings, though!
Pings are used to highlight objectives, ores, enemies and environmental hazards. You can use them to point to directions and you may even point to each other.
In League of Legends, you also have pings that are used most commonly since they’re quicker and easier to deploy and understand than most words. The issue in League of Legends, however, is that some pings inherently can foster toxicity, as was with the “bait” ping (a fishing hook) that was, before it got removed from the game, used to symbolize asking others to hang themselves or the “enemy missing” ping (a question mark) that is frequently used to question bad play or tilt other players after a misplay.
Deep Rock Galactic doesn’t require text chat at all and most folks don’t even know how to use it, in my experience. The ping system is your primary way of communicating with others but there is no way of using it in the environment or on others to somehow be toxic.
Even pinging at fellow dwarves will not be toxic, unlike in League, since it just utters compliments and the like.
All that is to say that the game is inherently non-toxic in its communication and even if someone were to be toxic in text chat, you could literally punish them by kicking them from the lobby and hence wasting their time and effort since they don’t get any resources when they get kicked. There is no report function but players won’t be back. Trust me.
“Rock and Stone” – On Comaraderie and Non-Toxicity
Arguably the most well-known feature of Deep Rock Galactic is the “Salute” button (V) the tutorial even puts emphasis on. It’s a button you can use to say things like “For Karl!” or “Rock and Stone, Brother” or “Rock and Stone!” – there are a ton of very memorable and amazing voice lines, and they differ a little for each class, too.
The Salute button is very tongue-in-cheek, playing off common battle cries and expressions used in military contexts, like “Oorah” and whatnot. You’re saluting others or shouting this line in combat… and it’s just funny.
But what I think is pretty cool about “Rock and Stone!” is the sense of camaraderie it brings and how it fosters a well-meaning community. “Rock and Stone!” can very much meaning “Let’s go!” or “Great Shot!” but it can also mean “Don’t worry about it, I gotchu!” or “It’s fine”.
Rock and Stone is the epitome of sportsmanship. I salute my fellow dwarves when I resurrect them or get resurrected. I salute them when the scout finally uses their beacon of light. I salute gunners when they use their shields. I salute fellow drillers just for playing driller. I salute fellow drillers, in fact, even when they do silly stuff like C4ing scouts. I even salute Molly (M.U.L.E.) who can’t even salute back… and in solo play, I salute my drone because it’s the most adorable thing in the world when it salutes you back!
Rock and Stone or For Karl or whatever is a declaration of joy and sportsmanship. It’s an expression of hope and best wishes, very “We’ll make it out of here” but shorter and more in-line with the universe. Rock and Stone is an utterance that facilitates understanding, kindness and mindfulness. Not everyone can give it their all, and it’s fine. If you can only give it 80% today, then 80% is your all, bruva. Rock and Stone!
What further plays into this is that your fellow dwarves on your missions aren’t the enemy – they’re victims of the system, just like you. While you’re risking your life on missions for pennies, it’s the company you work for that is cashing it in big time by having you do industry sabotage, having you set up refineries and protecting them, having you escort a drill to very precious minerals, and having you cull the alien population.
In Deep Rock Galactic, your enemy is essentially just the people you work for and your fellow dwarves are, just like you, people who cannot afford to feed their bearded spouses and bearded children without risking their lives on missions like that. So, you kick back at the bar, by a round for your fellow dwarves, and you salute them. If you wanna be upset at anything, be upset at Deep Rock, not your team.
Aside from that, there are also “leaflovers” aka elves that Dwarves are just racist towards, basically. In a way, fantasy racism (or racism in general for that matter) can foster community, too.
Without digressing too much here, that’s also the reason why homophobes and racists will get along because there are black people who are also gay or gay people who are also black. In that way, all bigots will also find common ground with sexism or rather sexism is incredibly common amongst all bigots, because bigotry targeting women is teeming in all groups of people who are bigoted in one form or another. Sexism and Misogyny are rampant amongst homophobes, racists, transphobes, islamophobes and antisemites, to just mention a few groups of people.
The concept of “leaflovers” as a common scape goat in Deep Rock Galactic is very tongue-in-cheek as well and creates this “enemy” of sorts that doesn’t actually exist in the game. It’s just referenced. As such, if someone behaves unsportsmanlike or if someone does something displeasing, most people will act as if it’s a leaflover in disguise that tried to infiltrate the community. This person is then essentially not part of the wider dwarven community anymore. Toxicity is not permitted.
“May your beards be thick and your gold satchels heavy!” – On Prestige and DRG’s Endgame
To get into something I talked about earlier, though, in League of Legends, Valorant, CSGO, Dota 2 and many other games, your team is human and your enemies are human as well, meaning that when you get upset at someone, they’ll always be human. Even you, yourself, are human, btw, which is people being toxic towards you is an issue. Toxicity is always festering and manifesting in ways that bring harm to other people.
In those games, toxicity manifests because of ranking systems and the prestige that comes with higher levels of ranks achieved and the accomplishment that a specific rank symbolizes. It’s a matter of pride. Reaching “Gold” or “Platinum” puts you above other players who are at “Silver” or “Bronze” but there is always someone above you in rank which means that even when you reach “Diamond”, you’re not of “Master” rank, and hence you still very much suck in other people’s eyes.
The ranking system, as such, promotes a sense of pride that lets you tower over others while also shackling you to a tradition of bullying because no matter at what rank you are, you’ll always have people berating you for that rank.
As such, the ranking system in games like League of Legends is the key motivator for you to strive to play better… but since you’re dependent on four other players on your team, you’re inclined to react very emotionally towards others. Saltiness or Toxicity are a result of this. When you lose a game, you’re more inclined to look at others and blame them for their failures even when you could have done better in most cases.
In Kosovo, we say that “we look at other’s mistakes with eyes of an eagle but at ours with those of a bat”, meaning that it’s easy to spot other people’s mistakes but very difficult to find flaws of our own. Most players in competitive online games, I’d say, will take the easy route to attack others here rather than speculate on what they themselves could have done better.
Back to Deep Rock Galactic, there is no ranking system of any sort. I mentioned Greenbeards and Greybeards, Newbies and Veterans, earlier, and those are just concepts that are derived from how much you play the game. A green beard will eventually turn into a grey beard, after all, and if you just play enough, you’ll get there yourself. There is no reason to shame others for just getting into the game. You were like that, too, one time, so of course you’ll pay for a round of beers for that person because someone did for you, too, at one point.
A prestige system comes with ranks, kind of, but those are cosmetic in nature and don’t get lost on defeat or anything. At rank 1, you’re a green beard and you go up in ranks over time, eventually turning into a veteran miner or a stone guard or a longbeard or even a lord of the deep (rank 76+). “Greybeard” is what most people unofficially call people at Rank 100 and more. Essentially, people who played a lot of Deep Rock Galactic.
You can get a fancier boarder by levelling up your class to 30 and then going for a prestige assignment, investing your heard-earned resources into the company (making the rich richer btw) to then get a fancy border with a star and after three stars, you get a fancier border… but again, it’s just cosmetic.
As I mentioned previously, the endgame is fashion. Unlocking all cosmetics, finding stuff from previous seasons’ battle passes, getting your border to be prettier, and just wearing ridiculous hats that are to your liking or having the fanciest of beards, perhaps even collecting all the modifications for your weapons… The endgame can be what you want it to be. You don’t have to do anything in particular to reach an “endgame” of sorts.
As such, there is no reason for you to be toxic because to collect everything, to unlock a new thing or to have a better border or title, you just need to play the game – and it’s easier to play the game when you have people that are cool. And cool people tend to kick you when you’re being an unpleasant dwarf, perhaps even stooping as low as leaf lover. shudders
“See ya, suckers!” – All in all
The title of this section is just a quote from the Scout class. You can see why they’re C4-able.
All in all, Deep Rock Galactic is able to combat toxicity by not equipping players with tools to be toxic but rather equipping them with meaningful ways of being a positive force in the gaming community.
Rather than handing out pings that could be used in unpleasant ways, to say the least, players instead are greeted by opportunities to chant together while huddling around a chunk of gold, saying “We’re rich!” over and over until mission command has to remind you that you’re on a mission to make them richer.
Deep Rock Galactic is a great game with an incredibly wholesome community where the very few people who dare to be toxic and unpleasant are frequently booted from lobbies under suspicion of being a leaf lover who wants to sow spite and discord amongst our dwarven brotherhood… and because you don’t get punished for one player getting booted out of the lobby and because lobbies are frequent and plentiful, this fosters a community of understanding that punishes those with ill intentions and rewards those that conform to the norms of sportsmanship and camaraderie.
To put it briefly, Deep Rock Galactic is a work of art that shows very well how to foster a non-toxic environment and a great community. It’s also the humour and the gameplay, of course, that aids this purpose, but for what it’s worth, the overall structure of the game, the way missions work and the way you communicate with others are what brings dwarves together rather than putting them against each others’ odds – and the longevity of their flagship title and the amount of profits that Ghost Ship Games, the developers of Deep Rock Galactic, are able to celebrate show very well how this is something that others in the gaming industry should strive for.
Rock and Stone forever!
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.
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