GAMING PLATFORMS AS CHAOTIC NEUTRAL?: TOXIC PERFORMANCE, COMMUNITY RESISTANCE, AND AGONISTIC POTENTIAL

Abstract

In the post-gamergate era, much has been written about the toxicity of online multiplayer video gamespaces. Yet, game scholars agree that the actual definition of the term ‘toxic’ is slippery. There is also consensus that toxicity is a highly context-dependent phenomenon reliant on the relation of players to one another but extending further to include the technical elements of the game (Canossa et al., 2021; Hilvert-Bruce & Neill, 2020; Kou, 2020; Kowert, 2020). Past scholarship in this area also illustrates that these spaces are deeply gendered and center masculine normativity (Cote, 2020; Gray, 2020; Ruberg, 2019; Shaw, 2015). Players from various positionalities may enter conflict when there is dissent over the definition and norms of the space. In these instances of conflict there is the potential for agonism (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). We employed cultural probes in tandem with focus groups and interviews to better understand how players experience toxicity in online gaming spaces. Emerging from participants’ conversations, this paper explores performative behaviours which are emblematic of performing toxicity or ‘counterplay’. We propose three common instances of counterplay: antagonistic counterattack, when a player reciprocates or matches the toxic behaviour of an antagonist; ludic mithridatism, when a player develops a threshold for tolerating toxicity in a gamespace; and playful transgression, when a player or group of players performs counter-hegemonic identity-work.