If game designers are to have any success combating toxicity, we must acknowledge that our own design choices are often the underlying systemic cause, and that it is our responsibility to change them.
In his video “we need to talk (about how we talk),” trading card game streamer Joseph “MBT” Rothschild criticizes the Yu-Gi-Oh! community for its overly harsh attitudes towards players who pick suboptimal cards for the sake of variety. This kind of toxicity is unfortunately common within gaming communities, especially now that the rise of social media and online competition have made it easier than ever to hurl insults at one’s fellow players. Instead of accepting this antisocial behavior as inevitable, however, MBT blames Konami for how narrowly it allows Yu-Gi-Oh! to be played: “… Having one format, that is constantly dominated by a design choice to make the most powerful [deck] of all time… means that the Yu-Gi-Oh! community has, by and large, coalesced around an idea of competition that excludes other ways of playing the game.”