Microsoft is currently “brainstorming” ideas on how to reward well-behaved Xbox Live players. In other words, after a decade of policing Xbox Live’s worst offenders, they’re going to see if the carrot works better than the stick.
Microsoft’s Frank Savage said at a GDC panel earlier today that the company is going to try and “actively encourage [players] to be better”. No idea yet on just what these rewards would be, or how they’d be implemented, but it’s an interesting step.
I can see Microsoft’s point – bigotry, immaturity and hostility are Xbox Live sterotypes the company must surely want to be rid of – but are we really at the stage where we’re rewarding grown humans for not being arseholes?
Xbox Live players with ‘good social behaviour’ may soon earn rewards on Xbox One [Polygon]
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15 responses to “Microsoft Wants To Reward Good Behaviour On Xbox Live”
How can you prove not teabagging?
Dry balls.
You made my day!
And so I decided to hand my Xbox Live account to my mom so she can get me some awesome rewards.
From what I hear, your mom is already very popular amongst the XBox Live community 😛
Maybe they should implement the reputation system in the Xbone first …
To be honest, I’ve never really seen any bad behaviour. Even though I’ve played 100s of hours of the Halo and Battlefield franchises online, I can only really remember one instance of bad behaviour where a bunch of frat boys invited me to a game and made fun of my gamertag in the lobby – big whoop. BTW don’t regard teabagging as a big deal even through I don’t do it myself. I’m assuming they are talking about vocal behaviour – can’t you just mute selected players?
I agree, I feel like the bad days of all that were back in the Halo 2 and 3 days in the lobbies. Now more of the problem, is that barely anyone ever speaks, so it’s hard to work as a team.
If they reward a good rep with free games, the community will shift. Having never played an Xbox Live game in my life, I can only assume the mindset of the stereotypical Live player’s mindset will change if they miss out on a free copy of last year’s not-quite-hottest-but-still-quite-good game if someone reports them for branding anyone who killed them a “fag”.
Tbh these days xbl is pretty quiet. Since people figured out how to mute disruptive people most of the community grew up. You still get the occasional screaming nut ball or person playing music down the chat line, but you can easily mute them.
Right now its so quiet that team work is kind of out the window. I sometimes realise ive been playing with a headset on for over an hour and haven’t heard a squeak…
Unfortunately there’s no way to track, reward and acknowledge those who are nice. Then we’d have more elite and cooperative Counter Strike death squads, and zero real world poverty.
*sigh*
Yup, the best they can hope to do is track the people that don’t get reported… which only indicates so much…
I just realized im more likely to acknowledge another player via doing some silly dance (lowering/raising my gun, jump like a mad raver) with my avatar than speak to them even with a headset on.
Yeah thats right. People shouldnt need to be rewarded for not being douchebags. Instead of banning microsoft accounts for cheating and so on, how about blocking their IP for a prolonged period of time or something like that?
People are rarely on static IPs. Banning accounts and consoles is much more effective because it almost always targets the correct person. In some cases it might be a friend or family member who did it but that’s your fault for letting a tool use your account unsupervised…
http://www.reddit.com/r/xblexploits/hey-guys-i-need-free-games-rate-me-and-my-douchebag-friends-and-we-will-rep-you-back
Gaben has talked about this idea for a while now. If the playerbase of an online game improves, it improves the game experience in general. Thus, better-behaved players can make the game more valuable, and so in turn things like free games or such for them would be a decent trade-off.
Of course, ironically the issue is that people are /so bad/ that they’d spoil a reward system anyway. People will abuse any reputation system.