I’ve noticed that too. Back in my XvT and XW:A days of virtual Star Wars squadrons, there seemed to be a lot more patience, respect, and willingness to teach the young’uns (of which I was most definitely one). A lot of the time it doesn’t feel nearly as much like that now.
I’m wondering how much the concept of being “internet famous” has to do with this. As in, ‘I have a Twitch/ Youtube streaming account that gets x thousand number of hits, therefore I’m better than the common flight sim proletarians out there’ attitude that I’ve encountered a few times.
You think? I think its just internet culture man. Or even culture in general. It started out at somethingawful.com, then 4chann and now the president of the USA. No civility anymore. Except here. Because we choose it.
Also age. I have read ancient Greek text where they rant about the younguns having no respect and being boorish louts.
I ran into a version of this when I was “working for” FSX@War. I had the Milviz F-100 and F-4 with TACPACK and wanted a good Vietnam theater to fly them in. FSX@War was building one so I pitched in.
The issue was that a few of the (so called) developers were Vietnam veterans. The problem was they had been ground forces. Their view of the war was very different from what could be produced in a flightsim (let alone in FSX). They wanted individual VC and NVA troops and couldn’t understand why we couldn’t make tunnels in the landscape. Those of us who were building airfields and harbors, bridges and power plants, were doing it all wrong.
You wanted to show them the respect due to a war vet, and they were very good at pulling up various old documents that really helped, but after a while it became too much. I finished Haiphong and Cam Rahn Bay and then called it quits.
Interesting to later see that FSX@War had closed its doors.
Absolutely brother! (Closest emoji I could find for “solemn agreement”)
Well, got to go now and find some more sarcastic memes.
I didn’t mean physical age with regards to ‘teaching the young’ins,’ so much as new to a game or genre. I mean, I think we can all agree that there are scores of older people who are among the most toxic on the internet, and we may be encountering more of them, as our chosen genre tends to run slightly older than most other gamers.
Ah yes, the lovely effects of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to programming and coding. I love seeing all the posts on forums of, “it can’t be that hard to simply [insert next to impossible to implement within the current engine feature]” from people who have never even seen a line of C or C++. That doesn’t help matters at all either.
In the field of psychology, the Dunning – Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.
OK…so that is why it is better to have your appendix removed by a real doctor rather than by an actor (who never finished high school) that plays a doctor on TV…now I understand…boy, that would have nice to know before…oh never mind…
I was in a virtual squadron for a good 2 and a half years and I think the key is to find “like-minded people”. For instance, the guys I was with were mainly flying Cliffs of Dover at that time and I enjoyed tremendously many of the missions we did together. Most of the lads were great people on a personal level. However, the interests of the squadron and my interests started to diverge when i wanted to train more guys on DCS instead of CloD. For many of the guys, the increase in complexity was just too much and I eventually realized that my attempts to get people into DCS were falling on deaf ears. I had to find my own path, so I ended up leaving… different people want different things, no hard feelings.
The guys from the 71st were (and still are) a great bunch, laid back but highly proeficient at what they do.
However, I’ve seen the other less glamorous side of “sim communities”. I briefly joined an Arma milsim group, which I left a few days in. They had great videos of operations, used proper comms and really knew what they were doing. However, when I started to play actively with them after a “selection process” (classes to define your MOS) I realized that I had two mandatory practices per week (which went on for at least 3 hours) and an additional mandatory session every Saturday night (which went on for at least 4 to 5 hours, including briefings and de-briefings). On top of that, you had to fill after-actions reports for every op. That kind of commitment was just too much for me… that and the fact that some people started yelling at others when they wouldn’t call their superiors “sir” or when they would talk to their sergeant by using their real name instead of their rank. For me, this “sir yes sir” mentality was just nonsensical and created a rift between members.
I eventually found out a couple of personal friends that I fly regularly with. We have mostly similar views about what we want out of flight sims. They love DCS, they don’t take themselves seriously and they want to learn, but we have a clear understanding that real life always comes first. I think that’s what’s most important in a flight sim community: to make sure everyone has grounded expectations about what they want out of the whole thing.
…that had to have been the try-hards who would’ve joined the military, but didn’t because they would’ve punched a drill instructor in the face the first time they were yelled at. Ugh, those kinds of folks seem to ruin any MILSIM they touch.
@PaulRix
I call people “sir” all the time when gaming. Especially old people like @Beachav8r or @Hangar200 or southerners like @chipwich , I heard they are used to it.
Lots of specialized areas/hobbies have ‘fans’, and if people are having fun and don’t bother others then it’s all good. I’m not sure if flight sims are the worse at this or not, or it’s just what we know about. Just like a lot of other areas there are ‘experts’ that love it a bit too much.
Maybe fishing clubs have funny handshakes, hierarchies, cool kid tables and the like. Probably, as it is just how people are in groups. People are generally cool though, so it all averages out.
Unfortunately a few get through. I actually had an officer answer a phone, “Lieutenant Commander select Jones”. I paused for a moment, then said, “Yeah, right. So Larry…”
(Closest emoji I could find for “solemn agreement”)
