Having an open mic is annoying, nobody wants to listen to you chew gum, heavily breathe, or whisper sweet nothings to your cat. Open mics can also get people into trouble when they ♥♥♥♥ talk their friends – which they shouldn’t do anyway but it happens. We can hear you argue with your parents in your basement, beat your girlfriend or boyfriend for no reason and we can hear ourselves. Feedback is such an awful devil in the audio industry. It makes me not even want to talk to people with open mics because all I can hear is myself and its extremely difficult to carry on a conversation sanely like that.

The larger the server, the more annoying the issue becomes. Leading a raid or a large group of people can be shut down by one open mic, or a mic with feedback. For admins in a Ventrilo or TeamSpeak server it’s as easy as a kick, global mute, or if needed a ban. It’s a little more difficult to overcome when you are solo dolo. The best chance you have is to tell your annoyance nicely to close their mic. Try one more time in case their own voice was too loud to hear yours. If they continue see the above but from my experience muting is the absolute best option in any video game.

As a gamer it is important for you to regulate your own local settings to the best of your abilities. Sometimes you can have your audio setup perfect on your end but that just isn’t enough. Other players mics may be too loud and they need to adjust their outbound settings. Be calm, just let your teammate know that their mic is having some issues if it is too loud and that they should try adjusting it when they are able to (i.e. dead).

Something that you have to pay attention to is your teammates attempting to talk, this could be in-game, in on outside voice communication program, whatever the case sometimes they are muted. As an ‘aware’ and helpful teammate it is important to point this out to people. We all key in accidentally sometimes but if it is consistently happening then usually it is a muted microphone or the microphone is not configured properly.

Mic synthesizers are the devil. They are funny for all of a sentence or two and that is about as far as it goes. Let your friends know if their mic synthesizer is bothering you, mute them at worst case scenario. Be sure that they know they are actually using their synthesizer. I know that I have owned headphones where if you hit a button close to the mute button it would synthesize your voice and you’d never even know. Let your friends know so they can fix it, mine let me use it for an entire night before telling me why everyone was screaming at me from the other team.

Argue after the game. Other people don’t want to hear your arguments. If you are dead and other people are alive it is truly disrespectful to be fighting over a microphone and griefing their ears. If the individual is somewhat new to your circle of friends and they don’t seem to have potential for attitude improvement drop them out of your circle. People with negative attitudes or that just want to argue with friends get annoying really fast. They are like a heavy weight stopping you from being able to play or be positive – DE-FRIEND CYA! There are 6 billion + replacements that may have a more friendly, sportsmanlike attitude that will be a great asset to your team.

It’s all great that you and 2 of your friends are laughing non stop over a loss or win but remember to be courteous to other players. Being racist, mean, or hateful doesn’t really help the community. When you have players like this in your server, it’s best just to mute them. Arguing with them will just make things worse, ignoring the player puts them almost completely out of your mind and it’s almost as if they are not in your game at all.

It’s great to be competitive moreover if university rugby taught me anything it’s that it is OK to lose. It’s how you lose, do you curse at your team, blame your cleats, or your lack of experience in the whether? The answer is NO, you lace those cleats up tighter, put a smile on your face and focus on the game at hand. You hurt the other team so even if they win, they remember how hard it was to face you. Maybe it could lead to a comeback. Focusing on all the negatives of a prior round does not help the next round go smoothly. Instead use the negatives to be strategic and devise positive solutions to your downfalls. Use it as a practice session for the next game.

Ex. You guys really sucked at long A last round, replace with, so what do you think we can do to stop that long A push? Nades?

Don’t have a full on chat-roulette moment but say HI, ask other people how they are doing. We are living in the age of technology and anti-social behavior. It is generally accepted to address people with respect until they show they do not deserve it. Talking to your teammates could bring you closer, giving you the bond needed to overcome the opposition. Try and pull people out of their shells, draw people into you, really, who wants to push people away?

Just because you’re doing poorly doesn’t mean your team needs to hear it every round. If you really want to say how bad you’re doing just be apologetic not angry about it. The game is not over until the final scorecard is shown. This goes for everything, so don’t think that you should give up because something didn’t work once, go your way, or didn’t come with ease. Some wins are harder than others.

It’s important to lift your team. If one guy is down, lift his spirits. It is the same with weight lifting, some days you don’t feel energized to lift or exercise for an hour or two. Your buddy can motivate you those days just like you can motivate him on bad days too.

It’s also hard to always be happy, being happy takes a lot of energy. Your friends can tell when you aren’t yourself and so can you. If you catch yourself starting to say or do things in game that the ‘normal you’ wouldn’t – STOP.

Take a breath of fresh air in through your nose slowly and out of your mouth slowly. Relax. It’s just a game, and it’s also here to make you happy and entertained. It is not very often that I find myself raging out watching an HBO special and wanting to E-Punch someone.
Why should it be any different in a video game? The social interaction should be a great positive experience that should be valued.

It’s okay to be wrong. Only a foolish individual could consider themselves to always be right. It is important to admit your mistakes to your teammates so that, as a team, we can mentally move on to the next round. Focus is very important.

Individuals that ♥♥♥♥ talk usually make me laugh. They embarrass themselves and usually are just acting out. It is a very hindering attitude to talk ♥♥♥♥ to people all the time. Be the best version of you that you can be, take new information for whatever it is worth and retain its value. Don’t throw away things that could help you because you don’t like the source you got it from.

Try and help new gamers, if you don’t think that you could stand to be with a newbie for an hour or any amount of time then don’t make them feel awful by yelling obscenities at them. Just don't queue up with them. Know what you're mentally about to tolerate as a gamer before you jump into an up to 90 minute competitive game with them. If you're already in a game and maybe it's not competitive match making choose to go to a different server, play a different game, perform a breathing exercise noted above.

Maybe you could try the other approach and try to teach them something useful. If you break them down and they are still there, build them back up. Don’t ruin someone else’s day – because there is a person behind that character model somewhere else in the world that has feelings. Don't troll newbies if you can help it. You want to build them up because you don't know what sort of rippling damage you can do to the gaming community by making new players hate the game.

They were new just like you and you may find that teaching someone that is new to your game how to play actually increases your skill level. You remember things you had forgotten and when you are teaching them you start to remember. Sometimes a new player with their fresh set of eyes, can make someone with much experience, or wisdom see something in a new light.

There can be many advantages to having a newer player to the game play with you but there can also be drawbacks. If you are a competitive gamer it is probably for the best that you try and play with your friend or new players in a more casual setting. This is also true for new gamers. Don’t expect to be AMAZING out of the box, everything in life requires practice and a strong commitment to be good at. Train yourself by playing first person mode before playing online mode. Things may not be as frustrating for you when you go online.

You may have a better sense of direction, map awareness, or know secrets that those who jumped straight into multiplayer mode didn’t learn. Play the game to have fun but remember that sometimes it is not fun to hit the restart button over and over and it is better just to stick with what you’re good at until you dominate it and then take the next step from there.

Guess what, I hear that there are girls outside, at schools, businesses, driving, walking, they are everywhere. A gamer is a gamer in my eyes and sometimes nerds go a little far on their desires for an E-girlfriend.

I know that times are changing and you guys are sending #selfies of your wieners and clams to one another over snap chat and that’s cool. But we are here to play a video game, just like other people fighting over something that happened 5 rounds ago, who did more damage on the meter, or who should get a drop, it gets people sidetracked off the true objective.

Treat women, men, all people with respect, it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or not. Yes there are fewer girls in gaming because who the ♥♥♥♥ wants to blow some Fnatic guy when there are Hollywood hunks out there.

Eventually there are going to so many girl gamers that they are saying ‘♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ its a dudezorz’ so don’t go out of your way to be rude or make them feel different about their gaming experience. Let the girls enjoy and stop being weirdos mr.gamer, men, creepy men, etc.

Some people do hack – a lot do actually – and you would be surprised how many top ranked players hack. This doesn't mean that everyone you play against is hacking though.

Game tactic, map awareness - knowing approximate enemy locations, and aim ar ekey factors in playing the game. Sometimes video game teams can be so mismatched that it looks like one team just has bots and the other is set on unstoppable mode. This can be just merely because of some 'pro strats'. Skilled players do often get mismatched against newer or inexperienced players and this can make it seem like the 'skilled' players are hacking.

Unless you see a hacker demo or its blatant (20-0 bhop scripts, superman script, autoheady aces) accusing them is just that, an accusation. The best you can do on steam or origin games is just to click the ‘I think this person is hacking’ button and the game admins will take care of it. You cannot control what other people do, just how you react to them.

You can QQ or Pew-Pew. You can complain over and over again to your teammates and ruin their experience with the game even more than the 'hacker' is. You may even inadverately arouse your teammates suspicions of hackers based on your own paranoia or inadequacies. Keep it to yourself until you can't hold it in anymore or someone else mentions something.

The best way to handle hackers - as long as they aren’t text/audio griefing as well - is just to report them. If they are audio griefing or text griefing mute them as well. Try and be the bigger person and just let it go and finish out your game.

You can say whatever you want but we are the ones that have to hear it. Say whatever you want but remember that you’re also responsible for the things you say. In a day and age where our gamer names/tags are becoming more closely tied to our social media networks it seems that there will become a time where trolling will almost cease. It will mean that my vision for gamers being responsible for what they do online is slowly becoming more of a reality for the future.

What you say online stays online. You sometimes play with the same people again, your reputation can go downhill. Some people may remember your jerk play style. Lots of people are recording these days so an ignorant comment today can haunt you in years. Be mindful of your words and what you feel is appropriate to say to others.

Make the game fun, be someone else, be amazing, be a hero, be an evil villain. Pick a game up for 20 minutes and put it down or play a game for 20 days straight without coming out of your house. Play just for fun or play for fun and to make everyone else’s experience even more fun.

Build a community, make a network of friends, meet their friends, find other games that you are interested to play with them. Find other common interests that you have, become closer friends! Create something that you can look back and be proud of. Make it whatever you want, but make it something that isn’t filled with hate, aggression or rage towards other humans.

Make it you versus the pixels, versus the game, make it a competitive thing if you want but remember that it is not the same type of entertainment anymore – it is a different level. Find like minded people with the same hobbies as you all the way across the world – and appreciate the sheer amazing technology we have at our finger tips.

Online multiplayer is something that would have made many lonely gamers of my generation come together. Communities are good or bad based on the people within them that try and improve them or bring them down. Which kind of gamer do you want to be? It’s up to you.