The Root of Toxicity in Mafia Games

[Alisae]

is from the game itself.
Its not fun.
It pisses people off.
It doesn't work as a competative game or a fun party game.

In a competative video game, you have a clear chance to just whoop some ass if you are a good player.
Do you really have that option in Mafia?

In a fun party game, your friends can get into it and, have fun.
But in Mafia, what happens is you get into fights and get mad at each other and start yellin.
The only time you get to really connect with your friends is when you're shitposting memes and literally not playing mafia.

And then you get to late game where honestly, no one really cares at all they just want the game to be over because the game has just gone on for way too long.

[SleepyKrew]

bad take

[Enter]

Counter point, mafia can be without toxicity if the game is played by people who respect each other more than they want to one-up each other.

[Amrun]

Counter point, mafia can be without toxicity if the game is played by people who respect each other more than they want to one-up each other.

[Alisae]

and why do people want to one-up each other

[Titus]

Because of ego. My husband valued ego over friends and it broke my drunk heart.

[Alisae]

and they have that ego because they wanna be the guy that gets to beat some ass

[Flavor Leaf]

In a competative video game, you have a clear chance to just whoop some ass if you are a good player.
Do you really have that option in Mafia?

Yeah. I started seeing Mafia this way a couple years ago, and it changed everything.

[Flavor Leaf]

Like don’t get me wrong, I very much wanna make those star making plays, but I wanna see other people make those plays too, and I wanna battle against their plays with my own plays.

If they win, I’ll learn from it, try a different approach next time, and vice versa.

[Ramcius]

It's competitive team game and in competitive team video games you can't whoop ass, if your team sucks

Also I like this new name for mafia games - social gatherings

[Creature]

Someone doesn't know what is Fortnite or League of Legends...

[Volpe14]

Passing thought but I find it worth noting that one of the main causes of why mafia is stressing is because of the sheer difficulty in playing as a team in my opinion, especially considering you almost never can be one hundred sure that X is in your team if you're town. Maybe it reflects how working as a team is hard, especially when there's distrust in it. Ever tried to work with a team that doesn't trust or sometimes even like each other? It's hard.

I can be wrong but I don't see often team games as much team oriented as mafia. Maybe you can look at Shooters or LoL, but they also have a individual score and there's a lot you can do in your own. You can't do much on your own in mafia without your team help though, especially as town. That can be frustating. You can also feel like everyone is against you in the game (when getting scum read/voted).

Keeping toxicity out of mafia while taking the game moderately seriously is indeed always a challenge...

People play mafia for different reasons and it's hard to make it enjoyable for everyone, or in some cases even for anyone. We keep playing it though...

I think that mafia just doesn't work as a clear cut game, it can't be enjoyable as a pure competitive game, you're gonna get frustated with not being able to do anything on your own and needing your teammates for everything. It can't be enjoyable as a fun party game most of time, the moment someone gets convinced in a read they will need to begin to argue against that person if they want to win, and I don't think it's a viable solution to play a mafia game where everyone always just shitposts/spam.

Mafia is maybe...I don't know, a considerable mix of competitive and fun party game which is...weird? As a game for enjoyment its trying to unite two opposite themes and that might explain the difficulty on enjoying it. You can't enjoy it if you don't like being competitive, you can't enjoy it if you don't like interacting with people, but you can't like either of those things too much to enjoy it.

[Psyche]

It's really not at all optimally designed for cultivating relationships; I hope everyone can at least agree on that.

[Creature]

If I relied on Speakeasy to start relationships I would be pretty much friendless here.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I think it’s a learning curve. It’s not easy to remain chill when you’re being wrongly sr but I’ve found that once you learn how to do that, it can really help you to grow as a person, because you will experience not necessarily comparable but heated conflicts outside of games and it can eventually train you to handle those kinds of situations better.

Beyond that, it’s just basic respect for your fellow humans and insisting on civility pretty much.

[Alisae]

Mafia was a game that was meant to be played rl not on an online forum

[Nancy Drew 39]

Mafia was a game that was meant to be played rl not on an online forum

I’ve never done that but I’ve played a chat version of it, which was fun, 100% non-toxic but lacked the fascinating complexity of forum mafia.

[Dannflor]

I feel like a large part of mafia versus other team based games like League or something similar is the aspect of of getting your team to work together. Like, that's an actual core part of the gameplay and you can accomplish it in a way that something like League (or any other team based game) doesn't really allow.

I think that's something that people ignore sometimes? Or rather, when people try to engage in that aspect of the game it usually devolves into toxicity, which makes sense because anger is the easiest emotion. But I think treating it as a space where you

can

cultivate relationships leads to both more pleasant and successful games. Being nice to people is generally more persuasive than being mean to people, which is useful for getting people to work together and do what you want—which is useful as both town and scum!

[syugar]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

[Alisae]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

So you clearly haven't experienced mafia on this site yet.

[Psyche]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

it's a really fascinating game

[syugar]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

So you clearly haven't experienced mafia on this site yet.

in what sense does that fact relate? you just said the game at its core doesnt work in any context people play it in and that u only enjoy "shitposting" in games. why are u on a mafia site?

personally i love the game in any context so ill probably enjoy it on here

[Psyche]

it's probably because alisae is a toxic person let's not pretend

[chennisden]

Mafia's like smash bros brawl: You think it's a great game and mixes fun/competitive but when you actually start playing it competitively and looking at it's intricacies

It sucks

[Alisae]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

So you clearly haven't experienced mafia on this site yet.

in what sense does that fact relate? you just said the game at its core doesnt work in any context people play it in and that u only enjoy "shitposting" in games. why are u on a mafia site?

personally i love the game in any context so ill probably enjoy it on here

Well Yugioh, my boy, you wouldn't understand.