How to gently make non-English speakers aware that their lack of communication makes a multiplayer videogame frustrating for all?

Question

DISCLAIMER: The following is not meant to endorse any racist or offensive behaviour ever.

Recently I came across some articles of a well-know multiplayer videogame, where it is possible to read that a lot of players from other countries have become exasperated with the presence on their regional servers of people coming from a particular abroad region. Leaving aside all the rants about cheaters/hackers, I would like to ask about another aspect of the fact: while I do realize that teamplay with people who cannot even speak English (I'm no English-speaker native speaker either) can be very hard and sometimes frustrating, I also do realize that it's a videogame, therefore I mostly let these guys have their fun.

Considering that:

• I'm talking about team games
• It is possible to not let people in and fill empty team slots, but these non-English-speakers leave the team open anyway
• No communication leads to a somewhat frustrating game for everyone
• Having less people in your team than the other makes the game much more difficult
• It is very possible that them not speaking English is a cultural problem (not being able to attend to a language course for example)
• They join a regional server, whose region is far from theirs

How can I make them aware that the presence of people not speaking an international language results in a worse experience?

Answer 1

I am a gamer myself, and I know exactly where your frustration is coming from.

Sadly, there is nothing you can do about that.

Talking/chatting with them will not achieve anything, because they do not speak your language.
Using Google Translator to translate a rant is techincally possible, but in practice they will just laugh at you and call you a flamer.

The problem lies in the setup of the game itself that allows people to join Servers that are not in their country.
The developers of your game are very aware of the problem at hand, but there are many many other reasons why they decided to build their server-setup / game design like this.
These devs are the ones who are responsible to prevent your problem before it happens by changing the game architecture.

Until they do, there is nothing you can do to stop people from joining foreign servers. It will keep happening if they are able to do it.

These people have their own reasons why they would choose to play on a foreign server. A random, angry dude (which is how you are seen by them) is not going to stop them from doing it further.

The only way to be sure to avoid these annoying players is joining the game with a full party of friends. But I know that you can't do that all the time. So when you play with foreign players again, mute them and use communication with the other english speaking teammembers.

Most games that apply to your description also have non-verbal ways to communicate like a chatwheel (predefined sentences that will be translated to each player's own language), pinging on minimap and the like. Be sure to use those to communicate with your muted "friends".

Answer 2

You really can't. One's spoken language (which is usually tied to nationality) can be a sensitive topic. Many people will subconsciously take bringing up the language barrier as an insult to their language (and perhaps even nationality) and make them aggressive.

Also, telling them that their language barrier is an issue is like saying, "Stop playing the game you like because you don't speak English." It will most likely make the other player resent you and make the situation worse. They may even resent English speakers even more after a situation like that.

It's unfortunate that the lack of communication in games where being able to communicate can give you a HUGE edge and win/lose you games. But the key to gaming is to not let these situations get to you. You notice the situations with non-English speakers because they're more obvious, but similar situations happen all the time with English speaking teammates who are just uncooperative: language is just one barrier in team play.

But if you do want to communicate something to them, I would avoid "calling them out" and instead trying to learn a little of their language to improve communication. I personally had a situation in which I was matched with a Chinese teammate in PUBG and wanted to communicate with him so I simply looked up some key phrases like "stop", "go", "careful", and even "thanks" in order to more effectively communicate with them. It worked wonders and turned into a good memory among my friends. It's a difficult process but if you have the time to construct a shared language it can do a lot to improve your games and even your own team play skills.