Dark Desires? Using the Theory of Basic Desires to Better Understand Toxic Behavior in Multiplayer Online Games

Within the context of multiplayer online battle arena video games (MOBAs) toxic behavior (TB) remains a complex and yet unsolved socio-technological challenge. While significant work has been done recently, there is a lack of theory-guided approaches for curbing TB. In this work, we test the motivational theory of basic desires for explaining the occurrence of TB. For this, we used a survey approach and collected a sample consisting of players of the successful MOBAs League of Legends and Dota 2 (n = 308). Using a PCA, results indicate two underlying factors of the 16 basic desires (i.e., physiological and social factors). Consequently, both factors hold the potential to explain TB. In addition, the predisposition age showed a significant influence on TB in our sample. These findings highlight the 16 basic desires as a promising frame for understanding the antecedents of TB

What constitutes victims of toxicity - identifying drivers of toxic victimhood in multiplayer online battle arena games

IntroductionToxic behavior (i.e., toxicity) is a pervasive problem in online gaming communities such as League of Legends. This issue arises from factors such as frustrating and stressful in-game experiences and online disinhibition. Prior research on addressing toxicity has focused primarily on the perpetrators and how to mitigate their negative behavior and the consequences. The aim of this study was to approach toxicity from the perspective of the victims instead, and consequently, to investigate the factors that contribute to the experience of victimhood in multiplayer online battle arena games.MethodsA global sample of League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 players (n=313) was collected to test hypotheses based on three theoretical approaches drawn from previous work, namely, the online disinhibition effect, social cognitive theory and theory of planned behavior. Participants were asked to complete a survey that included variables related to the three theoretical approaches.ResultsThe results of the study indicated that self-efficacy, and benign and toxic disinhibition, were the most relevant antecedents for the experience of being a victim of toxicity. Accordingly, the findings thus suggest that players with low self-efficacy and high online disinhibition may be more likely to experience victimhood in multiplayer online battle arena games. In general, insights based on our study demonstrate that individual characteristics partially explain why some players are more susceptible to toxic behavior than others.DiscussionThe study’s results have practical implications for game developers and policymakers, particularly in the areas of community management and player education. For example, game developers may consider incorporating self-efficacy training and disinhibition reduction programs into their games. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of literature on toxicity in online gaming communities and invites further research into toxicity from the perspective of the victims

Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Trolls:An Interdisplinary Exploration of the Who's, What's, and Why's of Trolling in Online Games

Summary Within the world of online gaming, trolling has become a regular menace. While gamers try to connect and socialize with one another, or even simply play the game, there are other gamers – trolls – on the prowl for an entirely different kind of good time, one in which they are enjoying themselves at the expense of everyone else (Chapters 2 and 3). Although trolling is common, and mass-media has latched onto it as a hot topic, it is only recently that the academic community has begun to take a serious look at how trolling occurs in and affects the gaming community at large. However, a lot of this literature is either descriptive in nature (see Thacker & Griffiths, 2012), or jumps ahead to prevention (see Cheng et al., 2017) without taking a deeper look at more than a single underlying motivation at a time. In short, there is a complex and prolific phenomenon happening online, but the research on it is only emerging. This dissertation’s goal is to take a deeper look at trolling as a phenomenon, beyond what has been done so far. More specifically, I aim to figure out a) what trolling is, b) why people do it, and c) who helps and who hinders trolling in online games. To do this, I took four different perspectives: the troll’s (Chapter 2), the researcher’s (Chapter 3), the victim’s (Chapter 4), and the bystander’s (Chapter 5). The purpose of Chapter 2 is to give the troll’s perspective on trolling, something that researchers had yet to do at the time. To do this, I interviewed 22 people who said that they had a history of trolling in online games. More specifically, I asked them about times they witnessed, were victims of, or perpetrated trolling, as well as what they thought about how the gaming community dealt with and felt about trolls and trolling. My goal with these interviews was threefold: I wanted to figure out a) what trolls consider trolling, b) what motivates them to do it, and c) the role of everyone else in game when it comes to encouraging or discouraging more trolling. What I found was that although trolling was almost universally considered a negative part of online gaming culture, and all the trolls in our group of participants started as victims of trolls before becoming trolls themselves, the online community neither encourages nor discourages it, making it an asocial activity. The next chapter allowed me to look at an archive of trolling incidents to find patterns in the way that different people involved in real-life trolling incidents communicate with one another. This public online archive consisted of 10,000 reported incidents of trolling in the popular online game League of Legends, and it included game data like player statistics, as well as everything all the players involved said during the game. Once the data was properly cleaned and prepared, myself and my co-author, Dr. Rianne Conijn, analysed the chat logs in two different ways: structural topic modelling (STM), and a traditional dictionary-based content analysis. In this way, we were able to see what characterized all the different actors – the troll, their victim(s), and the bystanders – and what was similar when it came to their messages. All this information was then compared to what existed already in literature used to describe trolls and trolling and complement what I had learned about trolls from Chapter 2. The key finding was that trolls and their teammates actually share a lot of the negative speech patterns (e.g., profanity, negative emotional content) normally associated with only trolls. Practically, this means that we have to be extremely careful as researchers when labelling trolls for the purpose of study, as we could very easily be falsely labelling victims. After speaking to trolls and looking at trolling interactions broadly, Chapter 4 focuses intently on the victim and their personal experience in a trolling simulation, taking into account their cultural background and values. It is also the first study to directly compare and contrast two different types of trolling: verbal (flaming) and behavioural (ostracism). They are both really common online occurrences, so the participants could easily relate, but they are extremely different in how they are executed, with flaming being vicious insults and ostracism being totally ignoring a person. Our participants were either Dutch, Pakistani, or Taiwanese, so that we could also look at how people from vastly different cultural backgrounds would react to – behaviourally and emotionally – the different kinds of trolling in the study. We simulated a trolling experience by putting our participants in a virtual game of catch with two computerized co-players, who they were led to believe were real people of either the same nationality or a minority member (e.g., a Moroccan immigrant in the Netherlands), who I had programmed to either troll them or silently watch the trolling happen. We found that there are indeed cultural differences when it comes to reactions, as well as differences between reactions to the two trolling types, but the core take-away is that future trolling interventions have to take into account the cultures of the target population as well as the specific type of trolling they are trying to fix or prevent in order to be effective. In the penultimate chapter, I shift the focus one last time to bystanders by putting participants in a game of League of Legends with two confederates who would troll one another throughout the game. This study’s goal was to see what motivated gamers to report trolls to an authority figure (the game developer) using the game’s built-in reporting functions, as the results of Chapter 2’s study suggested that this was an effective trolling deterrent. It is also, according to the results of the same study, the least-used recourse by bystanders faced with trolls in the proverbial wild. We found that how warm and friendly the troll was perceived to be and how competent the victim was perceived to be were what determined whether the participant reported our fake troll or not. A more competent victim and a less warm troll lead to more reports. To conclude, there is still a lot more to learn about trolls and trolling, but the field is farther along now than when this project started in 2015. There is a broad definition developed that encompasses most of the descriptive literature on trolling in games thus far. We also now know that there is the indication of a trolling cycle that requires further exploration. This is particularly important to know when it comes to the world of game development, as knowing the cycle exists allows for multiple points of intervention in order to protect their customers. Finally, this dissertation has shown the complexity of not just trolls – who are often portrayed in the media as one-dimensional antagonists – but also of everyone else involved in trolling interactions. Trolls, victims, and bystanders are all multi-faceted humans, and trolling, like all interactions, is an intricate social dance that deserves to be studied in even further depth in the future than what I have done here

What drives gamer toxicity? Essays from players

Negative online behaviors, such as toxicity, continue being issues in several popular multiplayer online games. Related research suggests that there are individual differences in how players understand the concept, and that various interconnected variables are relevant in understanding the emergence of toxicity. To explore this topic further, in this study, we gathered 16 essays from gamers regarding their experiences of toxicity in online games. Using the Gioia method for qualitative analysis, we divided the concepts described in the essays broadly into characteristics related to (1) the socio-technological setting in which the playing takes place; (2) the stakeholders' individual disposition including personality and player relationships; and (3) situational drivers, meaning events and actions that transpire during gameplay. As an important meta-level implication, our findings raise concerns regarding the lack of a universally shared view on toxicity, which were visible even with the rather homogenous sample of participants in this study.Peer reviewe

Dynamics of Social Play

Digital games have become a social medium. Players are often socially motivated to play games and actively seek out games that offer social interactions. Early studies on games such as World of Warcraft demonstrate that players can form meaningful bonds within the game. Catering to this trend, most game titles now include multiplayer experiences in their gameplay. Despite the growing popularity of social elements within play, we still have little empirically-founded guidance on how to effectively design for social experiences. If we want to design for social play, we have to understand what makes games social. What are the properties of play that are responsible for facilitating social ties between players? We address this question by synthesizing the exiting literature on design recommendations for social play into identify overarching properties of play that we think are the most prolific in literature: cooperation and interdependence. We perform two experimental studies demonstrating how games facilitate trust between players and how cooperation and interdependence are crucial properties of social play. Furthermore, we validate our framework in a field study, investigating the experiences within games that predict in-game social capital. We demonstrate that interdependence and toxicity are strongly linked to the social capital our participants experience in their gaming communities. We also illustrate how in-game social capital is negatively associated with feelings of loneliness and positively associated with need satisfaction of relatedness outside of the context of play. Overall, our findings emphasize how strongly the experiences within the game affect the social ties that emerge from play, suggesting that informed design choices are crucial for the success of social games. This dissertation also contributes to the ongoing debate about the effects that in-game relationships have on the player’s mental health—we show a strong positive link between in-game social capital and markers for psychological well-being. It is easy to disregard in-game relationships, as they are fundamentally distinct from the in-person ones we think of as natural. Yet we cannot ignore the emergence of digital games as a social medium. The more we understand the underlying elements of social play, the better we can design games that bring people closer together

Investigating Communication Patterns as Proxy Indicators of Team Cohesion in Ad Hoc Teams

Team cohesion is a well-known facilitator of effective team functioning. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence identifying predictors of cohesion due to limitations in measurement methods. To address this issue, I propose that teams in digital games can be used as an alternative naturalistic environment to investigate team cohesion. In this thesis, I present three studies that use a variety of experimental and analysis techniques to identify behavioural indicators of cohesion and show the value of digital games as alternative paradigms for investigating team dynamics. Chapter 3 describes a qualitative study on identifying potential predictors of cohesion. The study is conducted from the perspective of an intention to be on the same team in the future. The findings from Chapter 3 suggest that team communication may be a key factor that influences intention for repeated play between strangers in ad hoc teams. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 explores team communication as a proxy indicator of cohesion to identify precisely what and how communication influences or indicates cohesion. In these studies, we first establish the relationship between cohesion and performance (Chapter 4 and 5), and between cohesion and satisfaction (Chapter 5). This ensures that the findings on cohesion in digital game teams are comparable to the wider cohesion literature. Once these relationships are established, we investigate how different communication metrics are related to cohesion and team outcomes (e.g., performance and satisfaction). Performance and satisfaction were chosen as outcome measures as these represent well-known outcomes that are generated by cohesive teams as they develop. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 provide insight into the relationships between cohesion and team outcomes, and the relationship between communication and cohesion, in different team contexts. Chapter 6 closes with a discussion of the observations, findings, and new knowledge gained from this research expedition on identifying a potential unobtrusive behavioural indicator of team cohesion

“It taught me to hate them all.”: Toxicity through DOTA 2’s Players, Systems, and Media Dispositive

‘Toxicity’ has become a pervasive term for describing and discussing online game communities,but exactly what constitutes toxicity remains loosely defined. This project seeks to uncover how toxicity is constructed and understood within a game community described from inside and out as toxic. After situating toxicity within prior academic literature on toxicity’s constitutive elements such as griefing, trolling, flaming and racism online, this project focuses on the DOTA 2 community. It examines how the game’s culture operates throughout what Mirko Tobias Schäfer referred to as the media dispositive, or the collection of sites and discourses that the community engages with that overlap with the in-game experience. Throughout the dispositive certain voices are sanctioned by the game’s company, Valve, while others are silenced by the affordances of the dispositive’s sites and game’s culture. The final section of this work explores the in-game experience through ethnographic, interview, and participant observation data, to uncover how players perceive toxicity in-game. This work finds that toxicity is in part reflective of and formed by the broader culture of the game as discovered through an analysis of the dispositive, but that players possess highly subjective ideas about what constitutes toxicity that they tend to universalize, which strengthens toxicity as a rhetorical rather than descriptive term. The impact of toxicity on players and community members is uneven as some players are put into conflict with others while others, particularly women, are erased from the game space and community discussions. In conclusion, this project finds that toxicity in DOTA 2 is constructed by overlapping cultural and mechanical elements and is as much about what players perceive to be toxic as it is about actual player behaviors

Performing Both Sides of the Glass: Videogame Affordances and Live Streaming on Twitch

This thesis examines the performative dimensions videogame affordances assume within online, live streaming environments. This approach considers how streamers configure their videogame play in terms of a potential audience, drawing on five semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Australian-based Twitch streamers to analyse how streamers leverage videogame affordances to produce “meaningful moments”. Guiding this thesis is the question of how the player-videogame relationship is maintained, fractured or altered within live-streaming environments such as Twitch