Have you managed to stick to your New Year’s resolution from January this year? If not, rest assured, you're not alone in veering away from your goals to shed weight, hit the gym, or kick the smoking habit. Behavior change is hard, and this challenge is evident in the gaming world too.
League of Legends (LoL), a popular MOBA game by Riot Games, faces significant challenges with player toxicity, including harassment and verbal abuse. Addressing this issue is crucial for enhancing player experience, reducing churn, and fostering a supportive community, ultimately ensuring the game's long-term success. By creating a more positive environment, Riot Games can help players enjoy the game more and stay engaged longer.
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Research shows that interventions to change human behavior typically have modest effects, as maintaining those changes over time poses a greater challenge. In the fast-paced world of League of Legends, 74% of players report witnessing or experiencing toxic behavior, which includes harassment, verbal abuse, and griefing. While some may justify toxicity as an inherent part of competitive gaming, studies reveal enduring negative effects that extend beyond the screen, causing both personal distress and damage to the overall community.
Upon creating an account, players will be encouraged to choose and contemplate three values they wish to cultivate. They can modify these choices later as desired.
When the game begins, the loading screen will display each player's values at the top of their avatar.
During the match, each player will see their values next to their avatar. Additionally, they will have the ability to view their teammates' values displayed on the screen at all times.
After the match concludes, players will be prompted to endorse their teammates based on their values. If players believe their teammates have exemplified any of the displayed values, they can click on them to provide an endorsement.
Players will move up the tiers of their chosen value as they receive endorsements from teammates. Each tier will have checkpoints that reward players with in-game prizes.
We began by reviewing existing research on toxic behaviors in gaming communities, examining cultural influences and offline environments. This literature review included studies on coping mechanisms, reporting behavior, and social ambiguity's impact, offering a nuanced understanding of toxicity dynamics. Synthesizing these insights provided a comprehensive view of triggers, manifestations, and potential interventions for addressing toxicity in gaming.
We researched how other games promote positive behavior and prevent toxicity, focusing on DOTA 2's approach. DOTA 2 modifies players' in-game influence based on behavior and communication scores, consistently assessed during gameplay. Players with lower scores face feature limitations, encouraging better behavior and communication.
Studying the purpose and functioning of this feature, we concluded that:
While a positive step, the initiative could enhance its approach by actively promoting positive behavior, incorporating in-game rewards or recognition for sportsmanship and cooperation, instead of solely relying on punitive measures.
It's essential to weigh the impact of consequences on player satisfaction, as the act of removing features may lead to dissatisfaction and, in turn, contribute to more toxic behaviors. Striking a balance between consequences and maintaining an enjoyable gaming experience is crucial.
During our focus group session with six League of Legends players, they shared unique metaphors reflecting similar sentiments on key concepts like dealing with in-game toxicity, personal roles in toxic scenarios, and their reasons for playing. Participants thoughtfully selected metaphors that connected to themes such as "Reporting," "Game Toxicity," "Losing LP," "Team Contribution," and "Team Communication." Their insights provided well-reasoned explanations and highlighted common strategies and feelings related to these concepts.
Here are some of our findings:
To gain deeper insights from our research findings, we conducted semi-structured interviews with renowned experts specializing in gaming, game design, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The panel of experts encompassed individuals with extensive knowledge and experience in these domains. The interviewees comprised:
Online anonymity provides individuals with a sense of detachment from their virtual personas, potentially leading to the manifestation of toxic behaviors that seem inconsistent with their real-life character. This creates discord between behavior and values, as players recognize the inappropriateness of toxic behavior but may still choose to engage in it.
Players commonly attribute their losses to others, indicating a reluctance to take responsibility for their performance. While many report experiencing toxicity, few admit to perpetrating it, highlighting a potential lack of self-awareness as most players likely find themselves in victim role.
Players experience a feeling of powerlessness when reporting toxic behavior, as they perceive a lack of direct consequences for their actions. The normalization of toxicity in League of Legends has resulted in a decreased likelihood of reporting such behavior when players encounter it, fostering an environment where reporting is less prevalent.
Change that comes from within is authentic. Fostering a playful approach enhances openness to change. It's crucial to be wary of reactance, as individuals may react negatively to interventions when they feel their autonomy is being restricted.
To encourage creative thinking, we brainstormed solutions individually before presenting our ideas to the group. Each member referenced our research findings to ensure the solutions addressed user needs. We consolidated all ideas on a FigJam Board and voted to identify the most promising concepts.
We proceeded to bring our concepts to life through visualization sessions, delving into detailed discussions on the execution of each idea to align with our objectives. The sketching sessions were dynamic, prompting us to refine and rethink our approaches. Iterative in nature, we found ourselves revisiting and enhancing our sketches, aiming for a synthesis of three distinct concepts that could seamlessly harmonize to yield robust and cohesive results.
In the initial round of user testing, we used low-fidelity paper prototypes for our proposed value system within League of Legends. Participants, familiar with each other and from the same university program, engaged in a simulated in-game experience, selecting values displayed beneath their in-game spells. After the match, they rated teammates' adherence to these values and answered in-depth questions, providing valuable insights into value selection, self-awareness, and system adoption.
Based on insights from initial testing, our second round of user evaluations featured improved methodology and design. Participants, unfamiliar with each other and located remotely, played via Zoom, providing diverse perspectives. The prototype evolved into high-fidelity wireframes resembling the League of Legends client, with an added screen for articulating value choices to enhance self-awareness and user experience.
In the final round of user testing, time constraints led to a scenario-based approach instead of in-game matches. Original participants returned to evaluate the refined high-fidelity prototype, providing insights into its effectiveness in reducing toxicity and improving the gaming experience. Key changes included a mandatory "value selection cooldown" for reflection, displaying values in the loading screen for pre-game priming, revamping the endorsement screen with player avatars, and enhancing the prototype's fidelity to match the League of Legends interface.
Following the interviews, we let the users fill in the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire.
Overall, our design received an average SUS score of 82.5/100. In fact, the mean was greatly affected by one outlier with an extremely high score; all the other users rated the system as highly usable. A larger sample size is needed to get a more accurate estimation of the system's usability, but a SUS score of 82.5 assures us that our system is considered usable by most of our audience.
Engaging in this project has been a significant source of personal and professional growth, enhancing my skills as a researcher and prompting thoughtful considerations of psychological methodologies within design. The iterative nature of the design process facilitated my personal growth by fostering adaptability, resilience, and a deeper understanding of user needs through ongoing refinement and collaboration.
We are presently extending this project as an independent research study alongside Prof. Kaufman. Our focus is on enhancing our solution by exploring more user-friendly applications of self-affirmation theories. The aim of this study is to assess the sustained impact of our solution on players' behavior over an extended period and to determine if our interventions contribute to maintaining this behavioral change, extending beyond the context of League of Legends to influence their personal lives.
Collaborating with the Collaborative Against Hate, we are set to persist in testing and advancing our concepts. Securing IRB approval and funding from Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts Creative Inquiry Grant marks a pivotal step in continuing this exploration.
