Using Psychology to tackle toxic League of Legends players!
Have you ever wondered the largest online game handles its toxic community? Look no further! It turns out that Riot Games has come up with a solution to handle these inconsiderate players.
In 2011, Riot introduced a tribunal system to League of Legends, which was essentially a community-based court system where the defendants are particularly toxic players who have numerous reports filed against them by other players. Before this system, Riot would simply ban unruly players for their racial epithets, homophobic remarks, and cyber bullying. However, they realized that this method was not effective in significantly reducing the amount of bad apples in their ever growing community tree. Thus, they decided to employ a more hands on approach with “The Tribunal”.
Under the leadership of Jeffrey Lin, who holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Washington, Riot decided to employ an experiment that would separate the good players from the bad players. The Tribunal would serve as the data base for player misconduct. The team then created a baseline for what constituted bad behaviour in player chat rooms. This meant creating a categorization for thousands of chat logs that could be marked as positive, negative, or neutral. By combining these two tools, Riot looked at its entire player base and categorized the players who were known for toxic behaviour and the players that were known for positive behaviour, and then cross-correlating the words used by both populations. Lin explained this process further, “any good words in common we filter out the dictionaries. What you’re left with is a dictionary for all the words the bad players use that good players don’t use.”
The process of chat analysis allowed for Riot to flag the bad apples with up to 80% accuracy before they show truly bad behaviour or generate more complaints. Riot would take this information, and based on the severity of the misconduct, would enforce a ban on the player for a variable number of days. The player was given a “Reform Card” that showed the punished players the same chat logs and other information that was presented in “The Tribunal”.
Moving forward in their regulation of the player base, Riot decided to implement another experiment. However, instead of actively effecting the players, Lin and his team took a more subtle approach. Using the psychological principle of priming, Riot introduced game tips that would be shown to players on loading screens and during gameplay. The tips were categorized into 3 themes: positive, negative, and self-reflection. These tips were also randomly shown in blue, red, or white.
Positive: “Players who cooperate with their team win 31% more games.”
Negative: “Players who verbally abuse their teammates lose 23% more games.”
Self-reflection: “Who will be the most sportsmanlike player in this game?”
Unfortunately, the results from this experiment were various and are still being collected. Hopefully Riot Games will release their findings soon!
As a gamer and a psychology student, their radical inclusion of psychological testing on the player base is incredibly interesting to me. I think that to further incorporate psychology into their regulation of toxic players, Riot could implement a survey system after each game played. The survey would be simple and easy. The rating system would have three options, they could either rate a smiley face (positive), neutral face (neutral), and sad face (negative). Players would be able to rate the game on this scale, and then each individual player. This could be a quick and painless alternative for gathering data on toxic players.
The players who consistently receive sad faces would be first warned about their negative rating. If they continue to receive poor ratings then they will eventually be banned. Those with a neutral face would be left as they are. And those with constant smiling ratings would be rewarded with in-game goodies for their positive behaviour!
All in all, the way Riot and Jeffrey Lin approached their toxic player base was both unique and effective. I didn’t think it was possible to blend psychology and gaming; let alone applying psychological techniques to gather data on players. So next time you enter the Summoner’s Rift, remember that Riot Games is looking out for you — trying to make your gaming experience the best it can be with SCIENCE!
If you want to see the video that this post is based on check out this link: http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-Behind-Shaping-Player.
For further reading on this topic check out this article: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/using-science-to-reform-toxic-player-behavior-in-league-of-legends/2/.
