In the second edition of Bunt and Bold we featured a study about harassment in video games. It revealed that women are likely to receive up to three times as many negative comments in online video games with voice chats than men. Unfortunately, toxicity and verbal abuse in video games are a common phenomenon and are not exclusive to women. According to a wired article published in December 2020 “sexual harassment, hate speech, threats of violence, doxing [...], spamming, flaming [...], griefing [...]” are often rationalized as being part of video game culture.
Some of these terms don’t ring a bell?
Flaming: To engage in an online argument usually involving unfounded personal attacks by one or more parties.
Doxing: Publicizing others’ private information.
Griefing: Using the game in unintended ways to harass others.
Several studies and articles reveal the following facts about harassment in online video games:
Men are more likely to be perpetrators of harassment in video games than women. Wired adds that “perpetrators of such behavior tend to be younger, male, and high in emotional reactivity and impulsivity”.
“Anonymity in a virtual environment fuels negative behaviors and its justification as video game culture can make toxicity contagious.” (Wired, Firstpost)
Harassment is triggered by perceiving social cues from their team-mates such as a women’s voice in a voice chat or feminine sounding usernames.
The more players are engaged with a game, the more likely they are to harass others.
The main reason for people to harass others is based on feeling threatened in their social status.
Game publishers are aware of these challenges and their negative implications. This week, we want to look at mechanisms implemented by some game publishers in order to combat toxicity and to turn their games into a more inclusive space: Ping Wheels and automated Radio Commands.
Word of The Week: Unconscious Bias
Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one's tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing (Source: University of California San Francisco).
Ping Wheels for Quick and Non-Verbal Communication
Popular multiplayer games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends feature a “Ping Wheel” to allow for faster and most importantly anonymous communication between players. Ping Wheels enable players to access and use a range of pre-selected commands, phrases, and signals with only two mouse clicks. Players can for example signal where they want to go next, that they need support, or warn their team about imminent danger. The team will receive these signals in the form of a visual and/or auditory notification. This allows for quick and standardized interaction among teammates, while helping to prevent direct replies and sending social cues that could lead to further harassment.
About the Role and Impact on Performance of Ping Wheels
Riot Games introduced the ping wheel in 2013. The study ‘Ping to Win?’ from 2016 analyzed 84,489 players across 10,293 matches in League of Legends. While the ping system was optimized since then, the findings stay relevant. Here are some facts the research found:
46.32% of players only click one or less pings per game.
Bot-Laners use pings way less compared to Top-Laners, suggesting that players who are co-located may not need alerts.
Offensive actions (e.g. kills or assists) have a positive correlation with the use of pings.
Pings are more useful in stressful situations when players are far apart from each other.
Players with a higher gold-per-minute ratio have a lower (expected) ping count
Automated Radio Commands for Non-Verbal Communication
In order to avoid verbal abuse and other forms of harassment mentioned earlier, most video games allow players to mute other players and even the whole team. Muting a player will remove their written communication, disable voice communication, and remove pings. Muting the whole team basically eliminates all communication. While this can help to shut toxic players out, it leads to a different dilemma. Many multiplayer games depend on communication and arrangements with your team in order to win the game. While Ping Wheels are a first great step for some games, they are too limiting for, and not applicable to, other types of games, like FPS (First-Person Shooter) games.
Going back to a time when integrated in-game voice chats were not available or did not have the same level of mass-adoption as they have today, publishers like Valve solved this issue by offering players a variety of Radio Commands to communicate. In Valve’s case, the example refers to the FPS game Counter-Strike. Similar to Ping Wheels, it allows players to use a range of phrases that are then spoken by the avatar. These phrases include commands like “Go Go Go!”, “Stick Together Team!”, “Team, Fall Back!”, “Cover Me!”, and many more.
With the ongoing development of video games in today’s world, Riot Games’ FPS game VALORANT uses a more sophisticated version of this system. VALORANT allows players to communicate through phrases with an advanced version of the Ping Wheel. It features significantly more options to choose from compared to games like League of Legends or Counter-Strike. It is noteworthy that VALORANT offers multiple ping wheels, with each one featuring different options, which allows for more ways to communicate in various situations.
VALORANT also features information that is automatically communicated based on a player's action. The avatars a player controls in Valorant are called Agents. Agents automatically comment on what they see and do. For example: When a player throws a grenade controlling the Agent named Killjoy, she automatically yells “Placing swarm grenade”. When activating the grenade, she says “Swarm grenade out”. When an enemy attacks one of Killjoy’s defense turrets, it will trigger the voiceline “Found them”. These audio messages help teammates to understand what is happening without any player having to trigger a specific action, voice line, or text chat.
Automatic audio cues help with the flow of information and make players less reliant on voice chat. While several games also feature visual cues, for example showing in which part of the map teammates are being attacked or also sending voice lines as a chat message, voice commands heavily rely on a player's ability to hear. On top of this, not all automated voice messages are also shown as text in the chat. In 2020 Morgan Baker, Games Accessibility Specialist & Designer, released a Case Study on Deaf Accessibility in Valorant. She criticized that some of the audio cues do not have corresponding visual cues and that some visual cues lack clarity. After publishing the study, Riot Games has addressed several of the criticized points such as adding more ping options in order to improve the situation for hearing-impaired players.
As a VALORANT-player, a long-time member of the gaming community, our Bunt and Bold member Kristin thinks that Riot Games has elevated non-verbal communication to another level.
Riot Games Introduces Background Launch of Voice Evaluation System
Last Friday, Dot Esports reported that Riot Games updated its privacy notice and terms of service allowing “the recording and evaluation of in-game voice communications in VALORANT when a report for abusive voice comms was received.” On July 13, Riot Games will begin a “background launch of the voice evaluation system”. It will help “train language models and prepare for a beta launch later in 2022.” Riot Games also confirmed that the new system “would provide a way to collect clear evidence that could verify any violations of behavioral policies before we can take any action.”
Other News
Lifestyle media outlet Refinery29 released a feature about female talent in esports
Earlier this month, Riot Games confirmed on Reddit, that they aim to balance male and female character representation in League of Legends 50/50. Going forward, this will lead to Riot Games releasing more female characters in order to close the existing gap.
In light of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Bungie and Gamurs Group, the company behind Dot Esports, announced they will implement new reimbursement programs for employees who must travel for unavailable healthcare. Many other companies, gaming related or not, such as Apple, Comcast-NBC Universal, Disney, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix announced they will cover travel costs for employees who need an abortion.
Bunt and Bold is a project to amplify diverse voices within the esports and gaming industry. Help us to find and share interesting studies, research, artists, or projects you have been working on. Are you currently working on an initiative? We would love to hear more. You can contact us on LinkedIn (Kristin Banse | Christopher Hana) or contact us via Email here.