Projects

Design Question: How Might We encourage positive behavior and minimize toxicity for competitive players in multiplayer games in-game and outside of it.

​

Method Used:

• User Observations (Naturalistic Observation)

  • Summary of Process:

    • Choosing a game player to observe

    • Observing & note taking 

    • Feedback and takeaways from the observation 

  • Takeaways/Next Steps:

    • In order to find the factors that cause toxic behavior, I will look at longer streams next time and find the reasons that cause toxic behavior. The reason for the toxicity is either because of their personalities or because of the game itself.

    • I will record the number of toxicity behaviors I found and calculate the probability of toxicity happening inside the game.

    • Beside pro players, I will have some observations on common players to see whether their situation is similar to pro players' or not.

    • I will ask players for feedback on their experiences and encourage them to report any toxic behavior they witness or experience.

    • More observation needs to be done on the exact situation we see toxicity, and the levels we would see on average.

    • Since these clips were taken from streamers, we need to conduct more observations on non-streamer sources in order to adequately gauge toxicity, as streamers will not properly show prevalence.

• Semi-Structured Interview

  • Summary of Process:

    • Interview Questions Design

    • Interview 

    • Feedback and takeaways from the interview

  • ​Takeaways/Next Steps:

    • I would structure my questions more openly, so the interviewee could have more freely think about the questions, which could help us gain some unexpected insights.

    • We need to prepare more problems in case of having not enough questions to derive to some useful insights.

    • I would use more casual ways to ask the questions, so the interviewee would not feel too much nervous due to think of it as a formal and serious interview. 

    • The question designed to ask about the cultural differences motivate the interviewee to say something more as he had experience and deep understanding to both gaming environments. Accordingly, he has a lot more passion in answering that question than the others.

    • From the interview, I understand that community is, in some extent, correlated with inclusion because we need to build an environment that welcome all the people.

    • One of the things mentioned was that there is some normalization to toxicity in games. Society has reached a point where it just seems normal for people to be toxic online.

    • Different people experience toxicity in different ways. Some of the ways I have experienced it are very different from someone else.

    • For next time it may help to have more ideas based on where a conversation is going.

    • It can be a little hard to ask a question and once it is answer go back and ask the next question. It is easier to just allow the conversation to go where it is going.

    • For next time it may be better to select more gamers to interview based on the games they play.

• Secondary Research

  • Summary of Process:

    • Research Strategy

    • Data Collection

    • Data Analysis

  • ​​Takeaways/Next Steps:​

    • In order to have a more detailed understanding of the research, I will make three reports summarizing, the characteristics of toxic behaviors, their causes of them, and methods to reduce this.

    • I will read these sources more carefully in order to make sure I did not miss anything.