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MAY LING TAN: Hi, everyone.
Welcome to Building Prosocial Games: Designing Inclusive
Social Experiences.
What exactly is prosocial behavior?
They are social acts that benefit other people or society
as a whole, such as helping, sharing, donating, cooperating,
and volunteering.
How does that cross over into video games?
If you're watching this, there's a high likelihood
that you're part of crafting player
experiences through games.
In a study called "Video Games for Prosocial Learning"
in 2019, Gene Koo and Scott Seider
found that video games have the capacity
to deepen moral reasoning, open players to new perspectives,
shape or reinforce positive behaviors,
and provide a field for practicing cooperation.
It goes to show that social design in games
goes beyond having a few features to play multiplayer
together.
Play at its core is social.
It teaches us how to get along with others.
Games can bring us together.
But first they have to be welcoming.
Let's take a look at the impact of destructive players
on a game.
In a survey of about 2,000-plus individuals on what inclusion
means to players, by Jenny Shi in 2019,
toxicity comes in as the second highest cause of concern
for players about the industry, after game quality.
Toxicity is more harmful than things
like brand fatigue, originality, and monetization practices.
As impactful as games can be, people
are being driven away because of the potential harm
they could encounter from interacting with other players.
Who am I, and why am I talking about this topic?
I'm May, a game designer.
And I'm passionate about social design and inclusive games.
I've previously worked at places like Ubisoft, EA,
and Warner Brothers.
I've worked on different multiplayer and social features
and games where the protagonists wear masks--
very timely in this pandemic--
and games like "Ghost Recon Phantoms," "Watch Dogs 2,"
"Star Wars Battlefront II," and "Hyper Scape."
And this is what sparked and sustained my interest
in this domain.
Like so many of us who play games
to stay in touch with friends and loved ones,
I hope we can do better in building prosocial gaming
experiences.
Building better experiences is an intentional process.
You may have heard of this quote made famous
by Joe Gerstandt, a renowned speaker in inclusion.
"If you do not intentionally, deliberately,
and proactively include, you will unintentionally exclude."
This section will hopefully help us
rethink who gets left behind or isolated
in experiences we build and how we bring them back
into the fold.
In terms of game design, creating equitable gameplay
systems will bring this one step closer to building
prosocial experiences.
The first goal is to build cohesion between players.
We can do this if we create roles that promote
a variety of contribution.
A role is defined as a strategic approach to play.
Think tanks, damage dealers, supports.
And a class is best thought of as a fixed loadout or a bucket
of player abilities.
A cleric or a paladin are classes,
but either one may take on the role of a healer.
The more roles a game is able to support,
the more gameplay styles open up to players.
Players can employ different strategy and tactics
to outsmart and outdo one another.
Are the exchanges between these players, zero sum,
or positive sum, or mutually beneficial?
Is the player required to make the sacrifice to help?
A medical pack versus an area of effect heal
work very differently.
One requires sacrifice, while the other
is mutually beneficial, making the decision a lot easier.
Can the player's action add to their social capital,
hence increasing their value and worth amongst other players
in the game?
Next, do players get to opt in, or are the actions required
of them mandatory to perform?
Will they be punished for not participating?
The diagram on the lower right is
taken from a paper named "The Trust Spectrum,"
by Raph Koster and Aaron Cammarata.
It shows that if players' abilities overlap one another,
meaning that he can do what the other player can also do,
very little trust is needed and the player participation is
optional.
In high-trust scenario on the other hand,
there's almost no overlap in player abilities.
Each player is unique in what they
can do, making their participation absolutely
necessary.
Not playing their role leads to conflict and frustration.
And by building in levers that encourage generosity
and reciprocity, we allow for the recipient of a gesture
to return in kind, forming a loop where
connections can happen.
Another method to build equitable gameplay systems
is by widening the funnel for success.
Where we're able to do this, we open gameplay
up to more players to participate.
If the game pits players or teams against another,
allowing multiple strategies that lead to success
helps shift the focus from speed, precision, and reflexes
to one based on strategy.
This means that each team member can
contribute in different ways.
An example from "Splatoon," in the Turf War game
mode, the team's goal is to paint as much of the map
as possible within a given time.
Players who are not proficient at shooting
can meaningfully contribute to their team
by using a wide roller brush to paint as much
of the surface area as possible to reach that goal.
We also have to ask ourselves, what
behaviors do the game systems consistently
reward or highlight?
If it's a shooter, does it only glorify and reward
top killers and head shots that are made?
Players will take the path of least resistance,
regardless of what our intentions are.
For the players to feel included,
consider rewarding and acknowledgment system
that also celebrate different gameplay styles
and altruistic contributions.
The second part to creating prosocial gameplay systems
is to foster psychological safety in the game.
Let's take a short detour by looking at this concept
of the Dunbar's number.
Psychologist Robin Dunbar posits that there
is a limit to the number of people
with whom we can maintain stable social relationships.
And that number is 150.
The people we are closest to and trust the most beginning
at the center of these concentric circles.
They are who we trust most with our secrets
and will turn to in times of distress.
And as we move towards the outer circles,
the trust level starts to fall off.
People in the outermost circles are
the ones we know but are not as close with.
The level of trust we have in a relationship
influences our interactions with one another.
Now consider absolute strangers who
sit outside of these circles.
Those weak, nonexistent social ties are starved of trust.
As designers, it is important to understand the impact of game
systems we build through the lens of these trust levels
or lack thereof.
In order to create psychological safety,
we need to reduce or distribute the pain of loss.
Where there is lack of trust, lessening the pressure
on total strangers to be 100% coordinated to win helps.
It leaves room for trial and error, is less harmful when
someone messes up, which is wont to happen,
especially when they're new to the game.
The second point to reducing exclusivity or gatekeeping
is that it's an important part to equally celebrate
player mastery.
But while doing so, we have to ask ourselves
if the same system could end up punishing or excluding
other players.
Can one person be targeted for the loss of an entire match?
This painfully highlights and puts
pressures on players who are new or just less proficient
at the game as a whole.
As much as possible, prevent unhealthy side-by-side
comparisons.
Here's an example.
If the game only shows the kill-death ratios of players
in the match, then those who take on support or healer roles
will be heavily punished because of their contributions,
because those contributions cannot be measured by those
same stats.
When there is no psychological safety,
players become risk averse and fear failure.
Players should not fear being put down and punished
by their own team members at the very least.
Another aspect of creating psychological safety
is to reduce interpersonal risk.
The case for voice chat is that it is an indispensable tool
to help players bond.
However, it should not be a crutch for gameplay or design.
Voice chat is context rich.
It exposes information about the users,
such as their gender, race, or age.
And these are details there are also the same ones that
put them at risk of harassment.
Reliance on voice chat also presupposes
that both parties can speak the same language to begin with.
This puts nonusers at a heavy disadvantage,
especially in competitive games, because they're
a tool that they are shut out of using.
Consider the relationship as well as
between users of voice chat.
How strangers communicate is very different
versus close friends.
There are so many layers where miscommunications can occur.
To make a case for this, Ewok is a 14-year-old pro "Fortnite"
player who is deaf.
And she relies heavily on sound visualization
to succeed in her matches.
It's never easy for her to communicate
when playing with teammates.
She has to type her chat on a second monitor.
And during those times, someone can easily shoot at her.
When designing communication tools,
the broad questions we have to ask ourselves
are "what," which refers to the type of on-task information
that needs conveying; "where," defining the content and space
where that information needs to be made available; and "when."
Can the information when shared get lost
amongst other active feedback?
Some games are gradually making headway in the space.
"Apex Legends" team, for example,
have taken the principle of building the ping system
with accessibility in mind and seeing the tool's usage extend
beyond the primary audience that it was built for.
Another method to encourage prosocial behavior in games
is to set up an environment of positivity.
Having positive fictional identities
can create an overall environment that is less toxic.
This encompasses content we create, like emotes, NPCs,
emblems, et cetera.
Researchers Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson
discovered a phenomenon they label the Proteus
effect, in which the behavior of an individual
within virtual roles is changed by the characteristics
of the avatar.
In other words, we role play or slip
into the shoes of the characters in the game universe we're in.
So if they are positive, we unconsciously
reflect that, too.
We also need to predict the potential
for abuse or manipulation that our content could encounter.
For example, turning on or off collision in the social space
is a simple, easy design choice to make.
But it makes all the difference in players being able
to abuse those emotes to block access to doorways or vendors
or using interruptible emotes to create offensive gestures.
Does the cost of keeping them in the game
outweigh the potential disruptive behavior that
could arise?
A well-crafted code of conduct can also
help to create psychological safety
in the community of a game.
They're user facing and communicate
the game's shared social norms.
They define how relationships work between one player
to another, to other groups, and to institutions.
Codes of conduct should be aspirational.
Designers have to work with community developers
to define the values that their ideal community should embody.
What does belongingness look like in your game?
Secondly, codes of conduct should be accessible.
That means the guidelines are easily understood,
they're clearly defined, easily discoverable in and outside
of the game, and the rules are deemed fair,
and justice applies to all players.
Having an immersive code of conduct
that's embedded in the game's lore
helps keep players engaged.
And it ties affected the Proteus effect I mentioned earlier.
Players are able to embody the character in the game universe
they're in.
A great and entertaining example of this
is The Pirate's Code, "Sea of Thieves'" code
of conduct for their community.
Once we've built out all those design features,
the second, equally-as-important part
of encouraging prosocial behavior
is tied to the enforcement of those positive social norms.
Let's take a look at what that means.
Prevention features require close collaboration
between social design and UX teams to build out features
that first of all, let players set social safety boundaries
by giving them privacy management tools,
as well as defining social preference settings that
are respectful.
Building features that enforce positive social values
as stipulated in the code of conduct
also helps enforce those and remind
players of those positive social values.
Endorsement systems are a good way
to help keep those values in the player's mind
and what those positive social norms are,
making them great rehabilitation tools for reoffending players,
as well.
There is a disclaimer though.
There's always a danger when motivating players
extrinsically, as this encourages them
to game the system.
The detection of disruptive antisocial behavior
can be split into two general approaches.
One, automated detection systems take the load off
of human moderators and are increasingly
precise in their capabilities of detecting offenses.
Machine learning-aided chat filters
identifying idle or away-from-keyboard players
and anti-cheat solutions are absolutely
necessary to help developers identify offenders
as early as possible.
To catch offenders who fall through the gaps,
giving community reporting or counter abuse tools
is a form of crowdsourcing the community health.
Good reporting system should define the anti-patterns
of an offense as well to reduce abuse
of the system to begin with.
Centralized systems allow the live services team
and community managers to build a full picture
of a player across the various touch points of a game
by tracking them across the game's ecosystems,
while they're playing or while they're outside
engaging in forums or websites.
This is done by bringing together
the player account, the reports, and the logs,
where they can be accessed by community developers, customer
support, or the live services team.
The benefits of having a platform level access
means that developers can choose if a player's experience can
be impacted across other game titles, too.
So if a player is toxic in one game,
they might not be able to access another.
The goal of having a good deterrence system
is [? to encourage ?] offenses and disincentivize recidivism.
Effective sanctions are ones that
apply context-specific penalties that tie in with the offense
to begin with.
Some examples of this, if an offender was
toxic in text or voice chat, revoking their communication
channels help them cool it off.
Disabling a cheater's progression
is more effective than banning their accounts,
especially if it takes seconds for them
to create a brand new one and surface
other problems like smurfing.
Messaging systems that deliver a clear lesson can help players
learn to habilitate.
To the offender, swift, consistent, and clear reasoning
will help them understand where they went wrong.
For players who did the reporting to begin with,
sending follow up messages if an offender is reprimanded
is crucial in helping instill trust
that a reporting system works.
The rule of thumb here with these systems
is to be able to differentiate between occasional offenders
and chronically toxic or disruptive players.
Building and implementing these tools and features take time.
And it requires high cross-functional dependency,
so they need to be done as early as possible in development.
It's important for developers, community managers, customer
service teams, and marketing to come together
to build each piece that's required in this huge puzzle.
When done right, mitigation systems
will help prevent the occurrence and reduce
the frequency and impact of disruptive behavior.
A centralized profile management system
helps build a full picture of each player's profile
based on their actions.
And a deterrence system will help
deliver appropriate intervention and discourage reoffenders
through rehabilitation.
As developers, what are we building towards?
More inclusive games that enable players to feel psychologically
safe while playing, find a sense of meaning and belonging
in its community, and access its universal benefits.
The surge of popularity in games like "Animal Crossing: New
Leaf" and "Among Us" in this pandemic
shows how much we want to connect with each other.
And therefore, these experiences need to be built right.
In conclusion, toxicity and destructive behavior
do not happen in a vacuum.
It stems from a combination of various affordances
that signal to the player how they should treat others
in the game.
I hope this presentation has inspired you
that we can build positive bonding experiences in our game
where we deliberately designed to include.
Thank you.
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