The Other Kind of MMO: The Materazzi Problem - Twenty Sided

Shortly after I joined Goonswarm, they relocated to a different region of space in the north called “Deklein,” and more specifically the station in the VFK-IV system, which for years to come would be the de facto capital of Goon country. Almost immediately after moving they fought a war. Earlier in this series I promised not only a bunch of long, rambling stories but a bunch of long, rambling stories that contain potential game design lessons. Goonswarm’s war against another alliance called “Goodfellas” is one such story: it illustrates something I’m going to call the “Materazzi Problem.”

This is an entry in the middle of a series of essays about the author’s experience with EVE Online, but it contains a fascinating insight I’m actually ashamed I never figured out myself.

The reason competitive online game communities are so frequently toxic isn’t just due to lack of consequences or some kind of repressed negativity being inherent to competitive gamers. It’s because in many of these environments, toxicity is a competitive advantage. Hassling your opponents can distract them, provoke them into actions that backfire against them, or even make them concede just to get away from you. Getting comfortable with constant insults and offensive language makes you immune to these weapons and more able to use them, so toxicity will often spill into non-competitive places like forums and prevail even among friends and allies.

Such games thus actively encourage toxic behavior by default. This will mean more wins for the toxic players, but will drive away others, which is a trend worth fighting.

Two Hat: Stop tweaking your game and start fixing your community

Security expert Two Hat teams up with Image Analyzer to tackle harmful online content and toxic communities

Toxic behavior in social media and similar platforms is not a new problem, but it’s worth pointing out that there are financial as well as ethical incentives for platform-owners to improve it. You can increase engagement through endless A/B tested UI tweaks, but you might be better off improving your community.

Key quote: “[P]eople are 300% more likely to never return to games or platforms where they experienced toxic behaviour. Conversely, players are three times more likely to return after positive interactions.”

Designing Communities for Kindness

How to better set up your (game) communities for kinder user experiences.

Healthy communities don’t just happen. Victoria Tran, Communications Director of Kitfox Games, lays out what to consider when creating and maintaining a space for a game’s community, and in particular how to bake kindness into the community’s design.

Habitat Chronicles: The Untold History of Toontown's SpeedChat (or BlockChat(tm) from Disney finally arrives)

By hook, or by crook, customers will always find a way to connect with each other.

This look back at a couple of online games from the 1990s and 2000s shows that content moderation is a timeless problem and that if you give players a way to interact with each other, they will use it to circumvent your filters and communicate in ways less restricted than you intend. Wholly-automated prevention of harassment and obscenity may be flat-out impossible in a shared world.

Brendan Greene: "It's crazy, the hate I receive. I just have to ignore it"

At Gamelab 2019, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail talked to PUBG's creator about the darker side of making a global phenomenon

Rami Ismail of Vlambeer and Brendan Greene of PUBG discuss some of their experiences with online threats and harassment they’ve received from people who play their games.

It is completely insane that we’ve reached the point where having a successful game means people who are frustrated with bugs or slow updates or design choices will sometimes respond with intimidation or violence and this is just normal. We call it “toxic behavior” or “fan entitlement” and just encourage developers to protect their personal details as best they can. It’s just the price of success.

Tips & Tricks to manage Open Game Development

Open The Gates! More and more indies are allowing players to have a say about game updates. Maybe you decided to do this aswell, here are some tips & tricks after making 4 open game development games!

Games being developed out in the open through things like Early Access is a relatively new trend and there are still lessons to learn about how to do it effectively. Goblinz Studio have shipped four games this way and share the tips and philosophies they’ve learned along the way.

Fighting a toxic Steam community - and winning

At Develop:Brighton, Creative Assembly's Grace Carroll said the "visible presence of moderation" was enough to turn around a toxic Steam forum in just a week

Creative Assembly’s lead social media manager Grace Carroll provides some lessons learned on community management. To me, the key takeaway is that the biggest difference is made just by showing up - making it clear that the community is being heard and that there are consequences for toxic behavior.

Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs

Games are networking the world. Titles like 'PokemonGO' are showing the industry how the world can be an MMO. Hardware coming from major companies is promising…

Raph Koster’s fascinating and chilling GDC 2017 talk about the responsibilities of designers and maintainers of virtual and social spaces. Modern games and services from Facebook to Pokémon GO are ignoring the many lessons learned in the early days of shared online worlds, and you don’t even have to be a player or user to be affected by the fallout.