In part because it’s the biggest game on the planet, and in part because its community has a pretty poor reputation, the developers of League of Legends have been looking at some unique ways to combat unsavoury behaviour in the game. And are coming up with some refreshing results.
“We really wanted to figure out why were players being frustrated in games”, Riot’s Jeffrey Lin tells…Red Bull. “What were the common barriers to having a positive match in online games? What were the pain points players were having? One of the key insights we found early on was people or players weren’t inherently bad. What’s happening is every single player has their bad days.”
Riot’s approach to player behaviour going forwards, then, is to keep this in mind. Use less of the stick, and more of a carrot. Reward good behaviour with in-game acknowledgement, instead of having every game played under the spectre of some kind of ban. Encourage players to say “GG” (Good Game) at the end of a match.
Whether it works in the long run is anyone’s guess – and it will never work for those dedicated jerks who will always be trolls regardless of what kind of day they had – at least it’s trying something new, instead of simply sitting back and always threatening people.
Teamwork OP: Riot on making ‘good’ the easy choice [Red Bull]
Comments
6 responses to “Most Trolls Aren’t Arseholes, They’re Just Having A Bad Day”
Don’t think they will get anywhere with this. Most trolls are just trolls for no reason and they feed on attention and the demise of others.
Win or lose, we always said gg after halo matches.
Same. The way I was raised, if you won or lost, you always congratulated the other side. I always do that to this day. I even did it on GTA V when I fought some guys near an apartment for a bounty! Needless to say, I got called a ****ot and a **nt for saying it, but eh, bigger person and all that.
I generally only ever say “gg” if everyone else is doing it. Most of the time people are just typing it as a formality and never mean it anyway. Rewarding good behaviour is all well and… good, but all it does is encourage people to do whatever it takes to be seen as good while still being a troll since there’s no repercussion for doing so.
If someone hates their life, then every day is a bad day. Now they’re playing games and feel pressured under the eyes of other guys who are judging them to win and feel that they must.
There should be a system at the end of each game where you give a point to each player who has played respectfully and without trolling so that in future games you will be more likely to play with those players, eventually the system would prevent trolls from playing with good players and also even force some trolls to be unable to find a match with anyone.