Promoting Positive Play – IGEA Trust & Safety

Promoting Positive Play | Employing innovative tools and
systems to encourage positive play among communities.

Promoting Positive Play | Employing innovative tools and systems to encourage positive play among communities.

Video game communities flourish when they promote sportsmanship, camaraderie, and mutual respect. Beyond the establishment of expectations through codes of conduct, the video game industry is increasingly leveraging its technological and creative capabilities to develop systems and tools that identify and encourage positive gaming behaviours. This involves the integration of research, innovative design approaches, and insights gathered from player interactions.

The objective of these initiatives is to discern the behavioural patterns that contribute to a vibrant gaming community and to encourage such behaviours among players. Game developers strive to incorporate these insights from the early stages of game development, aiming to foster positive player experiences.

Examples of these efforts include incentive systems that reward players for positive behaviour, such as assisting other players, and mechanisms that encourage players to recognize and promote good behaviour, such as sportsmanship, in others.

Activision Blizzard

If the first step to a great game experience is consistently communicating the rules, the second step is consistently enforcing them.

Here are the mechanisms with which Activision Blizzard is doing that:

Activision uses a warning system in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, and Call of Duty: Warzone that addresses disruptive players and supports and amplifies its Code of Conduct.

Blizzard uses a warning system in World of Warcraft and Overwatch that promotes behavioural improvements among players who start to exhibit disruptive behaviours.

Electronic Arts

EA believes in the power of positive play and that being part of a gaming community should be safe, fair, inclusive and meaningful for all. The guidelines in its Positive Play Charter are key to making sure players can trust that its games and services are enjoyable for anyone. Additionally, EA’s Ping System provides an effective alternative for players to communicate and avoid potentially unwanted chat that may expose them to toxic or inappropriate content. Originally developed by Respawn for its battle royale game, Apex Legends, EA has granted game developers free access to the patent for the ping system as part of EA’s accessibility patent pledge.

Microsoft

Xbox and Minecraft are committed to helping young people obtain the online privacy skills they need to keep their data safe as they navigate the internet. To help young people learn these crucial skills, Minecraft Education has created Privacy Prodigy! This game-based learning experience helps players identify their personal data, determine with whom they can share their data, and explore ways to safeguard their personal information.

Privacy Prodigy is designed for young people ages 7-18. It’s available free for both Minecraft Education and in the Minecraft Marketplace.

This single-player experience introduces young people to the concept of areas of trust. They’ll develop the ability to identify the different types of information they need to manage and what they can share. Players will also learn strategies for protecting their personal data and ways to mitigate any issues that arise from compromised information.

Riot Games

Riot has invested significantly in promoting positive player experiences. It developed a new design discipline called “Player Dynamics,” which focuses on helping people play well together by fostering successful player interactions and addressing disruptive behaviour. As Riot develops new games, they go through a review process to ensure the games are designed with reactive and proactive features that incorporate Player Dynamics principles. For example, Riot’s League of Legends incorporates an incentive system called “Honor” that encourages players to be positive in their interactions with each other, providing in-game digital rewards to players that have an exceptionally positive impact on others and building trust in others in a player’s community.

For more information about Riot’s approach to promoting positive behaviour, see this blog post.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft launched its Fair Play Program in 2022 to raise awareness on disruptive behaviours in the gaming community, help players recognize their own triggers, and learn how they can better understand the roots of those behaviours to overcome them.

The program consists of five learning capsules with nine videos, one quiz, one self-assessment and one commitment, which take about 25 minutes to complete in total. The Fair Play Program also features interviews with a pro Rainbow Six Siege esports player and a coach, who will talk about how engaging in positive behaviour helps maximize their team’s potential and bolsters the competitive scene.

The Fair Play Program is a continuation of Ubisoft’s bigger journey of creating gaming structures that foster more rewarding social experiences and avoid harmful interactions through multiple approaches, such as the “Zero Harm in Comms” project launched with Riot Games. The Fair Play Program was designed in collaboration with a group of digital-learning experts, psychologists, internal Ubisoft creatives, and Ubisoft’s Online Services team. The team also looked at studies provided by the Fair Play Alliance, all focusing on player behaviour, player protection, impact on gameplay, and the impact of player well-being.