Players of competitive online video games know the struggle all too well: chat can be a pretty ugly place. Whether it’s trash talk, someone blaming their own team, or offensive remarks, toxicity is in no short supply. Chat filters, community moderators, and increased awareness of toxicity can curtail this to a degree, but players don’t need to wait for someone else to stop the toxicity for them- they can confront it themselves, and with little effort required.
My online intervention took place in the ROBLOX first-person shooter game “Phantom Forces”. It is a fast paced game where players fight each other in teams with different weapons and if your character dies, you can respawn within a few seconds, creating a competitive and captivating experience.
My strategy was simple: if someone is being toxic, respond to them immediately, and say something. Anything at all. Do not verbally attack them, just respond. My goal is to lower the chat’s hostility level and remind the players to have fun.
But this raises the question: “If it’s a chat and a player is saying things you don’t like, why don’t you just block them?” This is a valid question. I completely understand blocking players who are insufferably toxic or you don’t have the energy to deal with. No player should have to be obligated to respond to every little thing because sometimes we just want to have fun. However, I want to change other people’s behavior. I want to bring to light the fact that people can fight toxicity a different way, by directly confronting it and maybe changing some minds.
For example, if someone says:
- “My team is trash” respond with something like “What do you mean?”
- This ensures that you acknowledge the toxicity without attacking them.
- “Player X is so bad at this game” respond with something like “It’s just a game, you don’t have to get upset over it.”
- This emphasizes the fact that they are playing a video game and should not be attacking others over it.
- This reminds the player not to get upset. Everyone is playing this to have fun!
- If a player says something blatantly offensive, respond with something like “You probably shouldn’t be saying that.”
- This calls out the offensive remark without escalating the situation further, which might prompt them to continue or say worse things.
I ran this intervention multiple times, in different servers to ensure a fresh set of players each session. I would first play a few rounds saying nothing in the chat as a control, and then I would play the following rounds doing my intervention strategy.
Session C: Changing the Vibes
In my third session of this intervention, I had encountered a server where the game chat had a feeling of frustration and agitation. The game ended with only 3 “good game” messages, and it felt cold and tense.
One player was upset with other players for “camping” in the game, a strategy where you stay in one place hidden and wait for other players to walk past you so you can take them by surprise. As it is a video game, I wanted to emphasize that people have different ways of playing the game so I responded with that and said that it is simply a matter of planning and strategy to counteract players who camp. My chat messages are highlighted in pink.
The match went on and it felt like my comments were ignored, but luckily one of the players who was upset earlier asked a question about one of the weapons in the game, asking if it was good.
I saw this as an opportunity to respond to deflect the attention away from the negativity in the chat and help to open a discussion about the game itself. After many players began to chime in on their opinions of the weapons in the game, the vibe of the match took a turn and it felt like a casual conversation between a bunch of friends, despite the fact we were all strangers.
The vibes had changed so much that by the end of the game, many more players were saying “gg” meaning “good game”, prompting one player to remark “why is everyone saying good game?” out of surprise. The player who was originally complaining about the camping strategy even said goodbye and wished everyone well.
While I doubt that my intervention was responsible for this shift in the game atmosphere, I think that my actions along with everyone else’s to cool the tension and adopt a more playful attitude was certainly powerful. Players often want to do the right thing, but feel uncomfortable being the first one to say something. If you take the first step to counteract a bad chat environment, others might join in. Together, you can all make the game way more fun for everyone.
Session E: Misplaced Anger
In the fifth session of the intervention, I noticed the chat activity was relatively low until a teammate said something toxic against our team.
Their message basically expressed anger at the makeup of the team’s overall skill levels. As part of my intervention, I quickly responded, but realized someone else had beaten me to it.
The toxic player said how everyone on our team was underperforming. I reminded them that we are all just playing to have fun, and that there was no need to get upset about it. This seemed to have an impact on the player, as instead of continuing to be hostile, they began to calmly explain their reasons for why they were upset.
Player B interjected to cool the tensions with a distraction and Player C joined in with my intervention. We wanted to be non-confrontational, but still address the toxicity by shifting their attitude towards doing their best and just playing the game. I tried to show that I was understanding by not verbally fighting them.
At one point, someone on the other team was rude to the formerly toxic teammate and even the teammate was taken aback by this. Other players including myself joined in to calm the situation and assert that there was no need for rudeness in the chat. By now, I felt like the intervention was having at least some effect on reinforcing a positive atmosphere in the game.
Towards the end of the game, the formerly toxic teammate’s concerns about the unbalanced team were addressed. They expressed their reasons for being upset in a civil manner and explained their vision for an improved game experience.
This was huge in the intervention, because it managed to transform what was originally a toxic remark into something that was a civil, neutral discussion but also helpful for the game developers. This made me think that this teammate probably was having a bad day, and took out their anger on the wrong thing. Some toxic players don’t even realize they’re being toxic, but all it takes is a civil discussion and some understanding to get them to express what they really mean.
Conclusion
Throughout the course of this intervention I watched as hostile environments turned into friendly ones. The game chat can shift from negative to neutral to positive with relatively little effort. All it takes is one person to change the vibes, and other players might feel inspired to join in and make a difference too.
This intervention won’t always work, and despite my efforts to be as scientific as I could with my experiment, I can’t definitively prove that it was significant in all my sessions. However, it did prove effective in at least a few simple cases. It all depends on the person: some people will be toxic no matter what you say to them, and in that case, chat filters, moderators, and blocking users is the best course of action. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. Sometimes all it takes for a player to chill out is just a civil conversation like an ordinary human being and reminding them that we all just want to have fun.
Bastión Toledo-Altamirano
