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

By Ruby Harkness

How to play: 

• Option 1: Find a QR code poster around
• Scan it
• Option 2: Listen to me tell you to scan the QR code 
• Scan it 
• Answer the google form question linked to the QR code “How are you feeling? Answer with 1 song title.” 
• Submit the Google form

Artist’s Statement: 

“How Are You Feeling” is an intervention project based on taking a minute to ask yourself how you really feel. People live such busy lives and often don’t take the time to think about how they feel, this project is meant to intervene with that mindset and promote positive self care while people go about their day. I wanted this intervention to be simple, straight to the point, and meaningful for the people participating. Even the act of thinking about how you really feel is something people gloss over in today’s world. I think this is something that needs to be focused on.

Some inspiration from this project came from “Uncle Roy All Around You,” which combines the physical and digital world. I wanted to combine physical and digital as well for my intervention and I used QR codes and posters to achieve that. This intervention played out in two ways. Originally I was only going to put QR code posters up around campus. I did this and waited a few days and got like 4 responses. I learned that people don’t really take the time to scan a random QR code and usually end up going about their day. Although upsetting, I think this is completely normal. I tried to make the posters stand out to increase interest but that didn’t seem to work. The second phase was me intervening in people’s lives. I asked individual people in my classes and even presented the idea in front of the entire class to get everyone’s response. This was a lot more effective and helped me get the majority of my responses. I do think it’s interesting to think about how people don’t seem to take time out of their day to scan QR codes. This could even relate to the project, and provide evidence for how people are constantly on the move. Not only are people struggling to prioritize their feelings, but they also struggle to find curiosity in asking the question “How are you feeling”, which is written all over the posters. 

The project ended with the creation of the playlist: How we are feeling. This playlist is a collection of all 67 responses to the question “How are you feeling” in real song form. I wanted to make a playlist for this project because I think music is definitely a way people connect with each other and themselves. Relating to a song is a great way to think about your own feelings. The cover art for the Spotify playlist was also designed by me, and features organic shapes and lines. I wanted to represent how feelings are fluid, and in constant motion with this design. 

Playlist Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4PRgmpObxHkkONEM7Pgpq5?si=97e04311329e4f1e

Documentation: 

Posters: 

Spotify cover art:

Manga Monopoly is a spin-off of Monopoly with the objective changed from attempting to gain as much capital and take as much from your competitors as you can to instead trying to create the best art with the resources you have available. It’s a game played with 3 – 4 people, who all go around a Monopoly Board, collecting manga panels as they go. Everytime everyone makes a full lap around the board, players use their manga panels to make collages, and then vote on which collage they think is best. People get different points based on whether they got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd which points increasing in the last round. The person with the most points in the last round wins.

Inspiration (In Class & Out)

The broad inspiration for this project was the desire to take something highly commercialized and contextualize it into something more creative and generative. Many DADA movements are concerned with the commercialization of art, and I think of few more obvious games to critique this with than monopoly, a game that in it’s earliest form started out as a critique of capitalism and is now one of the THE MOST commercialized games of all time (we have Breaking Bad Monopoly). So I thought that through appropriation I could shift the focus of the game away from wealth acquisition and thus bring it more in line with its original intent (I know a satire of that kind of wealth acquisition was originally part of the point but world conditions are such that that kind of satire isn’t effective because no one thinks its satire they think its normal). Additionally, I wanted to combine the playfulness often seen in earlier DADA works along with the more overt political messaging seen in later ones, and I believe this project accomplishes both of those goals well. Collages are an accessible form of art as all you need is basic motor skills and an eye for composition (whereas most often forms of art require those two things + way more) and I think they can channel childlike creativity well due to that. The political implications of a game where the purpose is to create from nothing instead of starting off as a millionaire and stealing (AHEM, “renting”) everything in sight feel rather obvious, but to elaborate, I wanted the art to foster collaboration and healthy competition rather than a desire to seek dominance. In this game, you need other players to like your art to win, and I believe making something people like requires on some level an ability to understand and reach out to people (I feel that with all artistic creation in general) and I hope the game inspires those feelings in people instead of making them want to selfishly own and hoard everything for themselves.

The desire to send this mix of political messaging and fostering of childlike playfulness through collage was additionally of course inspired by the Merz art of Hannover Dada, wherein much of the point was recontextualizing “useless” or “boring” objects (junk, everyday objects, found objects) into something else entirely with an entirely new meaning. That was the approach I took to the “materials” of monopoly and manga.

I chose manga panels because I wanted to create a pastiche of many different series and artists, but I also wanted them to be visually cohesive. Manga are all in black and white, and this allows for an easily achieved color palette (as every Mangaka works with the same exact one, unlike comic artists) while still allowing for great contrast in the collages themselves. Additionally, I have a manga wall at home which works for these same reasons, so the idea came naturally.

First Iteration 

At first, I was quite rushed, so my starting iteration was rough. Each of the squares where relabeled but with no visuals (just the series title) and I didn’t know what to do with the community chest and chance cards. Voting was simpler as well, with people just voting for their favorite and that getting one point. The in class playtest went well, as detailed below 

Pros

• It was fun making collages 
• It was fun looking at other peoples colalges 
• Getting panels from series people knew made it more gratifying for them

Cons

• Voting being simplified made the votes more boring and not work well with only 3 people
• Many squares there was nothing to do, which slowed the game down 
• Players wanted more interaction with eachother

Second Iteration 

For the second iteration, I added many visual elements and tried to address player feedback. The game was made more visually interesting by me taking the volume covers of manga and placing them over the monopoly board. That way, each series was recognizable at a glance. To address the problem of community chest spaces and chance spaces having nothing to do AND to address the issue of players wanting more inter player interaction, I added a new set of cards to the game that allowed players to steal, force trades, take more cards, and more. This allowed for more dynamism in the gameplay as the actions of players could affect other player strategies in real time. I changed the voting to allow for points to be allocated based on whether it was 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and allowed players to pick from the top 3 cards on the pile when choosing their card. Overall, this increase of player agency and visual facelift helped make the game more interesting and I am happy with the result.

Final Playlets Results

Despite having three people, the final playtest was very lucrative. I got to playtest with both a manga fan and a non-manga fan, and seeing them both enjoy and have different takes on the game was both validating and interesting.

The non-manga fan liked the game and took a storytelling approach to her collages, trying to craft funny or interesting mini narratives with her manga pages. This was aided by this player just happening to get a lot of manga pages. From her feedback, I definitely would implement an “Explain” part of the voting phase where each player is required to give some brief intro for their collage.

The manga fan that played also enjoyed the game, and took a more impressionistic approach with their collaging, trying to make something visually appealing and leveraging text less. They suggested even more interaction, with players perhaps gaining physical tools like scissors, glue, or tape to further elevate their collages.

Playtest Collages

Rules

Cards