What Makes a Good Loser? an Ethnographic Study of Toxic Behaviors in Competitive Multiplayer Games
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What makes a good loser? An Ethnographic Study of Toxic Behaviors in Competitive Multiplayer Games Azul Romo Flores Supervisor: Isabel Löfgren Södertörn’s University | School of Culture and Education Master’s Dissertation, 30 credits | Spring 2020 Master’s programme in Media, Communication and Cultural Analysis To Bruno González Vázquez, thank you for your endless support. 1 Abstract Over the past decades, the scholarly discourse of violent video games as a possible influence for aggressive behaviors has gained much attention, primarily relying on the content of such games This study aims to explore the environment of competitive multiplayer gaming in terms of technicality (e.g. game mechanics), social interactions within a video game, and additional resources outside of the game as possible influential factors for toxic behaviors in competitive multiplayer games. Bourdieusian social theory is applied to gain a better understanding of the relationship between agents (players) and the field (competitive gaming) and the relevance of gaming capital. This study is based on a digital ethnographic approach to gain a comprehensive understanding of the gaming environment, and reports on semi-structured online interviews with 14 participants aged between 17-40, to gain insight on players’ perception and responses towards toxic behaviors in competitive games. This study proposes a spectrum of toxic behaviors in competitive multiplayer games, in which actions may be distinguished based on the form of expression (eg. verbal, physical or in-game). Primary findings suggest there may be a causal relationship between a player’s knowledge of a game and their conveyance of toxicity, regardless of age and gender. The degree of toxicity may vary depending on the player, and is more frequently performed by men. Lastly, toxic behaviors should not be examined in isolation from contextual factors such as game mechanics or social interactions, but need to be further explored as a medium-specific phenomenon. Keywords: gaming capital, Bourdieu, culture capital, competitive multiplayer games, eSports, competition, trash talking, online harassment, aggressive online behavior, toxic behavior 2 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 1. Introduction 5 2. Previous Research 12 2.1. The Violence Surrounding Games & Games Culture 13 2.2. Toxic Behavior in Games 15 2.3. The Spectrum of Toxicity 18 3. Theoretical Context 22 3.1. Bourdieusian Theory 22 3.2. Theory of Praxis, Doxa and Knowledge of a Field 25 3.3. Gaming Capital 26 4. Purpose & Research Question(s) 29 5. Methodology 31 5.1. Digital Ethnography 32 5.2. Semi-Structured Interviews 35 5.2.1. Interview Guide 36 5.2.2. Participants 37 6. Description of Game Environment 41 6.1. Game Mechanics 41 6.2. Asymmetrical Design 41 6.3. Playstyles 43 6.4. Communication Systems 44 6.5. Ranking Systems & Matchmaking 45 6.6. Code of Conduct, Reporting Tools & Penalties 47 7. Analysis of Empirical Data 51 7.1. Players’ Perception of Toxic Behaviors 51 7.2. Players’ Responses Towards Toxic Behaviors 57 7.2.1. Being the Victim 58 7.2.2. Talking Back, Getting “Tilted” 59 7.3. Code of Conduct in Competitive Games 61 7.3.1. Report Systems 63 7.3.2. Alternate Accounts 64 7.4. Influences Outside of the Game on Toxic Behaviors 64 7.4.1. Social Interactivity Outside of Game 65 7.4.2. Observing Play 66 7.4.3. Difficulty of Games & the Drive of Being Better Than the Enemy 67 7.5. The Supportive Community of Competitive Multiplayer Games 72 3 8. Discussion 73 8.1. Players as Mediators of Toxic Behaviors 74 8.2. Unsportsmanship in Games 75 9. Conclusion 79 Acknowledgements 81 Bibliography 82 Appendix A - Interview Guide 95 4 1. Introduction What is at stake for these players is not only their enjoyment of the game, then, but the status of gaming and gamer identity in mainstream culture. These are players who, by and large, take gaming seriously in a cultural context that sees gaming as frivolous and unproductive. (Myers, 2019, p.771) I have played video games since I was about seven years old. I remember going over to my best friend’s house after school and we would spend hours playing different games. Sometimes we would play together simultaneously and sometimes we would pass the controller around. Video games have played an essential role in many young people’s lives in the past twenty to thirty years, serving as a safe space or coping strategy to ‘real’ life (c.f. NakeyJakey, 2018). Although I have not played much during my early years, during my young adulthood in the mid 2010s, I became serious with my gaming habits by buying my own gaming computer and was particularly invested in online multiplayer games. According to Myers (2019, p.771), the act of playing video games has been considered to be “frivolous and unproductive” in cultural contexts. This belief has been actively discussed in mainstream media, especially after mass shootings in the United States (Copenhaver, 2015; Hegeman, 2019; Kreider, 2012; Pidd, 2012) where causes for such a violent act have been partly attributed to online games that elicit violent and toxic behavior. After the recent mass shootings in the United States, the president claimed that “we must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace." (Griffin, 2019; Voytko, 2019). One thing in this statement may be certain - video games are a commonplace. There are millions of players in online games (c.f. Bailey, 2020; SteamCharts, 2020). People of any gender, age, from any country and cultures, from any stereotype (Ferguson & Glasgow, 2020) can refer to themselves as ‘gamers’ due to their passion for games1. Not all video games are about violence, nor do they cause violence, but it is through a greater understanding of modern video game culture, its audience and this particular medium, that may provide insight as to how digital technologies have come to play an essential role in our everyday lives and in turn, understanding how this medium may affect our behaviors, beliefs and reasoning. As Wagner claims: One argument in the study of violent video games [Goldstein 20052] has always been that children do not have the competence to make [an evaluation of the consequences of their decisions] when dealing with violence in video games and thus tend to reenact aggressive behavior in real life. According to the presented theoretical framework of interactive media reading literacy, however, it would be exactly the videogames that counteract the very same problem they are supposed to create. (Wagner 2006, p.142). 1 See also Dave T Geek, 2018. 2 Cited in Wagner 2006. 5 However, there are various indicators that advocate games are not unproductive. Scholars Maija Majamäki and Matilda Hellman (2016) have studied how players perceive their time spent on playing video games as productive and meaningful, and if it may cause addictions (as other researchers have claimed in the past; c.f. Majamäki and Hellman, 2016). Majamäki and Hellman conclude that there is a problem with using traditional time as a measurement of MMORPG3-gaming, primarily because we “make simplified judgments about ways to use time in terms of ‘good’’ ways (non-gaming) or ‘bad’ ways (gaming)” and that “these do not correspond to the complexity of time dimensions related to the actual gaming activity. For the gamers themselves the use of time can be both good and bad at the same time.” (2016, p.369) In contrast, with the rapid development of gaming and communication technologies, gaming has grown from a leisure activity perceived as "frivolous" into an economy of its own where gamers have become a professional category. This has required gaming platforms to develop into complex systems with a staggering number of users, and therefore a development of online gaming as a mass cultural phenomenon. Professional video game players have earned similar base salaries as those earned by traditional athletes, either by competing as a team or individual tournaments (Phillpott, 2020). For example, Sumail who is a 20 year old professional Defense of the Ancients 2 (henceforth Dota 2) player, has won a total of $3.6 million earnings to this day (Ibid.). The International, which is the world championship in Dota 2, raised over $32 million through in-game purchases and donations from players, resulting in a prize pool of a total of $34,330,068 (CyborgMatt, 2020). While the economical aspect of the gaming industry may not be sufficient evidence to disprove the “frivolous and unproductive” argument, it nevertheless indicates a productivity of serious magnitude, that supports eSports (short for electronic sports) to be a legitimate profession and to be taken more seriously. Online multiplayer games can be considered as social games, even though you might spend thirty minutes playing with nine strangers, you are still interacting with a large number of different people and you are coordinating with them in order to successfully win the match, which is not always easy. For people not familiar with digital games, it may come as a surprise that online games have a player base as a major country. Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017) a team based online game surpassed 350 million registered players as of May, 2020 (Bailey, 2020) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Valve Corporation, 2016) has an average of 900,000 active players per month (SteamCharts, 2020). Previous studies (Ghuman & Griffiths, 2014; Frostling-Henningsson, 2009; Johnson, Nacke & Wyeth, 2015) have shown that one of the main reasons for people to play games is often because of the social engagements which games involve. In order to understand toxic culture in games, we must first understand where they originate.