The Cycle of Toxicity: Exploring Relationships between Personality and Player Roles in Toxic Behavior in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Abstract

Toxic behavior remains a salient challenge for online gaming environments, such as multiplayer online battle arena video games (MOBAs). In this study, we sought to understand player roles and settings in which toxicity occurs using a mixed-methods approach. First, we conducted ethnographic observations and interviews with players of the most popular contemporary MOBA, League of Legends (Study 1). During the qualitative analysis three main themes emerged: (1) the fluidity of roles, (2) the subjectivity of the toxic experience, and (3) cascading effects and changing modalities of toxicity. Based on the themes, we formulated hypotheses regarding players’ experience with toxicity. To test these hypotheses, we gathered cross-sectional data from MOBA players (n = 216), which we analyzed with co-variance-based statistics (Study 2). Our quantitative findings showcase the complexity of toxicity as well as players’ ambivalence toward the topic. We found indicators of substantial influences of personality and a cycle of retaliation toxicity spread as victims retaliated against the perpetrator.

Positive behaviour interventions in online gaming: a systematic review of strategies applied in other environments

“…Disruptive behaviour manifests as offensive interactions between players, such as harassment, verbal abuse, or flaming, and disruptive gameplay that breaches standards and social norms established by game developers and gaming companies, such as griefing, spamming, and cheating (Poeller et al, 2023). Disruptive behaviour has been documented in particular in the multiplayer online gaming environment (Kordyaka et al, 2023), possibly because these games afford complex social interactions between players through text or voice chat messages (Ang et al, 2007;Deslauriers et al 2020;Rezaei & Ghodsi, 2014).…”