Investigating negative experiences in online gaming communities
How might we create a safer online gaming environment?
UX Research, User Research Methods
2023
Process at a glance
The Research
We first observed 8 gamers as they navigated tools and communities to protect themselves from harassment. In the second round, we interviewed 9 gamers about their positive and negative experiences in online multiplayer games, playing on their own and with their peers.
The Outcome
We identified 4 key opportunity areas:
Company regulations and enforcement
Tools
Defensive user behaviors
Advocacy and awareness
Our findings inspired our final concept: Mellon, a community building platform aimed at reducing negative online experiences by forming inclusive communities and empowering members.
Stage 1 - Define
Toxic environments in online video games are "normal"
From the start, we understood that tackling the issue of toxic behavior in players was already an abstract problem to solve. Even while companies attempt to address this type of behavior in the online player base, the negative stigma of the social experience persists. So, we knew that the preliminary research phase will play a significant role for us.
Thus we conducted both secondary research and a competitor analysis to help us understand the scope and clearly define the problem. My team and I found the following key insights:
Strengths
Companies actively moderate toxic behaviors
Software tools to moderate negative behavior (e.g., muting, blocking, reporting)
Tools provide reactive measures for players to manage harassment
Weaknesses
Solutions focus mainly on responding to harassment, not preventing it
Do not address anticipatory anxiety players feel before engaging with others
Existing tools fall short in supporting players’ emotional safety during social interactions
Stage 2 - User Research
Round 1 - Observation Study
What do players need in order to feel safe?
While our preliminary research helped us focus our research area, we still had many questions about opportunity areas. We wanted to better understand how gamers react when experiencing toxic behavior. Though a major problem we ran into was we found it impractical and unethical to observe people being the target of such behavior.
Instead, we created a scenario where our participant is helping a friend cope with toxic behavior to help us gather insight into different players' needs. Of our 8 subjects, I observed 2 participants researching different ways to help cope with this issue.
People want to feel in-control over their online experiences
We learned that users would want a solution that stands up for them and advocates for their needs. Participants also wanted tools and coping mechanisms to help them feel in control over their experiences. These themes became the focus for us during user interviews.
Stage 2 - User Research
Round 2 - Interview Study
How do social environments shape the way players navigate toxic experiences?
For our second round of research, we wanted to understand how gamers FEEL when experiencing toxic behaviors. To understand this, we asked 9 participants about both positive and negative experiences they’ve encountered while playing online multiplayer games on their own and with their peers. Of our 9 subjects, I interviewed 3 participants about their positive and negative social experiences while playing video games online.
Stage 3 - Analysis
What we learned
The data from our observations and interviews reinforced our found themes: Company regulations and enforcement, tools, defensive behaviors, and advocacy and awareness.
Stage 4 - Synthesis
Turning insights into action
The key highlight from our research was that while players expressed the need to have control over their social experiences when faced with negative behavior, players reacted overwhelmingly positive when recalling good experiences with their friends or fun players they met online.
We came to the conclusion that a solution that focuses on cultivating positive experiences will have a greater positive impact in the experiences in online multiplayer video games. The findings from our research helped lead to 4 guiding principles that informed our design recommendations for our solution.
With our research concluded, we were able to develop a well-defined design strategy for a product that would help players create safer online gaming environments.
Reflection
Takeaways
This project challenged me to work through an open-ended, ambiguous problem. By methodically breaking it down through multiple research methods I was able to define a clear direction forward. It reinforced my ability to create structure in uncertainty, which I now see as one of my core strengths as a researcher and designer.
Navigating ambiguity through iterative research testing
The biggest success we had was following an iterative multi-step research approach, multiple rounds of research helped us methodically understand the problem, understand our users, and arrive at defined design strategy for a future product.
Dealing with limitations in scenario-based observations
Ethical constraints led us to study how players research defensive behaviors. This meant our findings mostly reflected preferences more than real-time actions.
If we were to run another study, I would like to develop scenarios to help focus on observable participant behaviors when encountering simulated negative behavior online.
Focusing future tests on positive gaming experiences
Our biggest insight was that we noticed participants were very excited talking about fun experiences they had online with other players.
I'd want to explore further into this positive relationship and community building within these gaming communities.