Social Psychology Toxic Behavior Video Game Essay Sample

Introduction Of Social Psychology - Toxic Behavior In Online Video Game Environments

In the domain of online computer games, harmful ways of behaving have arisen as a pervasive and concerning peculiarity inside the setting of social brain research. Interactions between players have become increasingly complex and dynamic as a result of the gaming industry's rapid expansion and the widespread availability of online multiplayer platforms. Harassment, verbal abuse, trolling, and cheating are just a few examples of the harmful behaviours that have thrived in this environment. These actions have a negative impact not only on the well-being of those involved but also on the gaming community as a whole and its social dynamics. Drawing upon standards from social brain science, figuring out the causes, results, and expected mediations for harmful conduct in web-based gaming conditions can reveal insight into the fundamental mental components at play. It is possible to gain valuable insight into the intricate interaction between individuals and their online personas by investigating the influences of anonymity, deindividuation, group dynamics, and the role of perceived social norms in virtual spaces(Ekiciler, et al., 2022). This will ultimately lead to the development of strategies aimed at fostering gaming communities that are healthier and more positive.

Feeling overwhelmed with your Assignment? Take a breather and let New Assignment Help ease your burden! Our professional team provides unmatched assignment writing services in the UK, guaranteeing academic success. Explore our free assignment samples for inspiration and guidance.

The prevalence of sexism or sexist behaviour in online gaming reflects wider gender disparities in society and the gaming community. Female gamers frequently encounter gender-based discrimination and demeaning treatment, despite efforts to promote inclusivity. Various forms of sexist behaviour in online gaming include harassment, objectification, exclusion, and derogatory language. Women are frequently subjected to insulting remarks, unwelcome advances, and verbal abuse, all of which contribute to a hostile atmosphere and discourage their participation. Female gamers are frequently the target of negative assumptions regarding their skill level, knowledge, or dedication to gaming, which contributes to the perpetuation of this behaviour. Sexism in online gaming has an effect on the diversity and inclusivity of the gaming community as a whole, not just on individual experiences. It restricts opportunities for collaboration and social interaction, reinforces harmful gender norms, and discourages female participation. Tending to sexism in web-based gaming requires an aggregate exertion, including designers, local area mediators, and individual players, to advance training, mindfulness, and stricter implementation of rejects chauvinist conduct, cultivating a comprehensive and conscious climate for all gamers.

This essay will aim to understand the unsolicited behaviour in the arena of online gaming which is especially projected against women gamers. Features such as verbal abuse, cat-calling, sexualizing, and casual derogatory comments are extremely common in the online gaming world. This is a direct reflection of the overall ambient sexism. Interestingly, the online gaming world is not even considerate enough to use benevolent sexism, women gamers are openly shamed and considered unfit for gaming. This essay will be widely focussing on theories and real examples of sexist behaviours in online gaming and attempt to understand the heterogenous ideas and socio-psychological arenas associated with it.

Main Body

The perception that the online gaming industry is dominated by men is changing as more women join the game. According to Statista (2019), women account for approximately 41% of US PC and computer game players. As per McDaniel (2016), notwithstanding the way that 74.9 percent of female gamers concur that PC games can be empowering, 75.9 percent of them report being abused or manhandled while playing web-based games. Despite the general destructiveness that PC game players experience, female gamers experience additional noxiousness focused on them by direction (Khandaker, 2019). The most common forms of harm that female gamers encounter include segregation, violent attacks, and inappropriate behaviour. According to Ballard and Welch (2017), male gamers are more likely than female gamers to engage in cyberbullying, and female gamers and lower-performing online game players are the groups most likely to receive negative responses from male gamers.

Gaming companies will unavoidably recognize toxicity as a real issue as online gaming becomes increasingly social and player interaction grows. As a result, it is necessary to distinguish power sanctions from destructiveness in electronic games. The Tribunal, a crowdsourcing platform for "expert" players to decide whether a reported player should be punished, was launched in 2011 by Riot Games, the creator of one of the most well-known video games, League of Legends (Kwak et al., 2015). As per Nexus (2018), they reassessed it around the year 2018. According to Kou and Nardi (2014) (cited in Lapolla, 2020), more than 47 million votes were anticipated for the Court's most significant year of evaluating harmful conduct. 74% of players altered their in-game behaviour after receiving punitive toxicity interventions. Overwatch's owner, Blizzard, had a go at another thing to stop a harmful approach to acting: To encourage good behaviour, it introduced an endorsement system that displayed a badge with a player's endorsement next to their name. Snowstorm uncovered that this framework had diminished the overall perniciousness by 40% in 2019 (Ziegelman, 2020). CS: Valve, the company behind GO, has also taken some steps to stop bad behaviour in online games. One of them is to immediately silence verbal abusers when they receive an excessive number of behavioural reports in the game (Ziegelman, 2020). "Minerva," an artificial intelligence-based framework that permits you to report a harmful player in-game at the specific time the poisonous way of behaving happens, is another representation (Scuri, 2019). In December 2020, the Minerva system's developer, FaceIt, posted a tweet with a graphic representation of the system's updates: Minerva is now able to spot harmful behaviour in voice chat. Since its launch, the system has identified more than 1.9 million harmful messages and reduced the number of messages that are seriously offensive by 62% (FaceIt, 2020). Voice detection is available in all languages. In addition, it is anticipated that this system will soon independently make decisions and forecasts based on reports of toxic behaviour during games.

According to an article published by the PR Newswire in London in December 2022, the gaming industry is losing up to 21% of female online gamers due to negative, toxic, and threatening experiences, according to Bryter's Female Gamers Report. The highest rates of harm done to females in gaming have been documented, which provides ample evidence that the positive aspects of gaming society outweigh the negative aspects.

Seventy-two per-cent of female gamers reported having bad gaming experiences, up from 64 percent in the 2021 survey. In the gaming community as a whole, toxicity is a big problem, but female players frequently have much darker and more dangerous experiences. Even when a player leaves the game, abuse does not always end; It could lead to stalking on other platforms and, in some cases, spread to real life outside of gaming.

According to the revelations of the Female Gamers Review driven by Bryter, among females who have any time experienced hurtfulness, 14% have gotten attack risks, 35% have experienced salacious way of behaving, 35% have experienced negative intuitiveness exercises, 41% have been sent uncalled-for substance, 44% have been strongly tried about their gaming experience, and half have experienced clamorous assault while playing on the web in the US and the Brought together Domain.

"Restricted progress in managing harmfulness is losing gaming affiliations' players and cash," conveyed Jenny McBean, Examination Chief - Head of Gaming at Bryter. Our findings indicate that nearly half of the female online multiplayer players do not disclose their gender, and one in three of them avoid speaking out of fear of negative reactions from male players. When ongoing interaction is altered in this manner, the client experience is hampered, female players are restricted, and group communication is hampered."

Despite industry efforts to reduce toxicity, many gaming companies will not be aware of its true extent. The majority of female gamers, 62%, rarely report negative behaviour toward them due primarily to unclear or ineffective reporting procedures. Only 38% of female gamers are of the evaluation that there is a palatable system for overseeing gaming destructiveness, and 34% of them are of appraising that noteworthy harmfulness is rarely significant because the liable party only here and there experiences results. 22 percent thought the reporting process was too time-consuming or difficult, and 21 percent were unsure of how or where to report. 20% said that the blameworthy party would figure it out. The long-running Female Gamers Study by Bryter has given game developers and distributors a better understanding of how the crowd's needs are changing, what is most important to them, and how to use this information to support the game plan and development cycle. 17 percent had attempted to report, but they had failed. 66% of people still believe that female characters are frequently over-sexualized, and 56% of people still believe that there aren't enough strong female characters, despite the fact that the number of female characters in video games has been steadily increasing over the past few years(Bryter 2022).

According to McBean's explanation, "Bryter's Female Gamers report highlights two priority areas for game developers and publishers." design of characters, player experience, and safety Our research shows that strong female characters with important jobs can make a game or establishment more popular over time. On the safety front, players will feel safer if you give them tools to manage their own player experience, show more commitment to fighting crime, make tools that are easy to see, and make it easier to report. Extending their customer base and adding to the outcome of online multiplayer encounters will help serious gaming associations as far as both monetary and reputational achievement.

Scholars claim that the online gaming industry is one of the lots that openly portrays sexism in the most hostile or ambivalent ways possible or known to man. Female empowerment, equality, and other such social movements have allowed women to somewhat progress in their individual progression paths. Although sociologists claim all this to be entirely superficial, which again is an arena of debate and discussion. However, the online gaming sector is one place where hostile or ambivalent sexism reaches its peak. The term "ambivalent sexism" refers to a complex and contradictory set of beliefs and attitudes toward women that contain elements of both benevolence and hostility. It is a social psychology idea that acknowledges the existence of both overtly negative and seemingly positive but patronizing views of women. There are two main components to ambivalent sexism: benevolent sexism and hostile sexism.

Hostile sexism includes obviously negative and hostile mentalities toward ladies. It includes the notion that women ought to be subjugated, incapable, or subjected to restrictions. Threatening chauvinist mentalities frequently manifest as clear separation, boisterous attack, or provocation, mirroring a craving to keep up with conventional orientation progressive systems. The widespread problem of hostile sexism against women in the online gaming industry is indicative of broader gender disparities in the gaming community. Women who participate in gaming frequently face obviously negative and unfriendly mentalities that sustain separation and establish a threatening climate. Derogatory language, verbal abuse, threats, and harassment of female gamers are all examples of this type of sexism. The harmful idea of threatening sexism adds to a culture of prohibition and terrorizing, where women might feel unwanted or dangerous in web-based gaming spaces. It sustains destructive orientation generalizations, building up the conviction that gaming is a male-ruled movement and that women are contemptible or inadequate members.

Overwhelmed by Psychology Theories? New Assignment Help is here to make things easier for you. We specialize in providing comprehensive Psychology Assignment Help, tailored to meet your specific needs. Let our expert team handle the hard work while you enjoy the results. Contact us now for a brighter academic future!

Conclusion

Game developers, community moderators, and individual gamers must work together to combat hostile sexism in online gaming. Combating hostile sexism requires enforcing stringent codes of conduct, establishing efficient reporting procedures, and cultivating a culture of respect and inclusion. Additionally, promoting allyship, providing education on gender equality, and raising awareness of the negative effects of such actions can all help to create a more inclusive and equitable gaming environment for all players. Unsolicited way of behaving against women in web-based gaming, portrayed by hostile sexism, sustains a hurtful climate that prevents inclusivity and uniformity. Drawing on speculations from social brain science, for example, social personality hypothesis and generalization danger, it becomes clear that these ways of behaving support orientation generalizations and put ladies' dynamic interests down. Furthermore, the secrecy given by online stages can intensify the impacts of harmful ways of behaving. To address this problem, a multifaceted strategy is needed, including educating the community about the negative effects of toxic behaviour, enforcing laws more strictly, and encouraging positive role models. Inclusion, gender equality, and a thriving gaming community for everyone can be fostered by creating a supportive and respectful gaming environment.

References

• Ballard, M. E., & Welch, K. M. (2017). Virtual warfare: Cyberbullying and cyber victimization in MMOG play. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 12(5), 466–491.
• Bryter (n.d.). THE GAMING INDUSTRY WILL BE HOPING FOR STRONG HOLIDAY SALES, BUT THE LATEST FEMALE GAMERS STUDY SHOWS THE INDUSTRY LOSES 1 IN 5 FEMALE ONLINE GAMERS DUE TO NEGATIVE, TOXIC AND THREATENING EXPERIENCES. [online] www.prnewswire.com. Available at: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-gaming-industry-will-be-hoping-for-strong-holiday-sales-but-the-latest-female-gamers-study-shows-the-industry-loses-1-in-5-female-online-gamers-due-to-negative-toxic-and-threatening-experiences-301708790.html.
• Ekiciler, A., Ahio?lu, ?., Y?ld?r?m, N., Ajas, I. I., & Kaya, T. (2022). The bullying game: Sexism based toxic language analysis on online games chat logs by text mining. Journal of International Women's Studies, 24(3), 1-16.
• Faceit. [@faceit](December, 2020). Product Update Summary Minerva can now detect toxic behaviour in voice chat, Voice detection works in all languages. Detected more than 1.9 million toxic messages since launch Observed a 62% reduction in seriously offensive messages being sent pic.twitter.com/HWfnoXODs8.Twitter. https://twitter.com/FACEIT/status/1338878980586352640?s=20\
• Khandaker, J. (2019). Girl Gamers and Toxicity (Doctoral dissertation). The Faculty of the Department of Sociology University of Houston.
• Kwak, H., & Blackburn, J. (2015). Linguistic Analysis of Toxic Behavior in an Online Video
• Game. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Social Informatics, pp: 209-217.
• Lapolla, M. (2020). Tackling Toxicity: Identifying and Addressing Toxic Behavior in Online
• Video Games. Master Project, Master of Arts in Public Relations Seton Hall University
• McDaniel, M A (2016). "Women in Gaming: A Study of Female Players' Experiences in
• Online FPS Games" (2016). Honors Theses. 427. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/427
• Nexus. (2018). Ask Riot: Will Tribunal Return? . https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/enus/2018/08/ask-riot-will-tribunal-return
• Statista, (2019). U.S. video gamer gender statistics (2019) | Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-andvideo-gamers/
• Scuri, M. (2019). Introducing the in-game reporting feature to enable our Community to work
• with Minerva. Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://blog.faceit.com/introducing
• -the-in-game-reporting-feature-to-enable-our-community-to-work-with-minerva566439f0727
• Ziegelman, K. (2020). How Major Gaming Companies Are Combatting Toxicity in 2020.
• Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://www.spectrumlabsai.com/the-blog/howmajor-gaming-companies-are-combatting-toxicity-in-20