hi quick instructions I'm Naomi I'm a
game designer I've worked on League of
Legends for five ish years working in
some projects and development now but
I've worked on a lot of our behavior
systems and splashed a little bit into
our champion design cool and I'm Kenny
I'm a data scientist I've also worked on
League of Legends I'm also a recovering
social computing researcher and an
occasional backseat systems designer so
like we said Naomi and I have worked on
League for a while we've specifically
worked on honor name-check and the
instant feedback system at riot and at
riot we care about creating the best
game experiences that we can for our
players and we've had some success with
social and behavioral systems but that
didn't come without a bit of trial and
error so today we'd like to talk to you
about some of our learnings on how both
social and mechanical interactions can
impact the player experience cool so I
wanted to start with an overview because
this is kind of a long talk and it feels
like it's easy to get lost so first I'm
gonna start us off with a radical
proposal second we'll go over some
definitions and conceptual frameworks so
that we can work together with a shared
language and once we have that language
I'm gonna do a broad overview of some of
the systemic design affordances and
communication affordances that we work
with in games I'll also talk a bit about
how to address disruptive communication
that can be carried by these affordances
then I'm gonna pass the mic over to
Naomi who will talk about some League
specific examples of communication
systems and talk about our design
learnings from building with systems
she'll also treat you to a league
specific analysis of some of our in-game
mechanics and she'll discuss how they
relate to the player experience and to
disruptive behavior and then finally
we'll try to leave you with some
digestible takeaways so in many ways
this is a primer based on our
experiences in this space we hope you'll
find it useful and we hope that you're
gonna go and apply some of this stuff
and then share back your own learnings
so I wanted to start us off with a topic
that's pretty big picture now I promise
not to basement most of my slides on
words I saw on Twitter um but it felt
like it might be an interesting place to
start so I'm just gonna give you a
second to read that over so Casey's a
social computing professor at the
University of Colorado Boulder among
other things she specializes in the
relationship between technology and
ethics so this might go without saying
but she's well-positioned to make a
statement like this and I like this
quote in particular because it helps
summarize a growing awareness in tech
that algorithms can't really be
impartial you may have heard of examples
of systemic bias and crowd work
ecosystems like uber TaskRabbit or
Airbnb you might have questions about
how websites are personalizing your feed
with hopefully not to fake news this
also shows up in building automatic
gender recognition software or really in
most software that tries to
operationalize gender and systemic
biases even come up in algorithms that
predict things like criminal recidivism
which can in turn inform sentencing
duration and parole opportunities for
convicts so you may already see where
I'm going with this but I think it's not
a far leap to adapt this to game design
so to that end I've shamelessly remixed
KC's words and applied this concept to
the space that we play in most
communication mechanisms can be used to
be disruptive and it's not that
designers are directly responsible for
how players use their systems but
attempting to anticipate behaviors in
order to mitigate harm is important and
so if you take anything away from this
talk I hope it's this if you're not
convinced or if you'd like some examples
stick with us after all even if you are
convinced this is easy to call out but
it's not so easy to put into practice so
let's chat about a little bit about
affordances there are a couple
definitions of the term but the closest
definition to what we're interested in
is all transactions that are possible
between an individual in their
environment and we can bring that into
more pragmatic terms and just say things
that humans can do in your game
so for our purposes what we're really
interested in is anything a human can do
in a game that impacts another human and
this includes the full action space
around your game - your lawn chair your
client your forums a third party trading
site or even social and streaming
platforms any game related experience
where players are going to interact
that's a place that we ought to be
thinking about as designers so when it
comes to affordances that facilitate
communication one place we could start
is by asking ourselves what are some of
the reasons the players might
communicate in games one way to classify
communications is based on the goals for
a particular message we could talk about
the tasks that a player is performing
and say that any communication that
supports a particular goal is on task
meanwhile any communication that isn't
in service of the game's goals would be
off task well it isn't always fair to do
this the idea of off task is usually
lumped in with social so for example
here's a team and League that's trying
to defeat a challenging monster this
monster offers a reward if the team can
bring them down and this team is
communicating on tasks by using
positioning pings and chatter voice
comms to coordinate their actions this
coordination is often a requirement for
success not only do they need to pay
attention to the monsters attacks they
also need to stay ready for the enemy
team to try and steal the kill and thus
the rewards on the flipside lots of
communication can be entirely off task
so this player is spamming a dance
animation while they wait for the next
wave of creeps to come
other examples of off-task might be
chatting about the results of an eSports
match while you're waiting for the game
to load or joking and all chat about the
lower implications of our particular
champion mashup so this categorization
is pretty high-level and it's fairly
easy to think about this and apply it to
the intended communication channels in
your game for example if we're creating
journey maps for players who are just
entering champion select we might call
out that a player can use the hover
function to indicate that they're their
desired pick so that their teammates
don't band yeah so we could also mention
that they can use chat to discuss a lane
swap once the
teen bands in many ways for something a
little more off task we might consider
players that use a lie skin previews to
help their team coordinate with a little
bit of extra Flair or we could mention
that the premades banter and voice isn't
interrupted when they hit the loading
screen so we can apply this label of on
or off tasks to many of the actions that
we specifically designed for but how do
we apply them to disruptive
communication is a message considered on
task if a player is frustrated due to
her teammates poor performance so if she
sends a message like stop feeding or
stop playing badly does it matter if
this message isn't likely to contribute
to the task of winning another example
when a player joins a game and doesn't
get to play the champion they wanted if
they choose to punish their team by
intentionally trying to lose how do we
even fit that into our framework are
they being on task just by setting their
tasks to the opposite of the rest of
their team's goals so when we're
considering the design for a system we
try and be thoughtful about the intended
experiences for the player and very
often this involves trying to think
about the motivations that a player has
at a particular stage of the experience
we can usually identify a few
motivations that players might have
perhaps they like besting challenging
opponents or trying to climb the
competitive ladder maybe they like
playing with friends or they want to try
out a new character these motivations
stem from goals in your game but players
can also bring goals in from outside the
game so not just goals players can bring
in all sorts of expectations biases and
norms maybe they've had a really bad day
and now when their match looks like it
just isn't going their way
they've got nowhere but chat to vent
their frustrations when a player's
motivations are disconnected from the
goals of the game their actions and
messages may also shift away from the
tasks that we usually think about when
we think about design I guess what I'm
getting at is this when we're trying to
anticipate disruption we need to move
away from thinking that categorizes
outcomes as either happy path or bug we
need to fold in goals expectations norms
and we need to keep in mind the
circumstances outside of our control may
put players in a poor mood and give them
limited resilience I guess against the
stressors that our game throws at them
so one way to think about how
systems can be used for disruption is to
identify all the different affordances
that players have at their fingertips
and this is a big ask on the surface so
to help I've tried to categorize things
into mechanical affordances and
communication channels mechanical
affordances and specifically the ways
players can impact other players are
often fundamental features in your game
these are the systems that define your
game loop and make you the game feel the
way that it feels communication channels
are the systems that explicitly help
players interact they're usually not
core mechanics but instead support
collaboration and social behavior and
it's worth noting that reality is a
little more blurry than this
categorization this is just a
theoretical baseline to help us get
started
Naomi's gonna follow up some of this
with learnings from all of our systems
in league and talk about how we've
attempted design for all types of player
interactions so I want to start with two
of the most general copper general and
common mechanical considerations playing
together at the same time and playing
together in the same space first let's
go over temporal mechanics
so most real-time multiplayer games have
this while some games allow asynchronous
play like words with friends are chess
by a male most of our games aren't
turn-based here are some examples of
systems that require synchronization so
in league when we make a match all the
players in the match have to push this
accept button to confirm that they're
ready to start champion select and this
ready check helps discourage players
from walking away from their computer
while they're waiting in queue in turn
fewer players are going to timeout when
your game is only a few lock-ins away
from starting a great example of
designing for this affordance or
designing with this affordance in mind
is the shift in recent Forex games to
allow simultaneous multiplayer turn
taking while older for X Games defaulted
to the sequential hotseat model for
networked play a simultaneous turn
option helps players spend more time
playing and less time waiting for their
turn there are a few things to keep in
mind when your game demands temporal
play first games which require playing
together in real time need to consider
how to
ándale players who have been temporarily
or permanently knocked out of the action
don't leave a player stuck waiting for a
match to resolve when they're no longer
able to participate it that's a recipe
for frustration and boredom second games
that require everyone to stay through
the whole match need to think carefully
about how to handle disconnects can you
sub another player in what about a bot
can players save and pick it up later
the other broad mechanical category that
I wanted to cover is playing together in
the same space
well it's often at the same time this
specifically is when two or more players
have their actions represented in some
shared space and usually this is through
avatars of some sort or another the
important part here is that the
togetherness is with respect to a
digital space so in league this space is
our map and the distance and terrain
between each player's character helps
determine the ways that they can
interact some games rely on spacer and
spatial interactivity more than others a
game like Journey has an intentionally
minimal set of interactions but it uses
this limitation to foster a sense of
togetherness other games like portal 2
or battleblock theater highlight how
co-op mechanics can be used in a shared
space effectively and so when we're
thinking about disruptive behavior some
considerations around spatial colocation
first games with a high burden for
coordination the leverage public
matchmaking systems can lead to really
frustrating experiences when I'm playing
a couch co-op and my buddy accidentally
kills me we have a social mechanism for
dealing with that conflict usually we
just end up laughing about it but if I'm
getting killed by a teammate that I
don't know and I can't see it's much
easier for me to get frustrated second
games with spatial presence can have
emergent behaviors around mechanics most
shooters have a Crouch mechanic and that
has a very clear use case but I suspect
that use case isn't teabagging a dead
opponent just because people know
they're watching finally spatial
togetherness has been a hot topic in VR
where players can create disruption when
they virtually get in another players
face this can be super jarring but many
of the systems to mitigate this take
advantage of a really clever design so
another system that you might build into
your game
the ability for users to create and
share custom content while custom maps
took off early in real-time strategy
games today we see players creating and
sharing all sorts of content you can
install Skyrim mods you can download
rhythm game charts you can even play
user created courses that look just like
the mario you grew up with so how does
this tie back into anticipating
disruption well depending on the types
of content that your users can create
and depending on the expectations of
your audience moderating disruptive
content can be heaps of work for example
if you allow custom audio or pictures
you're probably going to end up with
users being exposed to hateful material
or adult content even if you limit the
assets like in Super Mario maker you
might have to remove inappropriate words
or inappropriate shapes for some games
this might be the majority of the
disruptive behavior that they're
interested in addressing and finally on
the subject of mechanics do you remember
when I mentioned considering systems
around our games let's dive into a
prominent example streaming for starters
there a number of notable considerations
in online streaming streamers who play
your game are visible community
representatives to all other players in
other words disruptive behavior on
stream can tell a player about what
playing in your community is like in
contrast popular streamers can also have
huge targets on their back both in game
and on the streaming platform and
features like hiding the in-game name or
sorry features like hiding ingame names
for streaming can help prevent targeted
harassment before it begins I promise
I'm not too nervous on the more
mechanical side we see some cool
participatory gameplay through streaming
integration and games a notable recent
is the platformer dead cells which
allows viewers on Twitch to choose stage
modifiers and decide what items will
drop or when to heal or even control the
abilities of bosses it makes the game
feel a little more chaotic but it's
pretty fun and it radically alters the
experience for players and their
co-pilots thinking about the experience
of players and of viewers when your game
is being streamed can help us find ways
to prevent disruption but it also can
create new forms of play
so I want to mention a metal layer
that's one step deeper than most of the
systemic affordances that we've
discussed while this isn't a talk about
penalty systems one situation that we've
encountered in league is the result of
issuing bands in a free to play PC game
we found that if players don't want to
stop playing they might just create a
new account and with fewer reasons to
value this Smurfs account and with all
the expectations of a seasoned player
they can be matched up with brand-new
players and be even more likely to cause
disruption the point here isn't
specifically to call out smurfing on its
own rather to acknowledge that even the
systems that address disruptive behavior
can motivate new types of disruption so
flipping over to more communication
oriented systems let's start with one of
the most common systems names usually
names are the text that identify a
player in or around your game I talked
about how riot approaches names in the
basic tool session earlier but there are
three important call-outs I'd like to
mention first generally once a player
has a name it's always being fully
displayed if the filter didn't catch it
on signup now everyone has to look at it
and a sea of disruptive names can erode
trust from your players and feel like a
double standard when you invest in other
moderation second moderating names can
pose unique challenges when trying to
interpret context and intent if a name
has the word homosexual in it it might
be an expression of identity or it might
just be a player leading in with a joke
this stuff's hard right and so finally
moderation for names can apply to
several other contexts so if you build
it you can turn it on at guilds or clubs
or competitive teams and you can double
dip with all of your penalty or sorry
moderation systems so you don't have to
maintain you know six different tech
stocks so moving past some of the more
abstract affordances let's talk a little
bit about visually powered displays that
can communicate a feeling or express
identity these can be active and in the
moment like emotes or dance moves or
sprays and shooters they can also be
more persistent like
skins or gear transmog Zoar profile
icons they can even have an audio
component
Naomi's going to talk a little bit about
our remote system in a few minutes but
in league we curate our icons and our
skins and our emotes and this helps us
avoid the need to moderate
user-submitted content for sprays icons
or other visuals if players can add
custom images then you may need to add
vet you may need to invest in reporting
and moderation even if that content is
inherited from a platform you're
probably still on the hook for trying to
address this players aren't going to
give you a pass if they're seeing an
adult image or hate symbols in the game
and so thinking more about activatable
content like dances or emotes figuring
out how you want to handle spam and
considering letting players just mute
each other or preemptively mute everyone
is pretty important and this is
especially important if there's audio
all right another in-game system for
communication is a ping pings are to on
tasks as social visuals are to off tasks
ping systems allow players to quickly
share tactical information usually to
coordinate with teammates with a little
bit of practice ping systems can
substitute in for more verbose
communication channels for example in
league I used to have to type when my
enemy was missing so that my teammates
could be ready for a gank now I can
convey the same information with a
single key press and a swipe of the
mouse a recent standout example of an
effective ping system is in the game
apex legends once they've had a chance
to learn it players are able to use this
to coordinator fective Lee with
teammates that they've never met without
entering voice channels or relying on
chat messages for players who may not be
able to or may not want to use those
communication channels this ping system
is a godsend
however designing an effective usable
ping UX is hard so the more signals that
a ping system can convey the more a
player has to learn to use it
effectively and if it's too complicated
many players just won't bother
especially if there are other ways to
communicate in your game I've probably
played a decent bit of tribes this isn't
tribes this is
and it's fake but I've never learned how
to use the voice game system other than
to spam phrase shazbot so one other
mention just like active social visuals
think about ping spamming like other
communication channels players should be
able to mute each other's pings so lots
of games allow players to type messages
to each other and chat is one of those
classic vehicles for disruptive behavior
but it can also be a critical tool for
communication chat comes in with a
number of different flavors and
depending on your game there are various
approaches to mitigate the potential for
disruption so what do I mean by flavors
well to start with let's think about the
different types of chattel out in your
game can players talk to their teammates
what about sending messages to the
opponents in league we flip the default
option from enabling all chat to
disabling all chat and only having team
chat available and again this was just
an option and we saw significant Lee
reduced report rates in many other games
it may make sense to disable cross team
chat entirely aside from in-game chat
let's talk a little bit about direct
messages what sorts of requirements
exist before a player can chat with
another player can anyone message anyone
else or do I have to accept your friend
request before you can send me messages
even requiring mutual agreement isn't
everything
once that man direct message channel is
open making sure that it can be closed
or make sure that it can be closed
easily in the face of abuse and on the
subject of moderation consider the
investment for detection of disruptive
language either with automated systems
or via human review think about our
thinking about the points in the
experience that you're willing to allow
a player to flag something and how
quickly and sorry and how quickly you'll
be able to take action is really
important and so the final affordance
under communication that I want to talk
about is voice
Naomi is also going to talk about voice
and specifically for league in a moment
but I want to set you up with some broad
call-outs so let's start with the
obvious bets unlike most of the
communication mechanisms described so
our Voice participation requires a
player to disclose certain pieces of
information about themselves a feminine
voice or an accent that discloses a
particular ethnic background can open
avenues for personalized harassment and
unfortunately a lot of the social cues
for resolving ambiguity like facial
expression are still missing in voice a
lot of the social structures that
mediate or discourage harassment are
nowhere to be found
and additionally moderation here is
rough unlike chat voice moderation
through machine learning is still kind
of nascent and storing the data that
empowers humans to act or even the data
you need to train machines is
challenging from a compliance
perspective and compared leox compared
ibly expensive to chat data so for many
games especially games with a
requirement for quick Gordon quick
coordination and decision-making voice
is considered a hard requirement can you
think of any sports broadcasts where the
teams weren't on voice comms just all of
or just like all of the other
affordances for communication I'm not
trying to argue that voice doesn't
belong in our games it absolutely does
what I'm advocating for is that we build
our voice experiences while being
deliberate about the details thinking
about which players are placed into
voice and whether or not the system or
whether the system is opt in or opt out
can help providing alternatives for
players who are mute or have a bad
microphone or just don't want to use
voice can boost accessibility while
giving players control over how they
want to play and finally muting and
volume control are important here too so
pulling this all back together
anticipating disruption is hard being
caught off guard is even worse it's less
than three words Kim
while we may not be directly responsible
for the disruption that happens in our
games it's up to us to anticipate that
potential harm after all it's so much
harder would harder to address these
things once the game is out in the wild
and with that hi again Thank You Kenny a
very smooth transition time so Kenny's
talked a lot about our communication
channels the different affordances
around the types of features that we
design and designing with intent in
these spaces he's laid a lot of the
foundation for us to talk about this
space the TLDR kind of as I see it at
this space I kind of see it like this
piece of sushi this delicious delicious
piece of sushi we as designers were in
the job of creating these holistic
experiences for our players when it
comes to our game features especially
with the ones that allow players to
communicate with each other we want it
to be handcrafted we want it to be the
best experience we can create like this
piece of sushi we aren't really in the
business of throwing together a bunch of
different features into a pot sort of
mixing them all together hoping these
flavors combine well and calling it
player value however when it comes to
the design of communication channels in
league of legends we've had some hits
and misses over the years and I think
there are a lot of interesting takeaways
and learnings that we can draw from them
so that's I'm gonna do I'm gonna run
through the different channels of
communication and week and my own
personal takeaways keep in mind from
this point on I apologize but most the
content will assume some baseline
understanding of what league is and how
the game roughly works I believe most of
the learnings here are most applicable
to games in a similar space so online
team-based competitive games let's trip
let's first start with text chat it's
the most fundamental vector of
communication in League of Legends
Kenny's talked a lot about it before and
we could honestly talk for hours about
our different learnings around text chat
so to focus it in for this presentation
I want to focus on a single
dynamic here I love this chat log by the
way which is around the richness and its
presence in our ecosystem
typing generally speaking requires your
focus and attention and alternate setups
of your system aside from that it
requires the use of your hands
League of Legends also requires both of
these things so generally speaking when
you are available to type things to your
teammate in chat you aren't available to
play League and vice-versa
this creates these awkward dynamics
where let's say you're at the beginning
of a game game really hasn't started
that's a cool time for banter but if
you're dead during the middle of the
game or you feel like you don't really
have any other action so you're gonna go
sit in base that's the time when you're
most available to chat your team which
tends to create this bias in our chat
logs by volume to being more negative
this is an unfortunate dynamic and
League that we can't really get around
it's a very fundamental part of our game
but I think it's something important to
keep in mind when you're introducing
communication vectors with these
affordances in mind into a new game
environment next channel I want to talk
about is our ping system I think it's
the most prevalently used as a very easy
to use UX can he was describing earlier
its able to create very good
opportunities for you to communicate
game information to your allies in the
heat of the moment however when it comes
to multi region contacts where you're
speaking multiple languages will say
European server for example this ping
system is very useful right I don't need
to know what language you're speaking in
order to understand what these pings
mean it's localized to my experience
however in league pings also tell an
interesting story about how these types
of communication channels evolved over
time so in North America at least this
question mark enemy missing ping has an
interesting tale right
it's a giant bright yellow question mark
it's very loud the visual presentation
grabs your attention very intentionally
right when an enemy is missing in lega
it's a very dangerous time and something
you want to warn your allies about but
this question mark also has this other
meaning
which has taken on in league of legends
which is if you're really dissatisfied
with the play of your allies in a game
dropping the question marks repeatedly
around their their character model is a
very good way to get their attention and
express your negativity towards them not
a really great interaction but it's it's
an outlet right it's it's something that
players and we're looking for in this
space when they experience these
feelings of negativity and it comes out
through the ping system which so it's a
really interesting example of when one
of players looking for this type of
communicative outlet they're going to
find ways and understanding when you
build these systems in the first place
how to craft them with these types of
experiences downline in mind I think
it's really valuable
the next communication channel I want to
talk about is our emote system it's
relatively new is similar in function to
pains except it's localized to your
champion when you use an emote it's like
a speech bubble above your head a little
bit and it started in a lot more limited
place
originally when emotes were launched in
league of legends generally speaking
you're facing your opponent for most of
the game it's a 1v1 or 2v2 experience
generally speaking your your opponents
will be the recipients of this
communication more often your allies
given that it's localized of the space
around you however this means typically
speaking in a game of League you don't
really have a lot of really emotive rich
communication to meaningful with your
opponent so the types of interactions
that we'd see with the emote system
tended to be more VM right they tended
to be more of the teabagging esque types
of communication where you would kill
your opponent and then show this type of
emote to disrespect them but over time
we added a lot of improvements to the
system that shifted it to a more team
focused and celebratory place so we
started with a very foundational
baseline feature the ability to mute
these emotes you can just opt out of
this experience if you want to we then
bridged into adding more of these Auto
triggers these sort of celebratory
moments with your team where an emote
that you'd pre-populated would show up
and everyone would sort of ceremonia as
the moma
for your team so if you killed everyone
on the enemy team for example this
little beautiful cat emote with Papa and
then we added even more functionality
past that right on the side of your
screen regardless of where you are in
the map you could see the emotes that
your teammates show creating this sort
of alternate communication channel to
chat right something you could use
quickly in the heat of combat without
having to start typing something that
was inherently more emotional and
light-hearted in nature that sure it
didn't have the richness but it conveyed
a lot of the meaning to your allies and
drifted it to a more team focused space
I think it's a good example of even if
you do start in a place where your
features are more limited bringing them
to a better place is definitely
achievable lastly I think an important
communication channel for us to talk
about in League of Legends is voice chat
or more accurately how restricted it is
unlike a lot of other team-based
competitive games we intentionally do
not support voice chat between strangers
while it is information-rich
and can allow for a lot of really cool
coordinated plays it ultimately does not
help create a better holistic experience
especially in a competitive game like
ours voice is one of the few
communication channels that Dee
anonymizes you when you use voice you
reveal details about yourself to others
which as we know on the Internet can
relate to some pretty nasty situations
and I'm not specifically talking about
harassment of women in this case but
people of color young people LGBT people
basically anyone who vocally codes as
not part of the majority group probably
has some experience with this online and
this leads consequentially to a lot of
people opting out of voice chat with
strangers so I often hear sometimes from
other devs Naomi you know it's fine
right these people they can opt out a
voice chat big deal like the rest of us
can use it except it's not that simple
in a competitive team-based game is it
I'm gonna leave a side sort of the
emotional impact of when a dev creates a
feature that seems almost designed to
exclude you they'll leave that side for
the moment
voice-chat is a very powerful channel of
communication it is both information
rich and immediate which translates to a
significant gameplay advantage in a
team-based game when you expect
non-majority group people to opt out of
voice chat they put themselves at a
gameplay disadvantage to do so which
means that if you have any blind ranking
systems in your game that measure their
performance these systems are
systemically biased against them we as
game developers are asking our non
majority group players to put themselves
into the line of fire in order to
perform at their best in our competitive
games past that you create a dynamic on
teams where their teammates have an
active incentive to pressure them back
in joining voice chat because otherwise
their team is left at a relative
disadvantage overall this isn't great
all around we as weak designers are not
willing to accept this cost to our
community and I think voice chat is an
interesting lesson on how the
consideration around the types of
communication channels and affordances
that are available in your game is
really important to pursue so far
however we've talked a lot about the
design of ways that players communicate
in your game and generally speaking if
you're designing in this player behavior
player interaction space right
you'll probably be mostly working with
these types of features however I think
it's really valuable for us to talk more
broadly about the types of core
mechanics and systems that you have in
your game and how those can shape team
play and cooperation however what I just
said is a really big space right there's
a lot of different systemic factors that
can come into play and I really don't
have time to talk about them all things
like how stakes put pressure on your
players or the different types of
behavioral costs associated with
Palantir reward systems stuff like that
I think you can find wisdom elsewhere
however I want to talk more narrowly
about a subset of these dynamics that
emerge from game systems and mechanics
specifically I'm focusing on mechanics
that shape player perception around
their teammates which materially impacts
team play this list of team play
dynamics that I'm about to go through
isn't exhaustive but it's things that I
found useful when designing in this
space so I'm gonna first start with
something that's pretty straightforward
but I really don't have a good name for
it I haven't been able to find one I've
heard them referred to as anti
cooperative moments or reversed
cooperative moments essentially they're
situations created by game systems or
mechanics that are kind of these anti
collaborative game theory theoretical
interactions or zero-sum games between
teammates that introduce friction almost
unnecessarily right team plays kind of
left to decide not really intentionally
but because there's some other primary
design goal that's being pursued so
let's take an example from league right
I look at Draven's passive as a good
example of this Draven's this kind of
showboating character who loves being in
the spotlight right for his passive
whenever he gets a solo kill he gains in
power right he hears the the the crowd
chanting his name it empowers him
whenever he dies he loses power this
seems fine at first glance but when we
examine this through the lens of team
play right generally speaking as an ad
carry and League of Legends when you die
it's often a failure of your team it's a
failure in team play
so this losing power is sort of doubling
down on the pain of loss of a team team
interaction gone a foul right similarly
when we look at how he gains power
through this passive it's keyed off of
only solo kills right unlike most other
mechanics and League of Legends team
kills don't count if your teammate comes
by and turns this into a shared kill
it's going to be an opportunity a lost
for the Draven player and ultimately a
point for friction that can be induced
in this space to contrast this I'd look
at a character like I've earned in
League of Legends he's this ant-like
character who makes friends with all the
animals in the forest
typically in league there's a set of
buffs which can only only one player can
have at a time one of Ivan's special
abilities is he can duplicate this and
he can share it freely with a teammate
part of his champions power is invested
in a mechanic that fosters this type of
team cohesion and collaborative moment
that's really powerful okay
next dynamic I want to talk about Ivan's
buff sharing is actually a good example
of this systems that shape how teammates
perceive how the rest of their team is
contributing in a game so generally
speaking when you're playing a team game
right the ideal scenario is that a
player feels like everyone on their team
is contributing is pulling their weight
everyone's helping achieve victory but
if you've ever played a team game on the
internet you know this isn't always the
case
many factors from a games design can
mold this perception around team
contribution so as an example let's look
at a games perspective the way that
players have viewed the game in League
of Legends you have this overhead angle
right you have the share division it's
really great for things like watch
ability and for understanding where your
allies are and what's going on to set up
cool team play moments however it also
really starkly lays bare when your
teammates mess up right you can see it
in its full glory and you you don't
really it gives you the opportunity to
put the blame on them because you know
everything they know you can see
everything they see I would contrast
this with FPS games right your viewing
angle is typically a lot more limited
your your focus is what's on in front of
you it's focused on the action on the
enemies in front of you in these games
it's a lot more difficult to understand
exactly what's going on with your
teammates but this is a really rich
opportunity space that a lot of devs
have tapped into in the past so for
example I look at a game like left 4
dead 2 if you have a teammate behind you
who hits you with friendly fire the game
is gonna register this pretty subtly to
you especially if you compare it to the
other types of damage you take in the
game however if you have a zombie
gnawing on your face and teammate
protects you from them the game will
celebrate this and call it out very
loudly to you to celebrate this team
play moment similarly I look at a game
like overwatch right where typically
speaking if you're the average player
you probably don't have a really strong
idea of the peaks and troughs of how
your allies go through a match and
of their plays and miss plays however at
the end of the game it'll take a moment
to be able to highlight the really high
points of your ally in the mattress
ooming you've probably won which then
rolling into the next game that you play
with them it leaves this really good
social foundation because you basically
get to see all their good moments I
think when this type of design around
how players perceive team contribution
fails kind of obviously you will see
players tend to blame their team for not
contributing enough arguably this can be
helpful in terms of offsetting the pain
of loss or soothing egos via the
self-serving bias but in a team based
game this ultimately creates a hostile
environment towards team play with
strangers due to the negativity bias I
think in my opinion at least finding
opportunities to capitalize on this
asymmetry of information is a really
great path to for us to design better
team play so bridging into the next
dynamic when it comes to team
contribution it's not just about how you
perceive how your teammates contribute
but also how you perceive your own
contribution in competitive team-based
games I would argue that there's a rough
trade-off to be made at the high level
of a design around how much impact an
individual player has on the outcome of
the match versus how much impact the
collective action of a team can have on
the outcome of a match simply put this
kind of spectrum between solo carry
ability and requiring teamwork to
succeed keep in mind this a very
oversimplified model but with these
games that have this very heavy reliance
on team play you get these really
awesome moments where a team just clicks
and feels in sync delivering these
really sharp highs that are satisfying
from both a gameplay and social lens but
these games also can tend to create
situations for a solo player where if
you feel like you don't have an avenue
to contribute you can lose agency which
is dangerous when a player feels like
they lack agency their motivation for
playing shifts which can ultimately
undermine behavior I think this is where
we see a lot of cases of afk or
intentional feeding emerge when a player
loses this their goal can shift from
winning to whatever makes them feel like
they're back in control
and sometimes that just happens to be
trolling their team I think there's a
lot of ways to mitigate this but to hone
in on a specific example from leagues
history back in the earlier seasons of
league supports felt a lot less powerful
than other characters a lot of their
time and income was devoted to helping
their team by creating vision it's this
less viscerally impactful mechanic
that's diffused long term and strategic
but very powerful if you were a player
who ended up playing support but didn't
want you you were essentially forced in
this really unhappy situation where you
could either play optimally but play in
a really kind of disempowered play style
where you didn't feel like you had a
much impact on the match or you could
play in a in a way that made you feel
like you had higher impact and higher
agency over the game but actually in
reality probably led to your team losing
overtime we've mitigated this in a
number of ways first we sort of divided
the responsibilities of warding and
vision across the team so it's not just
the sole Dominion of supports second we
gave supports a broader diversity of
champions and items that could opt into
into play styles that felt more
empowering and more impactful made them
feel like they had higher agency every
game and lastly we added new features
like team builder and position select
that sort of sidestepped the problem by
allowing players to more reliably get
access to the roles that they wanted to
play the last dynamic I want to talk
about is around the perception of a game
state and for how four teammates how
this can diverge during a game and that
can be an opportunity for friction to
emerge so to illustrate this let's take
a game like overcooked right you look at
this screenshot this game is not going
well right the kitchens on fire it's
pretty clear from the UI our team's
doing really badly we're all playing
this together in the same shared
singular screen space so we all have a
good understanding that the kitchens on
fire we can't miss it it's very visible
we've built this shared narrative over
the last minutes of gameplay that has
led us to the state of the kitchen being
on fire
right we're on the same page that this
is not good let's contrast this with an
example from league I'm playing ad carry
and bot Lane and it's going really well
we're at ten minutes I've already got
five kills right I'm really clicking
with my support where we're farming
perfectly work basically really on track
to win this game my champions gonna
scale well this is gonna be great
however we've looked to mid lane and my
mid laner is not having a good time but
they've been repeatedly flanked by the
enemy jungler that enemy mid laner has
gotten kills and all the farm and
they're knocking at the tower knocking
it down and for them this game is
basically over right for them they've
basically lost now the fact that these
types of divergent narratives can exist
is interesting within league and keep in
mind there are moments of crossover and
collaboration shared interaction points
like contested objectives or the UI
indicators like the shared kill death
ratio Zoar the types of objectives that
each team has taken but they're kind of
abstract and they're not super easily
interpretable by the average player and
keep in mind I'll caveat this is as you
gain skill and League your
interpretation of the game state gets
better you can get a good idea of things
like when is it appropriate for your
team to carry you things like that but
generally speaking for the average
League of Legends player this personal
narrative that you form over this first
part of the game is the most salient and
the most real to them and therefore the
most impactful so it can kind of create
this situation of where this mismatched
perception of what's going on can become
a right place for friction this can
become very blatant right in this
example maybe my mid laner is afk at
their second tower or in the base and
just spamming surrender and not really
trying because they've lost a didn't see
right they feel like this game is over
whereas I'm I'm they're being like yeah
I'm gonna get some Penta kills I'm
basically set up to win this game while
a big rift like perception of perception
like this exists meaningful team play it
can be impossible however it doesn't
necessarily have to be this blatant
right it can be more subtle in a team
game everyone adhering to a single
strategy can offer me make-or-break
right but when these divergences in
perception emerge around the game estate
the pressures to adapt your playstyle
based on the game state also diverge so
in this example right let's say I'm
doing well
and I feel like you know we have this
lead we can press it a little bit we
should be able to snowball our advantage
we can take some risks to make sure we
really cement our position in this game
whereas my bid laner feels like hey this
game is almost over
we're about to lose we can't afford to
take any risks in the space that we're
in and this fundamental mismatch and how
our strategy has shifted lays the
foundation for poor team play and
miscommunication in like 20 minutes down
the line into this game overall I think
this type of divergence for a game like
League of Legends is pretty fundamental
right you can't change a big systemic
thing like this without creating a lot
of really negative knock-on effects
however I think dynamics like this this
especially but all the dynamics I've
been talking about are really important
to consider when you're laying the
foundations for your game systems and
mechanics so we've talked a lot let's
wrap this up
the main takeaway we I think Kenny and
myself want you to take away from this
is when you're designing these social
systems game mechanics core game
features designing with intent is really
important this is a really nuanced and
layered space and there's a lot of
overlapping interactions that exist and
breaking those down and teasing them
apart can be a really big meaty part of
this process however that's kind of
vague right I want you to take away
something useful and specific so some
questions that we've asked ourselves
during the design process that we found
useful first of all is the feature that
you're working on really necessary is it
in service of the experience right is
this a thing that you know every other
game has it so your VM has to have it is
it a maybe a feature that maybe your
prides a little wrapped up into or is it
something that you step back and
consider
maybe I don't we don't actually need
this maybe the game is better off
without it
second is your player journey
representative diverse and exhaustive
enough right in a team-based game that
has longevity like this even if you just
focus on your target audience and your
singular player journey is this the
majority of our players these players
are going to be interacting with
hundreds thousands of other players over
the course of their their lifespan is a
player in your game so understanding all
these interaction points and how they
converge and diverge is pretty key to
understanding an actual player journey
how will your feature evolve or aged
over time will you have time to revisit
it later if circumstances emerge it I
think this is where there's a lot of
value in things like risk mitigation
plans and sort of taking some thought to
see how will players actually interact
with this once you get it out there in
the wild lastly how will this feature
shape a player's perception of their
team I feel like this type of question
isn't exactly asked a lot and it can be
hard to tease out some of these
interactions but it can be pretty
impactful at basically all layers of
your games design so yeah thank you for
listening any questions you can go to
the mic I think so yeah thank you
Oh also fill out the survey I think yeah
great if there aren't any questions we
can all go get coffee we're also
available to talk after so feel free to
just come up and say hi the question is
have we thought about voice-to-text
voice yes actually I
I've had some fun times playing apex
legends recently since they have a lot
of these kinds of features it's led to
some pretty amusing interactions however
I I mean you're the data scientist so
you can correct me on this but as far as
I'm aware there can be a lot of signal
lost in these types of systems but I
think there is opportunity it might come
down to the tech at the end of the day
though yeah so I would say the
voice-to-text on its own is actually a
really great investment it's not
something that I've played too much with
personally but I think it can have a
bunch of fan-out bonuses around your
ability to moderate that content without
having to store the audio and your
ability to give players who can't or
don't want to interact directly with
voice better access to your systems in
terms of voice to text to voice the
answer has to be it depends what would
it like what is the new voice that
you're creating are you is it generic is
it representative like how do you think
about how that voice that you're letting
players project into represents them in
the game I think that's super important
and it's easy to say well if there's
just a generic male and a generic female
voice we've won we did it
but that's not representative of the
gender spectrum for example so we have
to be really mindful about how we
approach like skinning voices
essentially that help
all right yeah yeah I'd be happy to
after
yeah I would say like for voice-to-text
'voice specifically it's a nascent
system it's like the example I used
around bands it solves one problem we
don't know the problems that are gonna
come out of it so I don't I don't
necessarily believe it solves everything
yet but I would love to see it so thank
you
you'll have to shout I'll repeat the
question
hello-o so considering how the systems
in place can be turned off at certain
points like you know you can entirely
his master emotes because I don't like
the EOS was telling tone to me you can
silence a player emoji couldn't silence
chat voice chat and everything how do
you guys deal when for example we are
working towards winning the game that's
our and tasks are in goal and we're
working towards it but there's one
person that in the team and it happens
very frequently and that seem very a lot
of streamers just say mute slash mute
everyone so if you basically cut
yourself off from the entire
communication system and you're also
working towards winning the game but you
know in any case it happened to me we're
a team made muted everything so we
couldn't talk with a guy he he was
receiving no pings
he was so even know he modes or anything
at all and technically speaking he was
also working towards winning the game
supposedly in his own way how do you
guys deal with that when the
communication is purposely there yeah I
don't want to do it today coach speaking
yeah so you can dive in so like the
biggest thing for me around the ability
to mute incoming communication is that a
player is choosing to shield themselves
from potential disruption so for all you
know they had a really bad day and their
shielding themselves so you don't say
something that you think is benign but
ticks them off right text is ambiguous
pings can be ambiguous and when it comes
to designing our behavior systems we're
more and more erring towards the sides
of giving tools to players that let them
shield themselves from potential
disruption even if that is going to have
systemic effects
in like their performance it's not a
perfect answer but leaves not a perfect
game right yeah I think ideally in this
space right the fact that you have to
start off a game and feel like you have
to mute everyone in order to like play
sufficiently even like circumstances
aside I think is not optimal right
ideally your we we have systems in the
place that I'll essentially create
situations where you don't have to start
off by muting people potentially like
automatic muting type things or wait
other ways we can shield players I think
are more ideal in those specific
situations if you're looking for tools
as a teammate to try and deal with a
player who won't communicate I think the
best you can do is I mean at least in my
experience playing League is try to
adapt to their play style right it's
it's a little unfair for you right
obviously but the fact that we do
provide these tools I think is pretty
important as to what Kenny said and in
that respect doing your best to play the
game is important right so yeah not
really like covering every situation is
nearly impossible however this still
comes with a problem that well spend
losses I really checked but one of the
possible reasons to report a player is
refusing to communicate with team so do
you guys have a system which like kind
of helps identify when a player is
shield in themselves or when they just
don't want to you know they're just
trolling like right I mean okay yeah I
believe you
we've definitely taken a couple passes
on what our reports say about what to
expect from the other players in your
game for example we used to have a
report category for unskilled player and
obviously that's not the sort of offense
that we would want to issue a penalty
over so we took it out but yeah I think
this is a space where we're still
iterating that's something that I'm
particularly excited to work on in the
future because part of the reason that
players are muting all at the beginning
of a game is because they don't know
what you're gonna say
you could be a jerk to them you could
just be trying to communicate
effectively on tasks to win right and
they're playing risk-averse because
maybe they've been burned in the past or
maybe like I said they're just having a
bad day so yeah thank you very much
thank you yeah I wonder starts
everything thanks this was really great
dog also I've had game experiences where
I may not have reported anybody but I
did like not have a great time and then
I like signed off that game for like
maybe months
like apart from reports do you guys look
at other ways to measure that there's
been a bad outcome or a bad game like
you know like a larger data sense yeah I
mean definitely we've primarily focused
on reports as a gateway to issuing
penalties and the reason for that is
because like I've talked about here and
in my talk this morning language can be
really ambiguous and while we don't
accept things like hate speech in the
game quite frankly if no one thought it
was bad there's room to be made for the
idea that that was among friends or
something a little more private you're
still taking a risk when you do that but
we want to key things off reports
however in terms of other monitoring for
like perception and for trying to
understand what the player experiences
so I'm not personally super familiar
with it but our insights team has
devoted a ton of resources to serving
surveying players broadly surveying
players once they've left the game so
both like in terms of something pops up
right after you get out and we'll ask
you how was that match and then also
surveying players who have left the game
more permanently maybe they've taken six
months off and we're reaching out to see
why did you leave and players definitely
talk to us about negative behavior
experiences in like aggregate and in
specific cases so we're looking at that
stuff as sort of opportunities for
improvement so I think we're at a time
I'm sorry you can come bring your
question up here afterwards but just
thank you all for coming
here there's F Fairplay Alliance swag
over here should I've been asked to
direct you to if you're interested in
swag you can come get a sticker come get
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it's really great to have around here
thank you
[Applause]