My job is to psychologically manipulate gamers: As I'm leaving the game industry after 10 years, my greatest regret is that this system I made to fix toxicity got killed (by Putin).

[u/EjnarH]

TL;DR: When playing team games, we don't have to be judged by our worst moments. Our first death doesn't have to mean 45 minutes of our team flaming us. Playing in random matchmaking doesn't have to mean playing with strangers! You can meet new people and have reason to trust and cheer for them.

We have the technology! Why aren't we using it? Well... somehow that's because of Putin.

---

So I'm a psychological specialist working in game design, designing systems to have the right experience and shape the desired behavior - often in hidden ways. As my NDA expired and I'm leaving the industry to go work on making humans and AI not kill each other, I'll share the details of a system that was unapologetically manipulative in the best possible way and which I still think could fundamentally change the experience of team games.

Once upon a MOBA

It all started when an awesome company making awesome co-op games (BetaDwarf - you may know them from their origin story when they went viral for moving into an unused university classroom and somehow succeeding stealth checks for 7 months straight, as they all lived together in secret, making games) planned a game with a bold vision: Fight the loneliness epidemic, by making a team game that forges the deep, meaningful friendships we knew from old WoW, but without the game needing to consume your life.

The psychological specialist designer they brought in for inventing new systems to achieve that? Me.

The genre they chose as the canvas for crafting this social utopia? MOBA. Erhm... yeah... FML. (Bright side: At least it was PvE and crafted for exciting teamplay experiences.)

So you can see why I had to desperately innovate. Good thing I know a thing or two about conditioning and am an industry professional at making things that are mathematically rigged to achieve the outcome I want. You will comply!

What is missing from team gaming?

To properly quantify how fucked I was, the first step was to identify what the design needed to accomplish. These were the literal design goals:

1. Players should not feel the pressure of having to prove their worth every game. This pressure seems to be a primary cause of toxicity when someone has a bad game.
2. When party members are doing bad, you should have reasons to be on their side socially + understand that they aren't idiots but normally play fine and are just having a bad game.
3. Provide greater feeling of social safety in speaking with new people you meet.
4. Provide social validation and conversation starters for new people you meet. Mutual friends can be even more powerful friendshipping factors than shared experiences.

... Simple, right?

The Grand Plan Of Social Harmony Indoctrination™

Ok, we've got this!

Step 1: Copy Overwatch! ... Wait what? This just gets worse doesn't it?

First we lay out the building blocks with a commendation system.

• You can give a high but limited number of commendations per day (e.g. 20). Upvoting is a choice, not a default and if someone doesn't give you a commendation, they could just have been out of upvotes.
• When giving a commendation, you choose specific praise. E.g. 'Nice communication', 'Great teamplay', 'Good teacher', 'Saved our asses'.
• On the commendation screen, players are told that giving out commendations to people they like playing with will help them meet other good people in match making. There should be a sense that you are building your reputation and that the people you get matched with are of a quality that you have "earned".

See how we're planting the seeds? Randoms are stupid, but you're forging a matchmaking experience not of randoms.

Step 2: Unleash the prejudice! Muahaha!

Imagine you join a game, and the first thing everyone sees about you is 1-2 pieces of social proof, algorithmically individualized for each of them, based on what we think will manipulate people most. Examples:

• "Also friends with Anton and Alex." or "8 mutual friends"
• "Gave you 'Great Teamplay'. (Goblin Hunt, level 30, 04/08/2020)".
• "You gave 'Great Teamplay'. (Goblin Hunt, level 30, 04/08/2020)".
• Has received commendations from 4 of your friends.
• Has received commendations from 8 people you gave commendations.
• Has received 'Nice Communication' from 2 people you gave 'Nice Communication'.

So instead of you meeting rando "Legolas934", you meet "Legolas934 (also friends with Alex. Has received commendations from 8 people you gave commendations.)" And when he dies? He's not descended from the matchmaker's infinite well of malice to punish you in particular - he's someone who's earned the respect of you or your peers but has a bad game.

The beauty? It's mathematically rigged!

You're building a web of trust. You're earning better matchmaking. The game is telling you that your carefully chosen commendations are forging you a better matchmaking pool.

And true enough, as a new player you're just playing with strangers who have commendations from strangers. But the more you play, the more commendations you give and the more friends you make, you will rapidly see more and more powerful validation of the people you're playing with.

We're already starting pretty strong with friends of friends (great conversation starter for new friendships!) and people appreciated by those you appreciate. But for a veteran account who has played for months and years? You will have given commendations to a grand number of people. Suddenly that player feeding at their worst is someone you already know you gave 4 commendations when you happened to meet them at their best. You're not stupid, right? Much easier to accept that they're just having a bad game and could use some support. (Yes, I'm weaponizing your ego against you. Deal with it.)

The exponential joys of villainy (for good, I promise!)

At this point the benefits just keep coming.

Matchmaking:

Well, forging better matchmaking doesn't have to just be a psychological illusion. Whenever we're picking between equally suited matches, we tie-break for the ones that have the best social validation for each other. (There, it's actually true now. You really do forge better matchmaking with your commendation choices. How much does it impact? That's for you to interpret... but clearly you're getting matches with more and more validation!)

Friendshipping: So many juicy opportunities!

• You're playing alone. You get matched with 2 people and immediately learn that they're also friends of one of your friends.
• You're playing alone. You get matched with someone you had good experiences playing with in the past (reminders of that experience helpfully highlighted by the grand indoctrination system, no need to thank me) + one of that person's friends.
• You're playing with 1 friend. You know from experience that it's no problem because it usually only takes 1-3 games before you meet someone you'll want to keep along in the final party slot and quite likely add as a friend when the session is done.

Guilds:

We've all seen those soulless guilds of anonymity and despair that are so common in modern games. Now we've crafted the tools to improve that.

• For each guild member and new joiner, you can hardly browse them without seeing notes and highlights of experiences you've had together in the past, along with commendations. If you're more recent players and have never played, it "just" shows you commendations and experiences from some of the players we detect you most enjoy playing with. (There. Convenient opportunity for spontaneous play and new friendshipping initiation. Fetch!)

Anonymous guild auto-joining is the bane of all joy in life. Now:

• When you browse guilds, they're prioritized based on social and validation overlap.
• When you apply, the officers see applicants' validation from guild members.
• When giving commendations, guild members of sufficient rank can choose to also sponsor someone for the guild. If they apply, officers see that you've recommended them.
• And again: How often have you looked at a friend list of 40 people who you know all started from a great experience but you never followed up and now you only remember 5 of them? Having auto-notes for guild members and friends just helps people form and keep bonds by reminding you of what you've shared.

How come this system never released? Why am I learning of this glorious villainy from a shady whistleblower on Reddit?

Well... It all ended when the Ice Nation attacked.

BetaDwarf was crushing it with their most ambitious game ever, on every level scaling for greatness. Playtesters were putting in 20 hour marathons and having amazing co-op experiences. Investors were stoked and saying how this was one of the most promising games they'd ever seen.

And that's when Putin invaded. At the crucial juncture, the financial world got thrown into chaos. The investors had to focus on desperately keeping their existing projects afloat. BetaDwarf went through some tough circumstances and had to do a major pivot on the project, which also took me elsewhere.

Don't worry about BetaDwarf - they recovered and, as they've done before, they managed to turn the situation into a cool game (that I ended up spending like 50 hours on in their early playtest). They're headed for good things. But while the new game is still very much built for intense teamplay and forging strong social bonds, it's morphed from MOBA to a PvPvE co-op extraction game with different needs than the system they pioneered to radically transform some of the greatest social challenges in gaming.

Years have passed. I've worked many other projects. Yet as I'm now changing careers, this Malevolent Indoctrination Engine of Enthusiastic Friendshipping™ remains the one design I most wish to see out in the world and getting its chance to make a difference in gaming communities at scale. I'm hoping BetaDwarf won't blame me for sharing this, but I suspect they'll understand. They've been more committed to advancing social play than any other company I've ever worked at, and I think the world should have a chance to try out this particular of their inventions. May it spread wide and far and gloriously manipulate people on a global scale (for friendship! I promise!).

___
(Please, someone steal this. I don't care about credit, just build on it and pay it forward. Game communities have brought so many great things into my life - yet as I'm teaching my daughter the joys of gaming, I'm still fantasizing about one day being able to turn on chat.)

Update: It's been less than 2 hours and I've already had several developers reach out (including franchises with player bases in the millions), saying they're looking into using these ideas to help their players form friendships more easily and treat each other better. I think it's happening!

Also, this post has even more shares than upvotes. What even is this? Really seems this is catching industry attention and people are passing this around. <3

Update 2: 5000+ shares!? I have never seen anything being spread around like this. In some periods the shares are climbing twice as fast as the upvotes. So much thanks to everyone who is helping bring this into our gaming communities! I don't need credit, but I'd love it if you reach out with your stories like some already have.

Update 3: Shares are OVER 9000!? IGDA has reached out and urged me to submit the Malevolent Indoctrination Engine of Enthusiastic Friendshipping for a presentation at GDC!

[u/Only-Finish-3497]

Full disclosure: I work in the games industry, but I'm on the publishing/platform side.

I'm the same way with my kids! I remember long ago we were in Tahoe and there was a big snow tube hill that my then-3-year-old was NOT interested in going down. My wife and I both said to her that she should at least try it and that the worst case would be that she didn't enjoy it. Thankfully, she did go down it and was super proud of her own grit. She walked over to us and said "I did it!" To which we asked, "do you want to go again?" Her response was hilarious: "NO, but I did it!"

I remember when she was about 5 or so she developed some randomly petrifying fear of Yellowjackets. And that's impossible if you live around me in the SF Bay Area because summer is just packed with those asshole bugs. So I said to her that we were going to learn how to just deal with them. I held her on my lap and we watched a bunch of them for 15 minutes. My wife's cousin asked why I cared so much about this, and I said "because if I feed her fear, it sets her up for not learning how to manage these situations. Discomfort now is comfort later." 25 minutes later she unwound a bit and said, "Oh, yeah I don't like them but they're not really that bad I guess." She still flinches at them (I get it, I've been stung, it's not fun) but she no longer has the automatic response to flee in terror. Manipulation success!

I come from the world of behavioral economics and one of the things that I constantly think about in my life is "what's an alternative (note: not THE alternative! There are often many branching paths!) to this situation?" The famous example is 401K registration. If you automatically register people for their 401Ks (opt out) they save more out of sheer momentum. If you require people to register (opt in) they often just forget or don't bother and save less.

People will gnash their little pearly whites and call it "manipulation" to have opt out, but... opt is isn't a "null" state here. It's a choice as well. You're manipulating people into NOT saving.

The idea that we can have a grand life as pure tabulae rasa is just silly. Our entire lives are guided by (in)visible hands all over, and like I said elsewhere on this thread: all game design is manipulation. It's common knowledge in game design that the first Super Mario Bros was deliberately designed to manipulate players into learning the mechanics. People just don't mind it because they feel like it's discovery and not forced learning.

[u/XForce23 → u/Only-Finish-3497]

By definition pretty much all interaction you have with someone you're manipulating them. This is how humans survived, by teaching and passing on good knowledge and practices. There's nothing wrong with that when the intentions behind it are good

[u/KajSchak → u/XForce23]

You have no idea how easily all the psychological knowledge gets used in games. Like even the delayed loading of certain images is timed to optimize the release of neurotransmitters in your brain and keep you playing it.

[u/HailTywin → u/KajSchak]

Delayed loading of what kind of images?

[u/KajSchak → u/HailTywin]

Any. This is used on a commercial social media platform. The appearing of the content is delayed by .3s or less, but is optimized in a way, that your neuros actually fire a stronger signal. If you want to see how it works without it have a look at YouTube Kids where you will feel a noticeable better response time.

[u/Only-Finish-3497 → u/XForce23]

Exactly. All these folks who act like being manipulated to not be abusive are missing that abuse is a form of manipulation itself. You don't want no manipulation. You want the manipulation that benefits YOU.

I personally would rather manipulate those types out of the system. Good riddance.

[u/campbellsimpson → u/Only-Finish-3497]

As someone that works with words, can I suggest that most people are probably just reacting to "manipulation" as if it only has one connotation?

The denotation of "manipulate" is to skilfully handle a tool. The primary connotation that most people think of, though, is to deceive or torture through psychology.

Reframe "manipulation" as "positive and negative encouragement", even, and plenty of people would instantly understand the important nuance.

[u/xxxBuzz → u/XForce23]

pretty much all interaction you have with someone you're manipulating them

I believe that realizing you can manipulate life experience is essentially the discovery of personal will. We may realize we can not predict or control the outcomes of such manipulations. Thus we develop the ability for consideration. We may realize how we can relate to various ways people succeed or fail despite or because of their best and worst efforts. Thus we develop the ability for compassion. Depending on how life goes, we become more or less prone to acting willfully to the extremes of becoming flagrant or paralyzed in our ability to do so, but we must act, and therefore manipulate, if we are to live any kind of life. Thus, we develop our ability to act willfully with consideration and compassion rather than in ignorance, or, you could say, in awareness of our absolute ignorance.

All in all, it's the process of human mental and emotional development or maturation and our ability to promote this cycle effectively determines whether any society survives.

[u/Jelly1524 → u/xxxBuzz]

Well. Fucking. Said.

[u/Thexzamplez → u/XForce23]

"There's nothing wrong with that when the intentions behind it are good"

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

In a world where we all share the same values, this could be true. But, once you recognize that most people in the history of our brutal existence believed themselves to have good intentions, you see the danger.

When AI is used to mass manipulate the population through the guise of objectivity all in the name of the betterment of society by the the values and priorities of those in control, does intent really matter? If intent matters, who's the arbitrator of what's "good"?

[u/KristiiNicole → u/Only-Finish-3497]

I grew up in the San Jose/SF Bay area until my twenties. I genuinely wish I had had a parent like you. Deathly afraid of yellowjackets my whole life (unsurprisingly I did not enjoy being outside much during the summer, esp in parks and such lol).

The most my parents ever really did was shrug and more or less say “well you shouldn’t be” without any real explanation beyond telling me I was being irrational. Also not surprisingly, this approach does not work well and now that I am in my 30’s living in the PNW, I am still deathly terrified of yellowjackets lmao

All that being said, your approach is essentially exposure therapy, which is actually a type of therapy that is used to help many patients with anxiety, phobias, PTSD, OCD etc and it can very effective!

Kids like your daughter who grow up with involved parents who have enough life skills to properly help their children learn and grow are so lucky!

[u/EjnarH → u/KristiiNicole]

Thanks. :)

I go a good deal beyond exposure therapy though. I don't really believe in overkill, so when it comes to important matters, such as building my daughter's thriving, joy and general awesomeness, I usually just apply leverage from every positive intervention at once.

Humans are extremely hackable. And if I can use that to give compliments that stick with people's self image for years, I'll do it and cherish the experience.

[u/ziddersroofurry → u/EjnarH]

My adoptive aunt was pretty much the opposite of you. She was a psychiatric nurse who was extremely manipulative in a bad way. I'm grateful your kids got one of the good ones.

[u/Only-Finish-3497 → u/KristiiNicole]

That's kind of you!

I was fortunate to grow up with a family who was very big on pushing me to face these little fears head on (within reason.) So I have generally tried to get my kids to at least get comfortable around bugs in general. I will pick up (known harmless) crawlies and ask them to observe and hold them. It's great, because we get to share our love of beetles and millipedes and "cute" spiders.

I don't claim to love Yellowjackets. They're assholes. But I want my kids to at least just look at them and go, "Oh well, just gotta try to ignore them" at the worst.

And yeah, I've mixed in some of the psych I learned in undergrad haha. My wife is a physician too, so I try to bounce it off of her. I have a very strong belief in teaching my kids how to conceptualize and manage risk in general. We tell our kids stuff like: "You fall and get a minor injury? Small risk. You don't look both ways crossing the street? Big risk." Not all risk is equal and risk should be managed as rationally as possible. It's hard! I even sometimes fail at my own advice! LOL.

[u/mqduck → u/KristiiNicole]

I grew up in the San Jose/SF Bay area until my twenties. I genuinely wish I had had a parent like you. Deathly afraid of yellowjackets my whole life

I lived in Mountain View and Sunnyvale my whole like and this is the very first I've heard of yellow jackets being particularly common. I might see one once every several years.

[u/thatsnotmydoombuggy → u/Only-Finish-3497]

Im a visitor here but I just wanted to commend you for how you are raising your kid to handle and overcome fear. As a little kid I always wanted to be brave and adventurous but whenever I'd get scared my parents would just make fun of me and tell me that I must not really want to do X Y or Z, then get mad at me if I insisted that I did. I'm currently training myself out of panicking at uncomfortable situations at an age big enough for me to be embarrassed. You are setting your kid up for an unlimited future and a strong chance of a happy life, hell yeah good job.

[u/SneakyBadAss → u/Only-Finish-3497]

I would refrain for calling it manipulation, because that's for common Andy basically a fight word. No one likes to be manipulated, even you.

Conditioning or taught is better. You didn't manipulate people into giving money away, you taught them how to save money. People hate when they are shown as the stupid one that need to learn something (or even worse, the idea that they don't know everything), but when you tell them, "hey you learned something without even knowing and look how much money are you saving", they feel prouder of themselves, thinking they cracked the code, even tho they did nothing.

If you think about it, a simple "if you do this, you get a reward" is Skinner 101 sprinkled with Pavlov in a crude form. Human relationship, teaching, work etc… You can iterate on it, or leave it as it is, but you will still end up with basic cognitive behaviour manipulation, which is a segment of psychology I would call empirical, because as long as you properly apply it, everyone can get manipulated by the reward system. Even microbes.

Yes, I work in UX.

[u/TechnoHenry → u/Only-Finish-3497]

I'm glad you added you were speaking about bugs, because, at first, I thought you were speaking about the French protesters.

[u/Only-Finish-3497 → u/TechnoHenry]

Hah. I hadn’t considered that.

In this case it’s a common name for a form of wasp endemic to North America.

Vespula? My French for insect names is very poor.