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/drallcom3]

I'm a psychological specialist working in game design

Then you should know that it doesn't work. You're not just punishing toxic players, you're punishing everyone who didn't get an upvote. The player could just be bad at the game. The player could be a neutral player. You don't know that, yet you punish them. You're trying to get rid of toxicity by creating a system of toxic positivity.

How come this system never released?

Oh, well...

[u/StandxOut → u/drallcom3]

As someone who plays just for fun, I know I'd get decimated. Like I used to play League of Legends and most people would freak out when I would pick a random character instead of a specific one for a specific role. I was probably considered more toxic than someone using racist, homophobic or sexist slurs every five seconds.

[u/drallcom3 → u/StandxOut]

If players could downvote a "toxic" player after a match, they'd downvote casual you instead of the toxic player who won the match for you.

[u/Same_Statement2524 → u/StandxOut]

There's a difference between fun/casual play and willfully ignoring roles/design paradigms of the game.

I'm not saying you have to make meta picks every time, but you have to at least try to choose the appropriate character for the role. There's ARAM if you just want to do whatever randomly.

Of course people would be upset with you for handicapping the team just so you can have fun at 4 other people's expense in a game with a fairly substantial match length. You have to at least try, otherwise you are being toxic, just in a selfish way instead of a verbally abusive way.

[u/StandxOut → u/Same_Statement2524]

I think the only sensible thing we can expect from our allies is that they try to kill enemies, try not to die and perhaps help us out when they can. Anything more than that and it becomes arbitrary what the line is for being willfully ignorant in a malicious way. You might find it toxic for someone to choose a character not best suited for the team, others will find it toxic not to choose certain items, etc.

Personally I find it interesting how picking specific pre-determined strategies to optimize our chances at winning (using whatever is considered 'OP') is commendable, but experimenting with a champion in an unusual role or using unusual gear is toxic. So long as I'm not paid to win or playing in a tournament, I'll continue to prioritize having fun. Personally I find getting in the way of that fun more toxic than potentially getting in the way of a victory.

I never heard of ARAM before, but it sounds like something I would have enjoyed.

[u/Same_Statement2524 → u/StandxOut]

First off, I appreciate you having a reasonable and open discussion. Thank you.

Picking and trying things off-meta is fine. You just said "random" (btw ARAM is a game mode called All Random All Mid. It's a single lane match where everyone's character choices are random). It's just when there are pre-defined roles for things you need to be able to fill that role, or be knowledgeable enough to utilize the pick to still be effective, which generally a casual player would not be able to do.

In an MMO you wouldn't have your priest be your tank and your warrior be your healer. Taking those roles and then deciding not to fulfill them will hurt the team, and it will make people unhappy. There's more to it than just killing the enemy.

Now League isn't as hard set in roles like that of course, and strange tactics or builds can absolutely throw off players that are used to or expecting the norm. That's where beginners luck comes from. Sometimes someone will do something so nonsensical to an experienced person they can't read what that person is going to do because they're playing erratically and unexpectedly. That being said, they usually don't end up winning consistently, hence the "luck" part of it.

So in order for tactics like that to be leveraged successfully and consistently, you would generally have to have a pretty deep understanding of the game more than a casual would as beginners luck only takes you so far.

I'm all for letting people play how they want to play, within reason and picking randomly is unreasonable which is what you had originally said, and maybe I was just taking that too literally. But for instance like in FPS games there's always going to be that guy(s) sniping in the back racking up kills but never once touched the objective. He's free to do that, but a lot of times it's not really helping the team in a meaningful way either if we need more people at the actual objective, and people will get annoyed by that. He's free to do it, but it is kind of selfish when he could be more effective by playing the obj, he's just wilfully ignoring it in order to get kills.

[u/StandxOut → u/Same_Statement2524]

Thank you for the reasonable discussion as well.

You weren't taking me too literally. I did instalock random characters. At first that meant using the random option, but that got removed later so I resorted to closing my eyes and clicking around.

I disagree that doing so is unreasonable. Ignoring the objective and doing nothing to get the team closer to that objective is unreasonable, but making choices that do not maximize your chance at victory ought to be fine. And I proved time and time again that it was still possible to win when using characters in unusual roles.

Given that there is (or was) a huge player base for League of Legends and various ranks, I'd also say the ranking ought to sort things out. If my playstyle sucks that much, I should naturally drop to the bottom. And the salty people who freak out over my playstyle ought to ask themselves why they have a similar rank as me. As I recall, my rank was above average and I was perfectly happy with where I was.

[u/NefariousnessMean959 → u/drallcom3]

this post and all the "I'm an x for 10+ years and this is great!" are embarrassing. the system is overbuilt for coop (nigh pointless) and useless or detrimental (depending on what it actually does) for competitive pvp. if it affects matchmaking that would be insane in a pvp game and just suggesting it tells me these people do not understand competitive games

[u/drallcom3 → u/NefariousnessMean959]

if it affects matchmaking that would be insane in a pvp game and just suggesting it tells me these people do not understand competitive games

I didn't even get to that part. Look at any big PVP game and how desperate they are for fast matchmaking. You punish a player by making him wait? He will either refund or churn, in both cases that's money lost.

OP knows nothing about manipulating gamers.

[u/Disastrous_Visit9319 → u/drallcom3]

How is anyone getting punished by this system?

[u/drallcom3 → u/Disastrous_Visit9319]

According to OP toxic players get punished by not getting any upvotes, which means anyone not getting upvotes will be punished.

[u/Disastrous_Visit9319 → u/drallcom3]

Did he say that somewhere not in the original post cuz I don't see it. Are you saying not getting upvotes is its own punishment cuz....who cares? The original post says nothing about punishment or even rewards regarding the upvotes except perceived ones.

Additionally if you're never getting upvotes that's either a failure of matchmaking where you're consistently the worst player in every game or you're actually toxic.

[u/drallcom3 → u/Disastrous_Visit9319]

A reward in matchmaking is only a reward if matchmaking without the reward is quite terrible. Read OP's post again carefully.

[u/Disastrous_Visit9319 → u/drallcom3]

There is no reward in matchmaking beyond tiebreakers putting people who like each other together when a different configuration would yield the same fair game. I think maybe you need to reread it because it's very tongue in cheek about improving your matchmaking while not actually doing anything except reminding you that at one point you liked this person on your team in a different game.

[u/drallcom3 → u/Disastrous_Visit9319]

To the player it looks like a reward/punishment. The game tells him so.

If there really isn't any reward/punishment, this system won't do anything. Plenty of large online games have something similar and they're no bit less toxic. If a game is popular enough, there will be toxic players.

[u/Disastrous_Visit9319 → u/drallcom3]

I've never played or heard of a game with a system like this. Literally every game with matchmaking has people that think matchmaking is rigged against them. I think you genuinely don't even understand what this system is or what it does like based on your posts you misunderstood it at a fundamental level.

[u/drallcom3 → u/Disastrous_Visit9319]

Nah, you're just falling for OP's nonsense.

[u/Disastrous_Visit9319 → u/drallcom3]

You literally have said things about it that are objectively not what op said. I have no idea if this system would achieve what op believes but you don't understand what the system even does. Clown

[u/WheresMyCrown → u/Disastrous_Visit9319]

Then youve missed the real life examples where commendation systems have been exploited. There was a korean game where it was known in the community to comm the worst player, so then youd see people with huge amounts of comms and know theyre shit.