轉載：Deviant behavior in League of Legends: Do jerks drive off other players?

一篇關於LOL的數據分析 http://grouplens.org/deviant-behavior-in-league-of-legends/

Deviant behavior in League of Legends: Do jerks drive off other players?

January 11, 2014

Kenny

This post describes work appearing at CSCW 2014.

Many online activities today involve interacting with other people, and these interactions are often dictated by social norms – unspoken rules that classify socially acceptable behavior.  Whether intentional or otherwise, people sometimes break these rules.  Behavior that goes against established norms is called deviant behavior, and in many cases is assumed to be negative. In online communities, deviant behavior is commonly believed to be harmful, and is expected to drive users to leave the community. For example, intentionally incorrect responses on a question and answer site may discourage new users from asking questions. Our work looks at patterns of player behavior in an online game. We build a metric to predict a specific kind of deviant behavior, toxicity, and we use this metric to examine whether deviant behavior causes other players to quit

違反基準社會行爲標準的「毒瘤行爲」是否會致使用戶從社會團體中流失。老鼠屎和粥的故事

We look at deviant behavior in the popular online game League of Legends.  League of Legends is a competitive multiplayer game where two teams of five players compete to destroy the other team’s base. Each player controls a single character, and every character has unique abilities which, when used skillfully, can help the player’s team overcome an enemy team. If you’ve never played League of Legends, check out this four-minute introduction video from League’s developer, Riot Games.

Deviant behavior in League of Legends is a known problem. Riot has addressed it with several interventions, such as rallying the community behind a common code of conduct and using social psychology techniques to subtly influence player behavior. Problematic deviant behaviors in League of Legends manifest in several ways: A player could verbally abuse other players, quit a match early or help the enemy team win. Riot is specifically concerned with some of these behaviors, which they call 「toxicity.」 In their talk last Spring, they define toxicity as any behavior that negatively impacts other players’ experiences. You can see more on Riot’s efforts to influence player behavior in their GDC2013 talk.

Using data donated by Duowan (the creators of a popular Chinese add-on for League of Legends) we analyzed 18 million matches across three months. The add-on allows players to give feedback to their teammates. From recorded social and match data, we built a metric called toxicity index. Toxicity index is a ratio between 「thumbs up」 and 「thumbs down」 scores, used to identify players with consistently negative feedback. A higher toxicity index means a player was given lots of negative feedback by their peers. Similar to the 「report a player」 feature built in to League of Legends, thumbs down messages are strongly associated with toxic behavior in the game.

Toxicity Index

Once we were able to identify toxic players, we found several common correlations with toxicity index:

• Ranked matches are more competitive matches which have a public-facing rating. Players in ranked matches often had a higher toxicity index than players in normal matches.    排位賽比普通匹配中更容易出現低分評價、負面評價和惡意行爲
• Different character roles predicted different levels of toxicity.  不一樣英雄角色的負面評價不一樣
• Playing characters with lots of damage-dealing abilities (carries and bruisers) usually predicted players with higher toxicity indexes.  Carry位和中單一般負面評價較高

• Different character roles predicted different levels of toxicity.

  • Playing characters with lots of damage-dealing abilities (carries and bruisers) usually predicted players with higher toxicity indexes. Carry和中單一般負面評價較高

  • Playing characters with abilities that promote teamwork (supports and tanks) usually predicted players with lower toxicity indexes. 輔助和tank一般負面評價較高

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Average player toxicity index by role and game mode, with standard error bars.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Lower toxicity index means fewer thumbs downs per thumbs up.

 

• While we expected more positive feedback, players teaming up with friends received more negative feedback from their non-friend teammates.  一般組隊的常被單排的打低分

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Average number of friends per match vs number of thumbs ups

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 and thumbs downs received. Thumbs down excludes votes from friends.

 

What predicts quitting?

We also wanted to look for factors that drove players to quit the game. To do this we separated players by tenure, splitting experienced and inexperienced players. Using a regression, we examined player retention in terms of both finishing their current gaming session and quitting the game for a long time (or for good).

• Newer player’s session length didn’t seem to be affected by playing with toxic teammates, regardless of their own toxicity index.新玩家的遊戲時間貌似不會被他們的毒瘤隊友影響
• Newer players were less likely to quit for a long period when they had a high toxicity index, and were more likely to quit for a while after playing with toxic teammates. 新玩家不會由於本身的毒瘤而暫停本身的遊戲行爲（意思雖然毒瘤可是本身樂在其中），可是若是碰到了毒瘤玩家，遊戲結束後，新玩家會暫停一段時間（意思被別人的毒瘤影響了體驗）
• Surprisingly, experienced players were more likely to continue their session when they were toxic, or when some of their teammates were toxic. However, if the player and their teammates both had high toxicity indexes, the player was likely to end their session. 使人驚奇的是，老玩家無論是本身毒瘤了仍是隊友毒瘤了，都會繼續玩下去。可是若是本身和隊友都毒瘤了，那麼就會結束遊戲再也不繼續玩下一把

• Both experienced and new players who play with friends are more likely to play another match. 無論新老玩家都喜歡跟朋友一塊兒玩

• Playing with friends also kept newer players from taking a long break from the game, and playing with friends was the only factor that kept experienced players from quitting for good. 與朋友一塊兒玩是保持遊戲粘性的終極法寶

In summary, we found different game modes, character abilities and playing with friends all correlated with different levels of toxic behavior. Additionally, newer players who were toxic were less likely to quit the game, and newer players who weren’t toxic were likely to quit after encountering toxic teammates. Playing with friends predicted players at all levels would keep playing.

總結：

   1. 正義菜鳥玻璃易受傷，邪惡菜鳥以破壞爲樂趣（真是符合社會心理學）

   2. 社交，人-人互動纔是終極法寶

 

Want to learn more?  Read our full paper, accepted to be published this February at CSCW 2014.