Research Question

The question I am asking in my research is first how toxic players affect the outcome of

matches in competitive e-sports mainly focusing on League of Legends in particular. The first

thing my research will find is what a toxic player is. Next I must determine how different people

respond to toxic players. Once I have determined what makes a toxic player I need to participate

in as well as observe gameplay in order to determine whether or not toxic players had a role in

the outcome. The methodology for this will be better explained in the methods section. The next

question and probably the more important one is how toxic play affects players. How does it

affect player’s experience in game and how does it affect them outside the game.

Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that in games that have toxic players the team that has the toxic player

on the team will have a higher loss rate also the overall experience of both teams will be worse.

In addition I believe that toxic players will be at lower rankings than players of equivalent or

slightly lower skill due to the lack of team work. Also I believe that players experience negative

effects from this that may be similar to cyber bullying.

Background knowledge

Multiplayer online battle arena games or moba games are a very popular and quickly

growing video game with many producers making their own version. All moba games follow a

similar design. First there is a map on which the game normall. First there is a map on which the

game is played out, and on this map there are three lanes. In between the lanes is an area called

the jungle with different objectives in it. (As seen in the picture)

There are two teams that have bases on the map and the goal of the game is to destroy the other

team’s base by controlling map objectives and advancing through the lanes. Each team has five

players that each fills a different role. Each player is reliant on their team members to fulfill

their roles in the early game then communicate and work as a team to finish the game. There are

different tools that players can use in game to communicate the most important in this case is the

in game chat log as this is where most toxic activity takes place. The moba game I will be using

in my research is League of Legends one of the most popular moba games currently out with

milions of players worldwide. League of legends is a moba developed by Riot Games and while

not the first moba games it is arguably the most popular. An e-sport is a video game with online

multiplayer that has wide success and enough support that tournament prize pools can support a

dedicated community that largely only plays the game for a living or as a source of income.

League of Legends fills this role in the moba community.

Methodology

I believe the best way to record this communication phenomenon is to observe and not to

participate in any way. I think that participating would make a person beyond biased as the

negative communication or toxic players would direct their rage at you causing you to become

emotional yourself which would cloud judgement and invalidate the research. The procedure I

will use for monitoring and observing is to first gather a group of league of legend players. I

would do this through people I know that play the game as well as asking the campus league club

for participants. As a motivation I would offer a small monetary reward. The target group that I

would like to have is about ten college age people who play league at least once per day

preferably more. I would like to have a fairly diverse group however an overwhelming majority

of players are male so this may not be entirely possible. The next step is that I would give them a

list of questions to fill out after they experience a game that has a toxic player. They will fill out

the entire questionare only if they reported a player for toxic behavior. These questions will be as

follows.

1. What was the toxic play you experienced in this game?

2. How did you respond to this toxic play?

3. What are your feelings after the game was over?

4. Did it affect how your later games went or your mood later in the day?

5. Was the game a win or loss?

6. What was your overall experience this game?

7. Do you think the toxic play affected the outcome of this game

8. If this game was a loss, were you winning at any point and did the toxicity cause the

switch or did it happen after?

9. What was the result of the next game?

These few questions if answered in detail should allow me to gather a little bit of information

without being a burden on the participants. Next I would like to have all participants play games

of league of legends while in one location so that I could conduct interviews after they have

encountered a toxic player in game. The interview would follow the same question set as the

pamphlet however I would have follow up questions based on how they respond to the questions.

As a side note of this is I would like to compare the win/ loss ratio of games that have toxic

players compared to those that don’t. The reason for this is that I believe how a game is going

affects how toxic players will be.

Expected results

I believe that the results of this would be that toxic experiences have a lasting result on

players even if they don’t notice it. I believe that the results would show that there is a

connection to toxic play and possibly cyber bulling. Results should show that toxic play reduces

the overall experience of the game. I also think that toxic play can be caused by a game going

poorly and can make a game turn bad.

The following is articles that I looked at to design my research as well gain more

background information.