Our Motivation

Our motivation for this research is that women and the LGBTQ+ community at UCI have been harassed by cis/straight males in the online competitive gaming scene, left with little to no safe space to just play games. We want to look for various ways to gain and improve the competitive gaming scene for women and the LGBTQ+ community.

During our secondary research, we found out that there are a couple of existing organizations that have already been established as a safe space for women and the LGBTQ+ community, which includes: Fair Play, AnyKey, AbleGamers, Twitch Women’s Alliance, The GameHERs. Games such as League of Legends try to be more inclusive for LGBTQ+ gamers by having Pride month events, but are met with retaliation by the primary demographic—cis, straight male gamers. It is even difficult for the game’s creators to harbor such a safe space due to the amount of harassment.

The Design Question

How can we support women and LGBTQ+ communities at UCI against harassment from cis, straight males in competitive online games?

Our Research Questions

• What games are mostly played and why? (asks about current state of popular games)

• What specific barriers do women and LGBTQ+ gaming communities face? (helps guide us in understanding the problem space more)

• How do women and LGBTQ+ gamers handle themselves when they are harassed?

• How do certain games require the need for in-game voice chat as opposed to text-based chat? (the necessity/reliance on in-game voice chat can “out” gamers as non-cis men)

• How might women and LGBTQ+ gamers try to blend with cis, straight male gamers through customization of username, avatar, etc.? (gamers with a more feminine name or avatar may be targeted more than others)

• How do in-game ranking systems establish male-centric rankism against women and LGBTQ+ gamers? (stereotypes of women/LGBTQ+ gamers include being lower in rank and thus skill compared to cis, straight male gamers)

Our Research Method

We decided to conduct surveys because we believed that the limitations of conducting interviews would not help with our research as much compared to conducting surveys. For interviews, we were limited to choosing about 4 people to interview and this limitation would skew our results since we thought not many people would consent to explain in greater detail their experiences in the online competitive gaming community. On the other hand, we thought conducting surveys would be beneficial because it’s anonymous, and participants can answer in their own time and own pace, which gives them a more comfortable space to respond to our survey.

We ended up collecting 12 surveys in total that helped us scope the foundations of our project.

UX Research Results

• Most, if not all, of the participants wanted to separate themselves from the harasser by any means possible, 

  • mostly through muting said player 

  • or harassing the player back.

• The participants that played with friends had the situation escalate further w/ the harasser.

• Gaming alliances like theGameHers, and AnyKey may be prone to more confrontation in the larger gaming community.

In designing for our project, we asked ourselves whether or not the community we're making this project for needs more efficient ways to separate themselves with harassers.

Our Moderation Guidelines Prototype

 for Online Multiplayer Game Developers

Usability Study

Participants were given screenshots of the full matchmaking guidelines and gave feedback after reading thoroughly

Usability Results

What worked well: 

• Familiar with appraisal system

• Matchmaking with others who display similar/good behavior

What went poorly:

• Players with low appraisal statuses may create a more toxic environment by playing with other poorly-rated players

• Matchmaking with only “nice” vs. “not nice” players may increase queue times

Final Prototype

Overview

• Tags (skill, playstyle, main(s)), matchmaking requests

• Option to show/hide chat, friends list

• Players are randomly matched

Strike System

Manually report the player, bot auto-targets slurs and/or hate speech

• 3 Strikes:

  1. 1. 1. 1. Muted in chat

           2. Muted + restricted gameplay

           3. IP ban

Appraisal System:

Users can electively praise others for teamwork, inclusivity, or sportsmanship

• Each appraisal boosts their appraisal status

• Only possible immediately following a match

Key Takeaways & Reflection

Check out our Presentation Slides!