The computer game League of Legends is attempting to improve the behaviour of players with a reward system that encourages socially cohesive interaction between players, in an attempt to make the game more pleasant to play.
Riot Games have asked social scientists to come up with a new system which gives positive reinforcement to players, where traditionally players have been penalised for abusive or anti-social behaviour on the forums.
In October it was estimated that 12 million people were playing League of Legends worldwide, in a game which involves working with small groups of players, battling to destroy strategic points on a map. Called ‘Honour’ the new strategy gives players the opportunity to reward fellow players with points for friendliness, helpfulness, teamwork and being an honourable opponent.
Reports have shown that so far the new system has been a great success, with players reporting that they now enjoy post play chat with opponents, there has been less bad behavior and fewer insults post-gaming.
So far the new reward strategy has had the following effect:
• Negative Attitude reports: -29% in normals and -11% in ranked
• Offensive Language reports: -35% in normals and -20% in ranked
• Verbal Abuse reports: -41% in normals and -17% in ranked
“Riot has spent a lot of extra time implementing anti-abuse features into the Honor Initiative. We tasked nearly half a dozen PhDs and statisticians to this problem and let them tinker with models for weeks,” Lin at Riot Games explained. “Some of the results have been pattern recognition (players who have been reported 100% of his games after Honor, but got Honor nearly every game, social interactions, and honor values. The results prove that the abuse-prevention measures built in have been “highly effective”.
It seems that reward strategy, the first of its kind to reward players for social behaviour in competition, has so far shown some promising results. Hopefully it will improve the quality of gaming for many, who have had it ruined in the past by a few bad apples.
