MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game is a game genre where players play as two teams, competing against each other team on a battlefield. Toxic behaviors, such as cheating and communication abuse, have been a prevalent phenomenon in MOBA games, and game companies often adopt moderation systems to deal with the toxicity. However, previous studies suggested that players may have different interpretation and player use of the moderation systems, compared to the official explanations of the systems given by the game companies, and players in different MOBA games have different attitudes towards the same moderation system. But, to date, no study has compared the moderation systems in different games or investigate how players interpret the differences between the moderation systems. Therefore, in this thesis, the researcher investigates the similarities and differences between the moderation systems in two popular MOBA games, DOTA2 and League of Legends, and further explores the player perception of these moderation systems. The methods used in this thesis are conceptual modeling and semi-structured interview. The findings show that the two games have similar frameworks of their moderation systems, but the design philosophies behind the moderation systems are different. Players in the two games both report toxic behaviors included in the official taxonomy, but besides this similarity, the two groups of players interpret and use moderation systems in different ways, aligned with the design philosophies behind the moderation systems in their own games. The results also imply possible relationships between the different moderation system design and the difference between player interpretation and player use. Based on the findings, this thesis also gives three suggestions for future moderation system design.

This dissertation studies bad behavior at large-scale using data traces from online video games. Video games provide a natural laboratory for exploring bad behavior due to their popularity, explicitly defined (programmed) rules, and a competitive nature that provides motivation for bad behavior. More specifically, we look at two forms of bad behavior: cheating and toxic behavior. Cheating is most simply defined as breaking the rules of the game to give one player an edge over another. In video games, cheating is most often accomplished using programs, or "hacks," that circumvent the rules implemented by game code. Cheating is a threat to the gaming industry in that it diminishes the enjoyment of fair players, siphons off money that is paid to cheat creators, and requires investment in anti-cheat technologies. Toxic behavior is a more nebulously defined term, but can be thought of as actions that violate social norms, especially those that harm other members of the society. Toxic behavior ranges from insults or harassment of players (which has clear parallels to the real world) to domain specific instances such as repeatedly "suiciding"" to help an enemy team. While toxic behavior has clear parallels to bad behavior in other online domains, e.g., cyberbullying, if gone unchecked it has the potential to "kill" a game by driving away its players. We first present a distributed architecture and reference implementation for the collection and analysis of large-scale social data. Using this implementation we then study the social structure of over 10 million gamers collected from a planetary scale Online Social Network, about 720 thousand of whom have been labeled cheaters, finding a significant correlation between social structure and the probability of partaking in cheating behavior. We additionally collect over half a billion daily observations of the cheating status of these gamers. Using about 10 months of detailed server logs from a community owned and operated game server we next analyze how relationships in the aforementioned online social network are backed by in-game interactions. Next, we use the insights gained and find evidence for a contagion process underlying the spread of cheating behavior and perform a data driven simulation using mathematical models for contagion. Finally, we build a model using millions of crowdsourced decisions for predicting toxic behavior in online games. To the best of our knowledge, this dissertation presents the largest study of bad behavior to date. Our findings confirm theories about cheating and unethical behavior that have previously remained untested outside of controlled laboratory experiments or only with small, survey based studies. We find that the intensity of interactions between players is a predictor of a future relationship forming. We provide statistically significant evidence for cheating as a contagion. Finally, we extract insights from our model for detecting toxic behavior on how human reviewers perceive the presence and severity of bad behavior.

Mängden människor som spelar datorspel ökar, och det gör även bekymmerna om den ökande ‘toxiciteten’ inom tävlings inriktade online spel, som League of Legends och Overwatch. Detta är ett beteende som både Blizzard och Riot Games har erkänt och därmed har utvecklat mer avancerade system som har som syfte att stimulera positivt beteende istället för att bara straffa negativa beteenden. Nämligen Honor level systemet och Endorsement-systemet. I denna studie har vi valt att genomföra en teoretisk analys där vi jämför dessa två system för att avgöra hur de hindrar eller underlättar en negativt påverkande spelestetik. För att vi ska kunna beskriva hur en negativt påverkande spelestetik underlättas använder vi ‘underlättande estetik’, som representerar de kontextuella faktorerna som ger upphov till ett negativt påverkande spelarbeteende i tävlingsinriktade och lagbaserat spel. För att vi ska kunna avgöra hur en negativt påverkande spelestetik hindras använder vi ‘motiverande estetik’, som beskrivs som det "roliga" i spel. Vi börjar vår analys med att visualisera heders systemen, vi använder sedan denna visualisering för att bestämma spelmekaniken och deras dynamik för att vi ska kunna förutsäga det estetiska resultatet av dessa spelmekaniker i enlighet med MDA-ramverket och jämföra dem. Vi har upptäckt att, för att en spelmekanik ska underlätta en negativt påverkande spelestetik måste den ge upphov till en underlättande estetik. För att en spelmekanik ska hindra en negativt påverkande spelestetik måste den ge upphov till en motiverande estetik, men också stimulera positivt beteende. / As the amount of people that play video games is growing, so is the concern surrounding the increasing toxicity within competitive online games, such as League of Legends and Overwatch. This is a concern that both Blizzard and Riot Games have acknowledged, and have thus developed more advanced systems that intend to incentivize positive behavior instead of just punishing toxic behavior. Namely the Honor level system and Endorsement system. In this study, we intend to conduct a comparative theoretical analysis of these two systems to determine how they hinder or facilitate a toxic game aesthetic. For us to describe how a toxic game aesthetic is facilitated, we use facilitative aesthetics, which represents the contextual factors that give rise to toxic player behavior in competitive team-based games. For us to determine how a toxic game aesthetic is hindered, we use motivational aesthetics, which is described as the ‘fun’ in gameplay. We start our analysis by visualizing the honor systems to help us determine their mechanics and dynamics allowing us to predict the aesthetic outcomes in accordance with the MDA framework and compare them. We discovered a pattern that in order for a mechanic to facilitate a toxic game aesthetic, it needs to give rise to a facilitative aesthetic. For a mechanic to hinder a toxic game aesthetic it needs to give rise to a motivational aesthetic, but also incentivize positive behavior.

An Exploration of Human Resource Personnel and Toxic Leadership by Sabrina Michele Maxwell MA, Pepperdine University, 2006 MA, BIOLA University, 2003 BS, BIOLA University, 2001 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Management Walden University May 2015 ' Toxic leaders are destructive of morale, productivity, and organizational effectiveness. Literature has reported the perspectives of followers, and sometimes how organizations address those toxic behaviors, but research has not examined the perspectives of human resource (HR) managers who must detect the existence of toxic behaviors and handle with the consequences of them. To address that gap, the purpose of this study was to determine how HR managers handle the destructive effects of toxic leaders. Schmidt's definition of toxic leadership guided this phenomenological study about the lived experiences of HR managers involving the presence of a toxic leader. The goal of this study was to discover the processes used by HR personnel to identify and manage the conflict created by the behavior of the toxic leader. With this knowledge HR may be more effective and toxicity may be managed at an earlier stage. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 9 HR managers who reported some experience with a toxic leader and who belonged to the Professionals in Human Resource Association. The results identified a process commonly used by HR for managing conflicts created by a toxic leader, and revealed a negative impact of managing the conflict on the HR managers themselves. Positive social change may occur within organizations by applying the process outlined in this study for identifying and reducing the negative effects of toxic leaders before significant damage to people and organizations can occur.

Over the past decades, the scholarly discourse of violent video games as a possible influence for aggressive behaviors has gained much attention, primarily relying on the content of such games. This study aims to explore the environment of competitive multiplayer gaming interms of technicality (e.g. game mechanics), social interactions within a video game, and additional resources outside of the game as possible influential factors for toxic behaviors in competitive multiplayer games. Bourdieusian social theory is applied to gain a better understanding of the relationship between agents (players) and the field (competitive gaming) and the relevance of gaming capital. This study is based on a digital ethnographic approach to gain a comprehensive understanding of the gaming environment, and reports on semi-structured online interviews with 14 participants aged between 17-40, to gain insight on players’ perception and responses towards toxic behaviors in competitive games. This study proposes a spectrum of toxic behaviors in competitive multiplayer games, in which actions may be distinguished based on the form of expression (eg. verbal, physical or in-game). Primary findings suggest there may be a causal relationship between a player’s knowledge ofa game and their conveyance of toxicity, regardless of age and gender. The degree of toxicity may vary depending on the player, and is more frequently performed by men. Lastly, toxic behaviors should not be examined in isolation from contextual factors such as game mechanics or social interactions, but need to be further explored as a medium-specific phenomenon.