Studying toxic behavior influence and player chat in an online video game

Abstract

Many online collaborative games, e-sports in particular, heavily rely on teamwork. However, players can act in an antisocial way during the match, creating dissent into the match. This kind of behavior is referred to as toxic. We aim to discover the influence brought by toxic behavior in a popular e-sport, League of Legends, through the study of communication patterns of players during the match. We discovered that different communication patterns exist, and that they are directly related to player performance and level of toxic behavior. We also propose metrics to analyze players' performance and the toxic contamination level, which measures the negative impacts of the toxic behavior. Our analysis contributes to shed light on how players behave in an online game, and opens ways to provide a better ambience on the online video game community.