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Breakling the ice - How game developers deal with toxic behaviors on Social VR Games
- 1. Breaking the Virtual Ice: Antisocial Behaviors in Social Virtual Reality and How Developers Cope with Them By Yasaman Farazan BA Final Thesis Winter Term 2020/2021 supervised by Prof. Dr. Roland Klemke
- 2. Outline ● Overview ○ Research Questions ● Background ○ Social VR ○ Embodiment in VR ○ Toxic Behaviors and Violations ○ Regulation and Social Control Tools ● Research ○ Recruitment ○ Participants ○ Results ○ Conclusion
- 3. Overview ● VR growing popularity ● Immersive experience ● Social VR ● Toxic behavior and violations in Social VR ● Moderation tools ● The Research Keywords: Virtual Reality, Social VR, Digital Game, Toxic Behavior, Digital Survey, Social Control Tools
- 4. RQ1: Which forms of antisocial behavior users experience in social VR applications, and how they differ from other social experiences?
- 5. RQ2: What is the impact of antisocial behavior on VR users' experience?
- 6. RQ3: Which tools and regulations developers have designed to halt or control antisocial behaviors, and how are they used by the users?
- 7. Background
- 8. Social VR Source: Steam Charts ● socializing in immersive virtual worlds ● Socializing, playing games, content creation, role playing ● VRChat, Rec Room
- 9. Source: SteamSpy & Steam Store Developer: VRChat Inc. Publisher: VRChat Inc. Release date: Feb 1, 2017 Owners: 5,000,000 .. 10,000,000 Steam Reviews: Very Positive (81,172)
- 10. Source: SteamSpy & Steam Store Developer: Rec Room Publisher: Rec Room Release date: Jun 28, 2016 Owners: 1,000,000 .. 2,000,000 Steam Reviews: Very Positive (11,685)
- 11. Embodiment in VR ● Creating empathy with VR ● VR accessories improvements ● An immersive and believable Experience
- 12. Toxic Behaviors and Violations ● Interrupting the victims experience ● Deprivation ● VR Exclusive challenges ● synchronous nature
- 13. Toxic Behaviors and Violations ● Verbal harassments ● Physical harassments ● Environmental harassments ● Children without supervision
- 14. Regulation and Social Control Tools ● Muting ● Kicking ● Reporting ● Banning ● Personal Space Bubble
- 15. Regulation and Social Control Tools
- 16. Regulation and Social Control Tools
- 17. Regulation and Social Control Tools
- 18. Research
- 19. Method
- 20. Recruitment ● Online survey (Google Forms) ● 24 questions in 6 sections ● quantitative and qualitative data
- 21. Recruitment ● VR Reddit forums ● Shared on personal Twitter account ● RecRoom and VRChat official Discord community servers ● 9th until 20th of December 2020
- 22. Participants ● Number of Participants: 96 valid responses ● Age: from 12 to 49 years old ● Gender: 78 male, 16 female, and 2 nonbinary ● Country: 39 European countries, 30 from US, 11 Canada, 6 from Asia ● Ethnicity: 73 white, 6 Latin American, 8, Southeast Asian, 4 West Asian ● Occupations: 44 student, 9 IT, 8 retail
- 23. Participants ● frequency of using VR headsets ● Typical activities of participants in VR
- 24. Results
- 25. Results ● Rated their VR experience very positive (mean score: 4.26) ● What would they change if they could change one thing in social VR? ○ 70 answers was related to toxic behavior ○ 16 answers mentioned children using the platform
- 26. experienced or witnessed behaviors in social VR
- 27. How inappropriate participants find each item in Social VR
- 28. Results of knowledge and usage of social control tools
- 29. Conclusion
- 30. Limitations ● Possibility of biased sample group ● Differences in focused games ● Unbalanced gender ratio ● Prone to misunderstanding by participants ● Required more details on the experienced toxic behaviors
- 31. Conclusion ● RQ1: Which forms of antisocial behavior users experience in social VR applications, and how they differ from other social experiences? ● RQ2: What is the impact of antisocial behavior on VR users' experience? ● RQ3: Which tools and regulations developers have designed to halt or control antisocial behaviors, and how are they used by the users? ● A common event ● VR Exclusive behaviors (RQ1) ● physical harassment less irritating than verbal harassment ● Players are aware of social control tools (RQ3) ● leave a lobby or a game (RQ2)
- 32. CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon, infographics & images by Freepik THANKS Does anyone have any questions?
Notas del editor
- I am going to talk about antisocial behaviors in social virtual reality and how developers cope کوپ with them
- My talk will be roughly in 3 parts: The first part is an overview of my research and the research questions. The second part is about the meaning of social VR and its importance alongside embodiment and toxic behaviors. I will also introduce some social control tools that are used in some popular social VR games. Finally I’ll go on to talk about the research by mentioning the recruitment process, analyzing the results, and the conclusion.
- It has been predicted that VR headset growth will continue at a more rapid pace. The reduced price of new headsets compared to their ancestors makes them more accessible for a wider audience. Social VR games are one of the most commonly used applications on VR. Many of these games are available on VR headsets as well as PC, console, or mobile devices. In these online social environments, various players from different backgrounds, ages, or gender can participate in casual conversations, creating content, and playing games. Though on the darker side, users of these novel applications face behaviors that are not recommended by the developers or are not acceptable by the scales of real-world social norms. Social VR developers aim for a healthier and more welcoming place for as many players as possible and try to protect individuals' experiences. They have designed multiple social control tools to moderate toxic behaviors. In my research, I tried to get more insight into social VR and types of toxic behaviors and get to know various developers' solutions to this challenge. I prepared an online survey and analyzed the data to answer my research questions.
- This research intends to investigate the following questions: Which forms of antisocial behavior users experience in social VR applications, and how they differ from other social experiences? Even though social VR has many characteristics in common with other social media services or digital games, it fosters unique interactions that stem from its immersive quality. I tried to find out more about these interactions.
- For the second question, I wanted to know the impact of antisocial behavior on VR experience Online harassment is, unfortunately, widespread. Many people reported that they have been personally subjected to online harassment or witnessed these behaviors directed at others. Most participants considered online harassment a significant problem.
- Finally, I would like to find an answer to the question of which tools and regulations developers have designed to halt or control antisocial behaviors and how they are used by the users? Managing new behaviors emerging from the freedom that VR brings, poses many challenges for developers, both technically and design-wise. There is no doubt that they need to take action against toxicity. Since it is not only good for their community and publicity, it also has economic justification; Many players who have ever experienced any type of toxic behavior feel anxious to go back to that game.
- Before moving to the research let’s go through some backgrounds on the topic
- I mentioned social VR multiple times in this presentation. But now, let's dive deeper into what we really mean by it. Social VR refers to online applications that focus on socializing in immersive virtual worlds. Besides just socializing, it is possible to use these platforms to play games, create content, or Roleplaying, among other things. Still social features are an inseparable part of these games. Players shape huge communities around them, with various focus and purpose. Due to the emergent nature of these applications, players' interactions can be very unpredictable. VRChat and Rec Room are two of the most famous social VR games. They are both available on almost all possible VR and non-VR platforms for free. As you can see in the chart in the picture, their concurrent players have been rising recently. Since my research focus was on these two apps, I will show you some more data on VRChat and Rec Room in my next slides.
- VRChat was released in 2017, and it is still in early access. Based on SteamSpy, right now, it has more than 5 million owners. It has some advanced moderation systems that I haven’t seen in any other VR games so far. We will take a closer look at these tools later.
- Rec Room has been released in 2016 and has around 1 million users. It is more activity-focused and has many official and community-made games and rooms. Unlike VRChat that doesn’t allow children under 13 to play the game, Rec Room has some regulations and settings that enable this users to play the game with some limitations. Therefore it is more popular among the younger audience.
- We know that virtual reality is an immersive technology and a more personal experience. It is believed that these features make VR a great platform for creating positive impacts by giving a strong sense of presence. Right now the headsets can transfer your head and hands movement to the virtual world. Some accessories can even track a player's full-body motion. Hand tracking also enables users to simulate their precise hand movement on some headsets. The rise of graphics capabilities and a drop in their prices made VR more accessible to a broader audience. As we move on, the embodiment of an avatar in VR is becoming more immersive and believable. When wearing a VR headset, the user almost detaches from the real world. In this setting, any abusive or discomforting act is also received more intensely.
- Virtual toxicity was the byproduct of online communities since their formation. Assaults can interrupt the victim's experience and stop them from returning to the game or struggling with self-expression or stop using vulnerable avatars. These behaviors could make it impossible to bear for many individuals and deprive them of the whole experience. At the same time, the virtual world has the potential to be an inclusive space for everyone. Immersive nature brings some community management challenges that are exclusive to VR. Even the common toxic behaviors are perceived differently in VR setting. For instance, whispering a threat in an unsettling way or accompanying it with a gesture would leave a more intense effect on the victims. The synchronous nature of social VR makes it harder to record these events or avoid the hostile situation.
- Based on Oculus researches, toxic behaviors in Social VR can be roughly divided into three categories: verbal, physical, and environmental: Verbal harassment includes excessive swearing, explicit sexual language, cyber-bullying, inappropriate terms in usernames, threats to hack, hate speech, and violent speech. Physical harassment consists of sexual harassment like touching someone in a sextual way, making sexual gestures, stalking, blocking others' movements, entering others' personal space, or passing through others' avatars. Environmental harassment is done using virtual objects, showing offensive or violent content, or by using inappropriate avatars. In other words, they are usually intended to ruin others' experiences or exploit the system. Other violations may not be considered harassment but are not acceptable in most Social VR applications, like children under thirteen using Social VR without any supervision, or various forms of privacy violations. This is obviously not an exhaustive list. With more technical improvement and popularity of social VR, new toxic behaviors may appear. Different games foster different cultures due to their design and audience, and as a result, the intensity and frequency of these behaviors are also different on each.
- Social platforms are ongoing products, and their existence depends on their community. When it comes to games, each developer is responsible for their community. They also hold the most powerful tools to control and lead their users toward better behaviors. The emergent world of VR requires more care. More tools and options had been provided to change the outcome of a player’s unpleasant encounter. options like muting, kicking, reporting, or banning other users are well-known. One more common tool in social VR is Personal Space Bubble that prevents users from getting too close to each other when it is not intended or becoming invisible when entering this range. Some games also have a unique safe zone feature that allows players to quickly isolate themselves from the surrounding and mute all other avatars present in the room. This would put users in a space that will enable them to make further moves without any disturbance.
- One of the commonly used features in all games is contacting the game’s support. Facebook is planning to go further with its Social VR platform, called Horizon, by recording some footages to investigate the report in more detail. Oculus has also launched a new security feature that lets users send video reports to their Safety Center. Some games offer support inside the virtual world, which means the users can directly contact a virtual community manager avatar to report their case.
- Each of these features works differently on each platform, and there is no standardized interaction for them on VR yet. This means users have to learn them on each game. Since using these tools interrupts the immersion, developers try to implement them as intuitively as possible. For instance, Rec Room allows players to mute or block a user by holding their hand palm in front of them, instead of using a graphical user interface.
- Another noble tool is VRChat's trust system. According to the VRChat online guide, the trust and safety system is a ranking system to determine players' trust level, based on many variables. It is designed to shield users from annoying situations like loud sounds, visual noises, and other methods that someone may use to ruin others' experience. Ranks are also displayed on users' nameplates but are only visible when a user opens her quick menu. A rank called "Nuisance" نیوسنس is dedicated to users that have caused problems for others. At the time of writing my paper, this feature was in beta and may have changed by now.
- Even though social VR and cyber toxic behaviors are complicated subjects, I think we laid the groundwork for what comes next. The research.
- I surveyed around a hundred social VR players to get more insight into this community and their concerns to answer some of my research questions. The main focus of the survey was on toxic behavior and how social VR members receive them. Furthermore, the survey investigates whether players know and use safety tools in these applications.
- I prepared an online survey using Google Forms with 24 questions in 6 sections. Some questions were mandatory and some optional. I included a short description of social VR initially but tried not to reveal the research goals. In the first part, there were some demographic questions, continued with general questions about the participants' experience in VR. The next section was more on social VR. There have been no questions or mentioning of harassment up to this point. The next section was about toxic behavior and the knowledge and usage of social control tools. At the end of this part, participants could answer whether they have ever contacted the games' support. The final page was dedicated to asking more in-depth and less guided input from the participants with an open question.
- I shared the survey on Reddit for RecRoom, VirtualReality, PSVR, and VRChat and my personal Twitter account and on some related Discord community servers. The shared content on all of these platforms was very similar and consisted of a short personal introduction and asking for participation from those who have played social VR before. After receiving enough answers, I started analyzing the data and visualized it using Google Sheets.
- The survey got 106 responses. After removing duplicated or incomplete answers, spams, and answers from participants with no prior experience with social VR, it ended up with 96 responses. Participants' age ranged from 12 to 49, with an average of about 21. Many participants were 15 years old teenagers. You can see the distribution of age on the provided chart. Most participants were male and from European countries and the United States. Many of them identified themselves as white. Many were students. I had a question regarding disability, but I couldn't take the answers into account in my analyses since it missed a follow-up question about the type of disability.
- Most people said that they use VR games every day or many times a week. As expected, almost all participants said that they use VR mostly for gaming and socializing. VRChat was the most popular social VR platform, with 85 of them playing the game. Rec Room was the next favorite game with 64 answers. This was an expected result, considering that I shared the survey on channels related to these two games.
- Other survey questions revolve around the participants' social VR experiences and their thoughts and encounters with toxic behavior on these platforms. I will show you my analyses آنالیسیز for these data on the next slides.
- In the first question, I asked for an overall rating for their social VR experience, and most participants rated it as being very positive. This rating came before any questions about harassment. To get more insight into the most frustrating thing players experienced in social VR, I asked participants to describe what they would change in VR if they could change only one thing. Among 70 responses to this question, the most common theme was toxic behavior (n:20) and requests for fewer children using the platform (n: 16). Many survey participants conveyed their concern about juniors being exposed to content that are not appropriate for their age. Some were annoyed by the children's behavior on these platforms.
- To better understand toxicity frequency, participants were asked to report which items they have witnessed in a VR setting. Most of them said that they had encountered one or many of the mentioned items. Excessive swearing, children using content that are intended for adults, making a sexual gesture, passing through others' avatar, touching someone sexually, hate speech, entering others personal space, and inappropriate terms in usernames were the most commonly reported cases that more than half of the participants had experienced. Another analysis of this data shows the gap between different genders, as you can witness in the visualized data. This difference is more visible with stalking (difference: 222%), entering others personal space (difference: 205%), hate speech (difference: 203%), display of offensive content, (difference :200%), privacy violations (difference: 196%), and violent Content (difference: 193%).
- In the next question, they rated behaviors mentioned in the previous question based on how inappropriate they find them in a virtual world. For a better assessment, I analyzed the results in three different categories based on the Oculus research group study: verbal, physical, and environmental. In total, physical harassment, like entering other’s personal space, got the least ratings compared to the other two forms of harassment. Female participants rated harassments like touching someone sexually and making sexual gestures as intolerable and found entering personal space more inappropriate than male participants. Verbal harassments like excessive swearing and inappropriate terms got the least ratings. They were considered tolerable, except for hate speech, which is the item that is considered to be the most extreme among all (n: 42). The rating pattern was very much similar between male and female participants. The environmental harassments, like displaying offensive or violent content, were also common concerns among the participants. Other violations like privacy violation and children using Social VR were both among the actions that rated more inappropriate.
- Based on the survey, two social control tools, muting and reporting, were very well known and used by the participants. This is not a surprise, considering the frequency of verbal harassment that happens in social spaces. Two of the least recognized and used tools were about the personal safe zone and voting to suspend users. This may be due to the survey's wording and lack of common terms compared to more conventional tools. This finding confirms that most players are aware of the available tools to protect themselves from unsettling situations. Overall, participants were satisfied with the VR developers' performance regarding preventing or controlling toxic behaviors. Most of the unhappy participants were not satisfied with the support team's performance.
- In the end, I would like to get back to my initial questions to map them with my new findings from my researches and the survey.
- But before reaching the final conclusion, I would like to mention some limitations of my research: First, though I tried to gather answers from various places, the sample group was recruited through channels that were more populated by dedicated users. Even though this could be seen as a merit of the research, it may also mean that they could be more biased. The next limitation comes from the games. VRChat and Rec Room are both very popular Social VR games, but they are also very different in the overall experience, community moderation, and players’ culture. Also, the gender ratio was unbalanced, which make the gender related results less valid. In total, since the survey was conducted entirely online, it was prone to mistakes and misunderstanding by participants. Furthermore, my study did not distinguish between private and public virtual venues or between received and witnessed toxicity. The details of some harassment are important for making any applicable conclusion, considering the great possibilities in these immersive games.
- To sum up, I found that many players encounter various forms of harassment in their social VR experience and female players are more targeted. Regarding my first question, I find out about the various forms of antisocial behaviors that are feasible in this context that may not be achievable in other environments. I realized that players found physical harassment less irritating than verbal harassment. This result may be due to other factors like differences in participants' experiences or limitations. Answering the second research question about the impact of these antisocial behaviors requires more data. However, I realized that many players decide to leave a lobby or a game session whenever they encounter any abusive behavior. Fortunately, in theory most players were aware of some social control tools (RQ3) and have used them. In the end, as some participants also mentioned, many of these behaviors and how they are received are subjective, and players could receive them differently based on the context. As one of the participants pointed out, these platforms have their subcultures, and each subculture or group has its own implicit rules and social norms that may not be acceptable to others. But this usually gets more complicated in public hubs since people from different cultures and backgrounds may find fundamentally different situations more offensive than others.
- That concludes my research presentation. Thank you for your attention. I hope I can publish this research soon so it would help some other developers to make welcoming virtual environments for everyone. I’d be very interested to hear your comments or answer your questions.