research-article

Prosocial behavior in an online game community: an ethnographic study

Authors:

Magnus Johansson,

Harko VerhagenAuthors Info & Claims

FDG '17: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Article No.: 15, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/3102071.3102078

Published: 14 August 2017 Publication History

Abstract

We report an ethnographic study of prosocial behavior inconnection to League of Legends, one of the most popular games in the world. In this game community, the game developer, Riot Games, implemented a system that allowed players to volunteer their time to identify unacceptable player behaviors and punish players associated with these behaviors. With the prosocial goal of improving the community and promoting sportsmanship with in the competitive culture, a small portion of players worked diligently in the system with little reward. In this paper, we use interviews and analysis of forum discussions to examine how players themselves explain their participation in the system situated in the game culture of League of Legends. We show a myriad of social and technical factors that facilitated or hindered players' prosocial behavior. We discuss how our findings might provide generalizable insights for player engagement and community-building in online games.

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Cited By

Duguleană ATănăsescu CDuguleană M(2024)Emerging Trends in Play-to-Earn (P2E) GamesJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1901002619:1(486-506)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/jtaer19010026
Kim JOrtiz N(2024)Toxicity or Prosociality?: Civic Value and Gaming Citizenship in Competitive Video Game CommunitiesSimulation & Gaming10.1177/1046878124127789955:6(1057-1077)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781241277899
Johansson MStrååt BVerhagen H(2024)Just because you´re paranoid, doesn´t mean they aren´t after you - Meaningful distrust and game design patterns- a study of 4 gamesProceedings of the 27th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3681716.3681732(1-11)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3681716.3681732
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Prosocial behavior in an online game community: an ethnographic study
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods
      1. Field studies

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cover image ACM Other conferences

FDG '17: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

August 2017

545 pages

ISBN:9781450353199

DOI:10.1145/3102071

Conference Chair:
Sebastian Deterding
University of York
,
General Chairs:
Alessandro Canossa
Massive, Northeastern University
,
Casper Harteveld
Northeastern University
,
Program Chairs:
Jichen Zhu
Drexel University
,
Miguel Sicart
ITU Copenhagen

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Microsoft: Microsoft
Massive Entertainment: Massive Entertainment

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 August 2017

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FDG'17

Sponsor:

Microsoft
Massive Entertainment

FDG'17: International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games 2017

August 14 - 17, 2017

Massachusetts, Hyannis

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FDG '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 89 submissions, 40%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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Cited By

Duguleană ATănăsescu CDuguleană M(2024)Emerging Trends in Play-to-Earn (P2E) GamesJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1901002619:1(486-506)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/jtaer19010026
Kim JOrtiz N(2024)Toxicity or Prosociality?: Civic Value and Gaming Citizenship in Competitive Video Game CommunitiesSimulation & Gaming10.1177/1046878124127789955:6(1057-1077)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781241277899
Johansson MStrååt BVerhagen H(2024)Just because you´re paranoid, doesn´t mean they aren´t after you - Meaningful distrust and game design patterns- a study of 4 gamesProceedings of the 27th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3681716.3681732(1-11)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3681716.3681732
Boudreau K(2022)Beyond deviance: toxic gaming culture and the potential for positive changeCritical Studies in Media Communication10.1080/15295036.2022.208084839:3(181-190)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080848
Ata SMacun B(2021)Play tendency and prosociality in early childhoodEarly Child Development and Care10.1080/03004430.2021.1988943192:13(2087-2098)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2021.1988943
Türkay SAdinolf SBrewster SFitzpatrick GCox AKostakos V(2019)Friending to FlameProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300567(1-12)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300567
Drescher CWallner GKriglstein SSifa RDrachen APohl MMandryk RHancock MPerry MCox A(2018)What Moves Players?Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3174134(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3174134
Alissa KAlshehri HDahdouh SAlsubaie BAlghamdi AAlharby AAlmubairik N(2018)An Instrument to Measure Human Behavior Toward Cyber Security Policies2018 21st Saudi Computer Society National Computer Conference (NCC)10.1109/NCG.2018.8592978(1-6)Online publication date: Apr-2018
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Iten GBopp JSteiner COpwis KMekler E(2018)Does a prosocial decision in video games lead to increased prosocial real-life behavior? The impact of reward and reasoningComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2018.07.03189:C(163-172)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.chb.2018.07.031

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