Player Ratings & Team Matching

Project Description

Designing the Call of Duty companion app for female players that consistently get harassed by verbally abusive, toxic teammates.

Problem

41% of all gamers are female – and as a collective experience the same disturbing harassment over voice chat while playing online. We found that this problem is not unique to Call of Duty, but transcends to all first-person shooter games. The solution? Filter out toxic players through a robust player rating system that incentivizes players to rate by acquiring in-game rewards, and allows players to pick and choose who they get paired with by setting teammate preferences based off their top-rated traits and playing styles.

Insights

There are two major factors that cause offensive behavior in gaming, either the players are intrinsically aggressive, or the players are motivated by competition to act aggressively. Toxic behavior in gaming is extremely prominent due to lack of accountability or punishment. Since there is no immediate consequence or gratification when a report is submitted, many players see the reporting system as not useful and prefer to mute or ignore them instead.

Solutions

Rather than attempting to punish bad behavior, an effective method of accountability is to incentivize good behavior amongst players. Rewards being given to quality teammates motivates players to both increase their skillset as well as act as a team player, in turn promoting a culture of positive teammate encounters.