Usernames reveal the age and psychology of game players
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I would love to see someone tackle some solutions to this problem with some A/B testing. Sadly I don't think my userbase is large enough or antisocial enough for me to effectively test it.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/wha...
Am I missing something here? The idea that SatansDick2007 is probably an 8 year old troll won't come as a shock to much of anyone.
Its easy to say 'we knew that' post hoc, but they've done the science. (Also, hindsight bias is a real thing.)
This seems like the opening step in a line of research. Its like in Feynman's 'cargo cult science' address about the (apocryphal?) experimenter 'Young': this is learning how to carefully do science in this domain. http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
I'm sure the research in this area will uncover more unintuitive things later!
I mean, there's the things we know, and then there's the things that have been scientifically studied and validated.
And then there's the things that really don't need to be validated.
I once had someone claim that if you drove a vehicle through mud, it would get muddy. But since it hasn't been scientifically proven and validated, do I really "know" that to be true?
Is this really going to be an existential crisis where we don't really know anything until science tells us it's true?
This on the other hand is like profiling someone's personality based on their choice of ringtone, t-shirts or bumper stickers. It's not very interesting to learn that such choices map well with demographics.
I am instead making reference to Richard Feynman's commencement speech, titled 'Cargo Cult Science' (see link I provided) in which he talks about what is necessary for good science.
I even have an email dated Oct 12 2010:
> 2. Has the idea of a "Summoner Spotlight" ever been discussed? I think a small article written by a Summoner about their own character, and approved by Riot Staff could do wonders to enrich Roleplay almost to the point of The Hollow.[0]
Suddenly, on Oct 22 2010 Summoner Spotlights showed up! Probably a coincidence since the content was totally different, but for a fan like me at the time it was exciting. [1]
To say I was drooling the Kool-Aid at the idea of having a positive community would be an understatement.
Then something must have happened internally because Babaganush was soon fired and nothing was really done to stop the community from suddenly becoming overwhelmed with adolescents describing their urges surrounding "Nikasaur" once the Spotlights did show up. That, coupled with the in-game behavior, made the whole community smell of rot.
I left after it became clear Riot was not actually focused on really cleaning up the community. Riot took the game towards the e-sports competitive scene which, sadly, helped shape the community into what it was and is. I've heard the Tribunal has helped, but it's not one of those features that is going to make me come back.
[1] http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_Showcase
EDIT: To the downvoters, if you disagree with how I am recounting history, please do elaborate. Riot got rid of a significant amount of their moderate playerbase by their early business decisions, which was a contributing factor to having a negative-attitude playerbase in the 2010-2012 years. That negative attitude at this point has become a stereotype, and perhaps it could have been avoided.
That said, honestly, you can't prevent people from saying things you don't like, especially a bunch of anonymous kids. They can always sign up for a new account or whatever. Better just to punish and move on, especially as they have plenty of things to lose for being a jerk (IP, rank, champions, money they've spent, etc.).
The Tribunal is gone, but you can file reports, some punishments are automatic (did they spend the entire game swearing at their team and get reported?), you can mute anyone you like, etc.
Many years, I last solidly played sometime in 2011 and maybe a couple games with close friends in 2012.
I fully realize I am out of date, but I just wanted to provide a perspective of LoL that most people do not realize: There was a significant community of roleplay/lore interest in the game early on, most of whom were not the ragey type, that was immediately alienated by Riot's early business and personnel decisions. That brutal year or so of negativity within their community that still plagues the MOBA image could have been avoided if the more moderate parts of their community from the beta and first year had not been driven away.
Small RP communities rarely survive contact with the outside world. Sad, but true, in my experience. I've yet to see one grow large, especially when mixed with other people who simply aren't interested in that. Lore in LOL is more of a long-running gag at this point, though there are a couple of interesting champion interactions in game (Khazix vs. Rengar, battles for the Frejliord). But most of it doesn't make sense, the entire summoner thing was retconned out of existence, and would you even guess that Janna and Singed are from Zaun?
LoL is still easily the most toxic community I've ever laid eyes on, and most of the toxicity is created by the way Riot has implemented their system.
All it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and refuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you (you're forced to play a game with someone who is purposefully losing the game because they didn't get what they wanted, and there's nothing you can do except spend the next 30-40 minutes in a game you know is a loss or get banned for leaving the game early).
The result is that the community writes these long articles about the "art of dodging". For those unaware, the game happens in 2 stages. "champ select" during which everyone decides on the role and character they're going to play, and then the game itself. If you leave during champ select you get a penalty before you can rejoin a game. First dodged game is 5 minutes, every subsequent dodge is 30 minutes (resets 24 hours after your first dodge).
Because champ select + game tends to last an hour and a dodge only lasts 30 minutes, you save time by dodging and waiting. It gets more subtle than that, in that your teammates might get angry at you halfway through the game and then decide to purposefully lose the game for you. Because of this, it becomes an art to determine how much risk you have of wasting time going into a game.
So there's these guides running around about how to determine when to dodge as a means of climbing rank (most people will tell you that learning when to dodge is absolutely a skill necessary for climbing quickly).
This is all a result of Riot's decision not to give players a means of extricating themselves from these games in a reasonable manner coupled with too much leniency in ranked games with respect to people who do this sort of thing.
What happens a lot of times is people get really angry because they end up wasting 3 or 4 hours from these trolls in a single day. A 17 year old off for the summer can play 10+ games a day, a 25 year old with a job cannot, and so that 25 year old can often get very frustrated when he loses multiple games in a row due to trolls. And when you consider it takes another win to even out the loss, it's actually 2 hours that troll took away from you.
I stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it is to play that game and climb rank.
Then I would submit that you lack experience, they're towards the head of the pack. Also, from that language, you appear to be a bit toxic yourself.
> All it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and refuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you
You can mute them. What you cannot do is ruin other 8 other peoples' day because of one guy. Moreover, the new pick intent systems are calculated to avoid trolling due to conflict over desired role.
Champ select remains a problem they're working on, and there are games worth dodging, but they're far in the minority for me. Of course I'm happy to support, so no one is ever forced into that role unwillingly.
> I stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it is to play that game and climb rank.
Ranked is inherently frustrating due to being competitive. Not everyone there is trolling, some are just having really bad games and there's almost a Poe's Law where you can hardly tell the difference. You will find that people are stressed in any competitive game, though, and LoL is really not as bad as most.
Note: I've never been banned. Granted, I'm only Gold II myself, but I have played with and against Challengers.
Which is the other part of the community that frustrates me. Riot has spent a lot of time worrying about "chat toxicity" when in fact it's a non-issue due to the mute feature. They've put all this effort into machine learning so they can start banning people automatically for things people find offensive (IIRC, one of their touted successes was folks in asian countries using last names as an insult. The system learned that was offensive and started suspending people automatically for doing it).
Imagine if all that effort was instead put into social engineering to help tamp down on people's frustrations with ranked.
But it won't be, because ultimately the really loud people are those like you who think disagreement or criticism is tantamount to being toxic (instead of demanding that they change the ranked system to put less power in the hands of the assholes). And yes, I did catch that you edited in that jab about me being toxic after the fact, did you seriously think you were going to get a rise out of me?
The truth is I've been playing multiplayer games since the old MUD days before Ultima Online and Everquest were ever a thing. Back when colored text was considered a luxury and people would switch clients based upon the speed of the triggers (especially for pk). I've been involved in enough communities that someone calling me a bad name on the internet rolls off my back.
But you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ select "mid or feed", or "me and X duo bot or feed" and then watching everyone else forced into the following decisions:
1) give them what they want, 2) refuse and risk wasting 2 hours of your time (an extra game to make up for the loss) 3) dodging and being forced to sit out for 30 minutes.
Because riot doesn't give them a 4th option 4) opt into giving up the game early.
Here's how poorly designed Riot's ranked system is.
This is the internet. This means people will have disconnection issues. It's normal.
If someone fails to connect to the game (from minute 0), Riot forces the other 4 players to continue playing the game. If any of those 4 players leave they risk getting suspended or banned, and no matter what they do, they take a loss on their ranked record. They automatically lose 2 hours of their life because someone's internet crapped out.
Of course people find that shit frustrating.
A primary reason Riot has so many shitty people acting shitty in their system is because the design of their system gives those bad actors all of the power.
For anyone who is truly curious, watch this video. This man is spot on, and if you doubt it, keep in mind that I stopped playing the game specifically for the reasons this man spoke about.
It's not disagreement, it's how you express it ("crock"). I cannot agree that it's a "jab" to call someone on expressing themselves in a negative way, though, nor do I want a rise out of you--only self-awareness. It's true that I edited that in, my bad for not calling that out. As you can see, you were downvoted for that and neither of us is able to downvote the other.
They are trying to get rid of some of the frustration with ranked by making people call two roles and changing champ select. They have also studied the negativity regarding this. What they haven't done is copy DOTA2's leaver system.
> But you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ select "mid or feed", or "me and X duo bot or feed"
Does this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?
I honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called on it if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there have been network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.
YOU don't like how I expressed my disagreement. I could copy/paste what I said before about loud people being loud and it would be just as valid.
> As you can see, you were downvoted for that and neither of us is able to downvote the other.
How many people read that post and chose not to downvote?
This goes back to what I said before about loud people who are overly sensitive. Most people read it and passed on by.
> Does this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?
When people realize declaring support will give them a faster queue, they'll start declaring support and then refuse to take the role using the same tactics. The duo's will still attempt to force the roles they want and exhibit the same behavior as they are currently.
People's internet will still crap out and those 4 players will still be forced to play it out.
It will have an effect, but not nearly as large an effect as you're trying to imply. They need to give the group as a whole more power to deal with the bad actors.
> I honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called on it if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there have been network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.
That must mean it doesn't happen, right?
As for Loss Prevented, it has to get extremely bad before they use that. I've seen too many instances of consistent disconnects in games over hours and days where no Loss Prevented was given. Loss Prevented is, by definition, late to the party and their last resort for the most dire of situations. Any discussion about how to deal with things such as random disconnects by players cannot include Loss Prevention as a possible solution.
And whoever downvoted you. You may not realize it, but you read like someone who got banned for raging at others. It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.
And with that said, I'm out. Have a good evening.
To be fair, that reason right there is the entire reason early groups of human beings -- me, many of my friends, and many strangers -- fled League of Legends. Coming out of beta, that was the only defense a person could take. And it stayed like that for way too long. People have human limits -- to embody this self-defense of "just ignore it" is limiting Riot's player pool to only those who have the mental and emotional fortitude of a machine. Surprise: people are not machines. Taking the humanity out of the individual has been, and still sounds like, the root of the bad behavior in the LoL community.
The proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on, not making the game worse for the eight people who had nothing to do with it.
There's nothing to "defend" yourself from: they're words, you're not being "attacked" that's ridiculous hyperbole.
Nowhere did I say to take revenge.
> People who cannot keep the peace when someone trolls are are part of the toxicity
Nowhere did I say to go up in arms and start a mob war, either. Being silent and "just ignoring it" is not the same as keeping the peace. I agree with your notion that feeding trolls is also bad, but because people are humans and not machines I have to disagree that they are part of the toxicity. They are a symptom of it; a side-effect. Curing that symptom is all that Riot really wanted to do in the early days, which is why I quickly abandoned the community.
I really do not think my original point was properly conveyed so let me clarify further:
There is someone being negative. That is the fundamental problem that needs to get solved[0]. As I mentioned before, Riot's stand has always been to "just ignore it" or "don't be a symptom". So:
> The proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on
Is really Riot's sentiment from 2010: "Just ignore it". "Don't feed the troll". "Don't become a symptom of the toxicity". These statements are equivalent to saying: "Players are expected to have the mental and emotional fortitude of a machine". Tough shit if a guy instalocks Ez and calls mid, and tough shit if a teammate purposely feeds kills. Under the "Just ignore it" doctrine, there is no recourse during the negative experience. Sure, after ruining the experience the negative person could be reported. But its no surprise there are people that would rather not have to put up with the bad experience in the first place.
> not making the game worse for the eight people who had nothing to do with it.
That right there is what is wrong fundamentally. The implication is that the game is already bad because of one negative player. See [0] above.
So when I originally replied to the comment:
> It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.
I was not talking about revenge in the sense you were describing it. League has a huge community and therefore huge peer pressure. Bite back by leveraging that peer pressure for good: getting people to encourage each other to try new characters when they queue for a week straight with the same character, or encourage when making good cooperative plays, or not letting people instalock multiple games in a row, or being able to boot people back into queue if being obnoxious in champ select, or having mods review game chat while games are going on, or creating a culture of support by giving probationary people pink names and making it cool to encourage them when they display positive behavior. There are a ton of ideas like this, and they were there in 2010. But fundamentally, Riot seems OK with that first negative player. That low bar is why I do not play.
> There's nothing to "defend" yourself from: they're words, you're not being "attacked" that's ridiculous hyperbole.
No, it is not ridiculous hyperbole because that is not what I am saying. Please, quit the attempts of putting up a strawman argument.
But since you (trollishly?) went there, it is clear that the power of words may be lost for you. For other people, words can be emotionally charged. It is unreasonable to ask others to also trivialize their emotions (See the theme of my posts?). If I am a tank and I see a teammate say: "Our tank is a fucking gringo cracker nigger faggot slut bitch for feeding their carry", that carries some emotionally charged weight to it.
If you take anything away from my post it is this:
That first negative player is the root of the problem. Players are humans: they will sometimes feed back as a symptom. Leverage the players' humanity for good to fix the root problem instead of trying to turn them into emotion-less robots fixing the symptom.
That said, I personally, when I was an admin of a completely different online game, have been called every single insult, swear word, and racial epithet (I learned most of them from said trolls). I did not lose my cool or even rage at them, I keep the idiot talking to me (and away from the public chat) until a higher one could come on to ban them. It's better when they suffer from their own rage rather than you :)
But if someone is doing something that gets you banned (or in trouble) when someone else does something that upsets you, well, I can't agree with that just being a "symptom" because then there would be no "disease" in the first place. Everyone has to take responsibility for themselves because nobody else can.
And on that note, I do apologize, because I think my tone sounds worse than I intended in a few places and I don't mean to blame you for any specific problems. I'm just explaining that keeping chat peaceful requires that people do not feed trolls and those who start trolling because of another troll also require punishment, generally chat bans. And there's only one person with control (and thus, responsibility) for one's emotions: the person themselves. Learning self control takes practice, though.
You've been unfair this entire conversation, but you've also been very loud about your feelings.
If Riot would concentrate on making the ranked experience less frustrating for people it would go a long way towards tamping down on a lot of the negativity.
The most frustrating part is that I like the game a lot, but I flat can't put in the amount of time required due to the trolls and such.
Running a similar analysis on Wikipedia might be interesting, minus the age analysis.
Either way, while it was fairly obvious to anyone who runs forums or other communities, it's nice to see some actual research that backs up our common sense intuitions here.
On another note though, do you what would also be interesting to study here?
The correlation between avatars and age, psychology, etc.
Because let's face it, the picture someone choses to go with their profile (or the in game model they design or choose for an online game) says at least as much about them as their name does. A lot of people do tend to choose pictures or characters that look a bit like what they look like in real life (or in a lot of kids case, what they wished they looked like).
P.S. Am I the only one somewhat surprised about the 'ages figured from usernames tend to match what was entered on registration' aspect? Given that a lot of games and communities are 13+ only (or perhaps older), I'd expect a lot of kids to lie about their age when signing up.
We're using neural networks to predict future actions of users from weakly-correlating metrics and achieved surprising accuracy from one day of tinkering.
I imagine there are other types of information that can be inferred from an alias. It supports the argument that metadata contains private information. As well whether use of pseudonyms provides anonymity.
On Reddit a username with 88 in it can be interpreted as a dog whistle for racists.
Although considering how popular League of Legends is with Chinese people, the other hypothesis seems much more reasonable.
Or NASCAR fans. Which contrary to popular belief is not the same thing.
Surprising?
This filter is rather different in different situations, because what is appropriate (and what has consequences) is different in different situations. In a very real way, I would argue that changing that filter enough (and pesudoanonymity is usually 'enough') makes you, essentially, a different person.
Most people, in a pseudonymous situation, have much less of a filter, in part because bad behavior is more acceptable, and in part because bad behavior has fewer negative consequences, both to themselves and others, than it does in a real life situation. (I'm not saying that there are no consequences; people are hurt. But usually not as much as people would be hurt if the same people removed the same filters in real-life interactions.)