Grigoryan, 1

Artur Grigoryan
Kyle Thiele
English 101-21
11/4/15
Teasing and Verbal Abuse.
Video games are taking over, online games in particular. Online Games contribute to over
53% of media sales and 40% of the media market (Doglov 49). All online games include a mode
of communication, ranging from chat to actual talking. In the case that the game does not provide
it, third party applications are available as a means of communication. This communication
ranges from friendly chat about the weather (and my grandmas health) to heated argument and
verbal abuse. Some examples of offensive language include: You are a f--king worthless piece
of s--t and should go kill yourself. (http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2393394), this
is an extreme, yet same ideas can be conveyed without the use of obscene language. Another
extreme is being over sensitive, getting offended by anything negative anyone says. The debate
is, how can one differentiate between abuse and teasing, joking, trolling, trash talk and innocent
blurs? The line should exist not as a rigid structure separating the abusive players from positive,
but a tool for reforming players to act kinder towards others.
There are several causes of abuse. Balci states that aggression after playing video games
is the result of two types of violence. Avatar aggression is the violent behavior inside the video
game itself. The second one he calls player aggression, aggression and violence that originates
from fellow gamers (1). In both cases viewing the violence can lead the gamer to get involved
himself. I agree that no all aggression and violence as a result of gaming is caused by the game
but also by other games, yet I think that the stimuli outside the video game should be also take
into account. This is exactly what Lin tries to get across in his presentation. He states that Most

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of the abusive behavior is caused by people having a bad day and a lowered tolerance towards
the mistakes of others. (___). The bad days used to be a result of stuff going wrong in the
physical realm, but with the raise of intensity in video games doing well or not has effects on the
gamers.
After researching for this paper my own gaming experience has changed. I started
realizing and noting what I felt like and wanted to act like. I realized that my bad moods were
caused not only by players on my team going AFK( away from computer) or trying to ruin the
game on purpose. What affected me more what losing the game. Losing made me angry at my
team, and less likely to help team mates in another game or my brother and mother. Yet when I
won a game, I felt on a high of a sort. An achievement in the cyberspace made me feel like I
can do things in the real world. Similarly, in his experiment, Igor Doglov looks at what has the
most effect on the player. He takes two variables into account: avatar customization and the type
of game played. Then compares which contributes to most helpful behavior. Instead of finding
exactly what he came for Doglov finds that those who win a cooperative game are much more
likely to help others and help for a longer/larger quantity (52). Even though over all failure or
success had a great impact, the atmosphere within the game had impacts.
The atmosphere in the game is not only made up by players and their current emotional
balance but also by how they interact with each other. In his research Bali discovers that The
longer a player is in the gaming community the more skill he has to combat and avoid this tight
situations (6). This means that abusers tend to get filtered out by the community early on and
they are not present in the higher ranks. Yet this doesnt eliminate the casual abusers and gamers
who just had a bad day. Yet even when 2 out of 5 players on your team are AFK staying positive
and communicating with your team and even the enemy can help you have a gg (good game),

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which is what the game is all about anyways, having a good time rather than winning or losing.
Not all tight situations resolve with the two teams honoring each other.
As stated before the outcome of the game and the mindset that the gamers leave the game
with carries over into next the next game and into the real realm. The developers of League of
Legends, Riot, have realized this over 2 years ago. Jeffrey Lin, the social systems designer states
so in his GDC presentation (Have no clue what to do is it by minute?). Realizing that aggression
spreads from game to game, Riot implemented a few new features into their game. First of all
they allowed cross team chat. This enabled enemies to have fun by trash talking and
congratulating each other on good plays. Yet it also opened a door to players abusing the enemy.
That seemed to be a major setback to this approach. Yet the gamers did not encourage this type
of behavior. They asked the other team to help them in warning or reporting the abuser. This lead
to a 35% decrease in reports of abusive players. Besides cross team chat Riot also implemented
in game tips which stated the effects of abusive behavior on team mates. These one sentence tips,
when presented in the right color, lowered the aggression in the game by over 20%. Riot
realized that protecting players from abusive players will lower their change of becoming an
abuser themselves. Similarly, Balcis sole was to keep the ambiance of the game intact by
quickly punishing and banning abusive players (3). Such harsh measures are usually necessary
but there are exceptions, not all that seems abusive in fact is.
There is a difference between verbal abuse and trash talk. I never thought that there is a
difference before I watched a YouTube video. In his video, Trevorous discusses the methods of
trash talk, and why he uses them. He claims that trash talking is part of sports and a way to win
games. Dixons response supports the YouTubers thoughts, he summarizes how deals with trash
talk. He gives me the idea that trash talking is present in any competitive field. What they both

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forget to realize that there is only a thin line that separates trash talking and abuse. Tolerance and
mood of each individual gamer has to be taken into account. Some communities, like those of
actual world friends playing together, tend to allow more abuse towards each other. This is
accepted because the players realize that their fellows are just teasing and having a great time.
Yet the same set of words, when playing with total strangers.
Some might argue that the verbal abuse in online video games is a result of social skills
degradation in the gamers. The lack of physical conversation and Face-to-face time is the cause
of reduced social skills and empathy to understand the feelings of others. At first this might seem
as an answer yet research proves this hypothesis wrong. L. Mark and his team where interested
in this question and conducted field research. They found that though just playing video games
decreases the real world empathy, more so in females, and did not affect the quality of face-toface time. Yet they also found that socializing in an online environment leads to increase in both,
empathy and quality of real world conversation (45). This leads me to conclude that playing
games on your own without trying to cooperate or socialize can lead to decrease in empathy,
largely due to the violent content. Yet talking and chatting with friends while playing can
increase empathy and level up you conversation skills.
Acceptance of trash talking in the completive setting is not far from current debate. Two
writers in particular argue about the topic. Dixon condemns the practice by stating that such
verbal attacks are demeaning to opponents and treat them merely as objects to be overcome in
the pursuit of victory (90). Summers defends the practice by explaining that competition in
modern sports is not to determine which side has more athletic skill, but which side know how to
undermine the opposing side using mental skills. These skills include trash talking and other

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ways to stand the enemy on edge (68). Even if trash talk should be accepted as part of
competition, there is only one way to offer fair judgment of when teasing becomes abuse.
Taking into account the fact that the tolerance of every gamer is deffirent, Riot has
created the tribunal. The Tribunal is a place where the community gets to decide each specific
case. Members of the community can log on and vote to either pardon the case or punish the
player (Hudson, 1). I think this idea works better than an automatic offender recognition system
presented by Balci because in the Tribunal real people make the vote. This means that the acused
player can not say that the system malfunctioned and judged him wrongly. Besides providing a
fair and flexible judgment system the tribunal is the ultimate way to let the community and
members that compose it know which behavior is acceptable and which behavior is not.
Every gamer is different due to the fact that they are real people. These people come from
different nations, cultures, backgrounds and families. Actions that are completely acceptable to
some communities and relationships, are foreign and offensive to others. There are those who
will abuse others just for fun. There are those who can be considered way to sensitive, yet others
just mute everyone and have no care in the world. There is no definitive line between trash
talking in order to win and ruining the experience of other players by verbal abuse. In the end the
line is personal on an individual level. The only sure way to never harm others is to be sensitive
and get on the good side of others instead of trying to see how close one can get without crossing
the line.

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Works Cited
Balci, Koray, and Albert Ali Salah. "Automatic Analysis and Identification of Verbal Aggression
And Abusive Behaviors for Online Social Games." Computers in Human Behavior 53.
(2015): 517-526. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Carrier, L. Mark, et al. "Virtual Empathy: Positive and Negative Impacts of Going Online Upon
Empathy in Young." Computers in Human Behavior 52.(2015): 39-48. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Dixon, Nicholas. "Trash Talking as Irrelevant to Athletic Excellence: Response to Summers."
Journal Of The Philosophy Of Sport 35.1 (2008): 90-96. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 5 Nov. 2015.
Dolgov, Igor, et al. "Effects of Cooperative Gaming and Avatar Customization on Subsequent
Spontaneous Helping Behavior." Computers in Human Behavior 33.(2014): 49-55.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Hodson, Hal. "Moderate Your Language." New Scientist 218.2912 (2013): 18. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
Lin. I have no clue how to cite a video http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-BehindShaping-Player
Summers, Chuck. "OuchYou Just Dropped the Ashes." Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 34.1
(2007): 68-76. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.