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Crowdsourcing, Communities and Social Identities: Using Citizen Science to Combat Online Toxicity

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Serious Games (JCSG 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9894))

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Abstract

Today, over 1.5 billion people worldwide play digital games, a number projected to rise to 4.5 billion by 2020 due to the proliferation of mobile devices. With modern games being connected experiences where people from around the world coming together to compete, cooperate, and otherwise participate in virtual worlds, the social systems within games and the behaviors they facilitate have become topics of great interest, especially with the recent focus on player toxicity. Previously, successful commercial games simply had to engage players through compelling narratives, meaningful challenges, and a sense of achievement. However, with the rise of multiplayer elements and online games, the relationships players have with game communities and developer-constructed identities become far more central to enjoyment and retention. This paper suggests that online toxicity results from threats to the agency of these constructs, and that Games with a Purpose may play a role in managing toxicity-causing role paradoxes.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission and the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation. The author thanks the MacArthur Foundation for support on a previous study on network culture, and Kathleen Yin (University of Queensland) & Kristin Siu (Georgia Institute of Technology) for useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Serious Games SIG, International Game Developers Association, Philadelphia, USA

    Matthew D. Lee

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  1. Matthew D. Lee
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Correspondence to Matthew D. Lee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Tim Marsh

  2. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, United Kingdom

    Minhua Ma

  3. SINTEF Technology and Society, Oslo, Norway

    Manuel Fradinho Oliveira

  4. University of Bremen, Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge

  5. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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Lee, M.D. (2016). Crowdsourcing, Communities and Social Identities: Using Citizen Science to Combat Online Toxicity. In: Marsh, T., Ma, M., Oliveira, M., Baalsrud Hauge, J., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9894. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45841-0_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45841-0_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45840-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45841-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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