Prosocial behavior in an online game community: An ethnographic study

Yubo Kou, Magnus Johansson, Harko Verhagen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2017
EditorsAlessandro Canossa, Miguel Sicart, Casper Harteveld, Jichen Zhu, Sebastian Deterding
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450353199
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 14 2017
Event12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2017 - Cape Cod, United States
Duration: Aug 14 2017Aug 17 2017

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series
VolumePart F130151

Conference

Conference12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCape Cod
Period8/14/178/17/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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