OP-ED

Playing games is a fundamental part of being human. Whether you engage in monthly game nights with friends and family, or you spend hours each week logged into complex multiplayer worlds, you share a key thing in common with your fellow players: a sense of community.

Games have always centered around connecting with other players. As we saw during the height of the pandemic lock down, it became an important way for distant friends and family to stay in touch.

But community is important for other reasons as well. Forming friendships in game communities can aid in social and cognitive development for younger players, while helping older players feel less lonely or isolated. For developers, building a healthy community around a game is one of the best ways to improve engagement and retention.

In our research, nearly 40% of players say that the opportunity to interact with family and friends is what keeps them playing. In-game, players communicate with each other using text (41%) or voice chat (32%). This in-game dialogue often leads to friendships and connections that extend to social media, in-person interactions, messaging apps, game forums, and much more.

More than half of the players we surveyed belong to some form of game-related community, and three quarters of them rate it as an important part of their game experience. But that places a greater responsibility on developers, platforms, and other members of the games ecosystem to encourage and enable positive interactions.

Creating positive communities in games

Managing a community around a game title brings its own set of challenges, with the primary one being how to prevent or mitigate toxic behavior. When some players verbally abuse, attack, or gang up on others, it can cause the targets of this abuse to stop playing entirely.

Toxicity is one of the leading causes for decreased player engagement and lower retention rates, which can continue to be felt weeks or months after an incident has occurred. A disappointing 81% of players report being harassed during multiplayer games. One out of seven players don't join new communities because they've had negative experiences in the past, and one out of five stop playing certain games altogether.

Developers and platforms need to be proactive in mitigating negative experiences for players. It's not an easy task; what may be considered acceptable behavior by one group of people may be toxic to another, depending on context, culture, or the relationships between the players. For example, a group of friends playing together may be less put off by “colorful” language than a party of relative strangers.

Using tools to ensure good experiences

Mitigating toxic behavior for your game can start with choosing the right types of players to test out your game prior to launch. Stadia's Channels feature allows you to give beta access to certain players, so you can see how people engage with each other in-game.

After launch, you can also allow players to self-select into certain communities, like "Chilling and chatting" or "Competitive speedrunning," that provide the kind of gameplay they're looking for. This Public Parties feature on Stadia helps provide players with the ability to customize their own experiences in-game and invite other players to share the types of gameplay they enjoy.

YouTube also offers moderation for live chats, which includes the ability to assign moderators, make chatting activity available only to subscribers or members, and initiate slow mode that limits how often a user can comment.

While these tools can help promote a positive player experience, using them alongside Google Cloud Clean Chat, a tool designed to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning, is crucial to maintaining and scaling a comprehensive solution that can identify and block toxic behavior before it becomes problematic.

Helping players help themselves

The good news is that 95% of adults who engage in multiplayer games online report positive social experiences -- whether they're making new friends, helping others, or simply enjoying the experience of belonging to something larger than themselves.

Creating a positive, vibrant community is incredibly important to a game's success. It's all about knowing your audience, knowing the type of players you want to attract, and making sure you have the right systems in place to make sure they're all having a positive experience. It's a big responsibility, but the emotional connection people will develop with your game is more than worth the effort.