Sexism, racism and harassment in online games remains a problem for many gamers despite individual efforts made to address these issues by companies such as Blizzard, Riot and Twitch. To try and counter this problem more effectively, 30 different companies, including Blizzard, Riot, Twitch, CCP, and Epic, have created The Fair Play Alliance, which will aim to "cut down disruptive behavior" in online games.

The Fair Play Alliance will use research and lessons learnt from the online gaming community to try and create a set of online behavior standards that are deemed as acceptable. Furthermore, its aim is to identify and come to an understanding of the fundamental issues that cause poor online behavior. Deciding what is acceptable and what is not will be a difficult task though, according to Kimberly Voll, who is Riot's senior technical designer: “There are a lot of challenges when you’re trying to determine what good behavior looks like—or at least what bad looks like—on a global scale,” Voll says.

Firstly, respectable or acceptable behavior varies between different cultures and groups. With the increasing globalization of online video games especially, this might pose a big challenge. Secondly, among close friends, it might be acceptable to swear and trash talk at each other because friends generally mean it in a funny way, where the same verbal interaction between complete strangers might be received as very offensive. In this way, context is another challenging factor that needs to be taken into consideration.

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Voll acknowledges past failures that Riot made in trying to address online toxicity, and she also mentions how the incident of the notorious League of Legends streamer Tyler1 is the result of Riot's and Twitch's flawed punitive measures. Where their measures should have condemned Tyler1, it instead turned him into a child star. Voll says that, “I think this is a really good example of a spot where we can learn from one another and understand the repercussions, [because] on one hand, we’re very conscious of the slippery slope that is to step outside the game and try to impose values more broadly. [But] on the other hand, every frickin’ thing’s online. There’s no IRL and online anymore. This is just all reality now. So streamers are ambassadors of culture bigger than just League of Legends or whichever game. They’re ambassadors of online life.”

The first step that The Fair Play Alliance will take in combating these miscommunication issues, like what happened between Riot and Twitch in the example with Tyler1, is a day-long summit at GDC. The summit will begin on Wednesday morning and Voll will deliver the keynote. At the summit, developers and creators from Activision, Epic, Supercell, and more will discuss various topics such as research they have done regarding toxicity in online gaming, issues they have faced and mistakes they have made, and most importantly, what they’ve learned in the process.

The Fair Play Alliance is certainly a step in the right direction for the enduring bad behavior in the online gaming community. We look forward to seeing what The Fair Play Alliance will accomplish in the long term, even though it is only getting off the ground now. It would also be interesting to see whether other similar initiatives will be made in the never-ending fight against online toxicity.

The Fair Play Alliance has a website for people who would like to get involved.

Source: Kotaku