League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed by Riot Games for the PC. The game is a competitive team game where players are split into two teams. The object of the game is to destroy the enemy team’s nexus using the various abilities each champion (playable characters) have. I actually loved League of Legends and began playing it at the beginning of middle school. Unfortunately, I decided to quit after seeing how toxic the community had become. Unfortunately, League is only one example of a game with a toxic community of players. The question is why are people toxic in video games and is there anything we can do?

What is toxicity? Is it when people troll, act like jerks, or spew profanity? According to the article “How League of Legends could make the internet a better place,” Andrew Webster states that it’s all of this and more. However, Webster argues that these toxic players only account for a small percentage of overall players in a game community. Jeffrey Lin, a Riot developer, states that “More than 90 percent of the vitriol comes from normal players who occasionally act out while playing.” The problem Lin says he’s trying to solve is “how do you get them, when they have a bad day, to not rage in the middle of the game.” In my personal opinion, the simple answer is you can’t. Many people, myself included, enjoy settling down and playing video games after a long day. The reality of the situation is that people play videogames as an escape from reality or a stress reliever. In a way, videogames create a virtual world that allows the player to be in control. When players begin losing in a game they become frustrated as they lose the feeling of control. As I’ve discussed in my second blog, “trolling breeds trolling” (Cook 3331). This means once a toxic player goes off on another player, there is a possibility this negatively is passed onto that player turning them “toxic” as well.

Despite all of this, Lin and Riot have still tried many things to combat toxicity in League of Legends. For example, Riot games have developed a machine algorithm that can “find racist, homophobic, and otherwise abusive language in the in-game chat” to find toxic behavior and send these players a warning. I was surprised to hear that this actually prevented toxic behavior about 50 percent of the time as I always thought a warning would be useless. In addition to this, League has also developed an honor system where players can choose an award to give to someone in the game. These awards range from “they’re a good teammate” to “friendly.” Lin says that “reputation means a lot” and this honor system gives players an incentive to be nice to strangers. From my own personal experience, the honor system isn’t all that great. Most of the time when I’m playing League, I usually play with a friend. After a game, we usually honor each other instead of other players. I’ll admit, people like me aren’t making the game better by doing things like that but the point is the honor system doesn’t work as well as it ideally should.

Although Riot games have really tried to make an effort to stop toxicity in League of Legends, toxicity will also be part of gaming culture. Just like in real life, bad and mean people exist and they aren’t going away anytime soon. The best thing that we all can do is stay positive, not let toxic people ruin our enjoyment, and keep doing what we all enjoy- playing video games.

Work Cited:

Cook, C., Schaafsma, J., & Antheunis, M. (2017). Under the bridge: An in-depth examination of online trolling in the gaming context. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3323-3340. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817748578

Webster, A. (2015, March 6). How league of legends could make the internet a better place. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161955/league-of-legends-online-happy-place