Inside League of Legends developer Riot Games is a team of more than 30 staffers trying to make the experience of playing their game kinder, gentler, more honorable and less “toxic.”Team Player Behavior, a roughly six-month-old division of Riot, has implemented measures designed to reduce toxic behavior like negative chat, offensive language, and verbal abuse. And while toxic behavior and online gaming often go hand-in-hand, says League of Legends producer Carl Kwoh, “We’ve looked at our own game and said ‘This is not a great experience and we want to try to handle this problem.’”
Earlier this year, Riot Games started assembling its player behavior team, bringing in PhDs in cognitive neuroscience, human factors psychology, and statistics to reduce toxic behavior online and increase sportsmanship in the League of Legends community.