Researchers Survey Attendees at Tekko Conference to Assess Prevalence of Hate in Esports
Researchers Survey Attendees at Tekko Conference
Esports is a rising multi-billion dollar industry that reaches millions of people around the world annually. Despite the meteoric rise of esports, an unfortunately familiar problem inhibits many individuals from being able to fully engage in it. If one follows esports outlets and influencers, it is a sadly common sight to see individuals experiencing significant harassment including death threats and swatting. Developers have been trying to combat this for years, but many smaller developers don’t have the assets or experience to counter the hate within their games. So the CAH has decided to take a step into this virtual arena in an attempt to find out why these issues exist, and more importantly how we can aid developers in creating a fair playing field for all.
From July 18th through July 21st, the annual Tekko Convention was held in Pittsburgh. This two decade old convention focuses on all things anime and Japanese. As a part of the convention multiple esports tournaments are held. The CAH had the opportunity table at Tekko, and survey individuals on their experiences in hate and discrimination in competitive games. The CAH surveyed over 150 attendees to gain valuable perspectives into the more toxic aspects of gaming culture. Many participants expressed their gratitude in being able to participate in the study, and the answers they provided had a few common themes.
Across the answers of individuals from all demographics, the most commonly observed form of hate was misogyny and sexism. Around a third of the female identifying respondents in the survey stated that they experience harassment in almost every single match they play, with one respondent saying that they had to quit playing one of their favorite games due to how toxic the game was. In addition to misogyny, many respondents brought up homophobia and transphobia as constant issues within online gaming. It is a substantial challenge for developers to tackle this type of problem, as software to counter hate speech in voice chat is in its infancy, and large scale instant moderation of text chat is too expensive for smaller developers to handle. Many respondents wrote that the reports they do send feel toothless as if dropped into a void.
The Collaboratory Against Hate has a unique opportunity to be impactful in this space. By leveraging socio-technical expertise found only at CMU and The University of Pittsburgh, we can attempt to create both policy and technical solutions to solve these issues, and provide a much needed helping hand to smaller developers who are trying to launch their first online games.