In part because it's the biggest game on the planet, and in part because its community has a pretty poor reputation, the developers of League of Legends have been looking at some unique ways to combat unsavoury behaviour in the game. And are coming up with some refreshing results.
"We really wanted to figure out why were players being frustrated in games", Riot's Jeffrey Lin tells...Red Bull. "What were the common barriers to having a positive match in online games? What were the pain points players were having? One of the key insights we found early on was people or players weren't inherently bad. What's happening is every single player has their bad days."
Riot's approach to player behaviour going forwards, then, is to keep this in mind. Use less of the stick, and more of a carrot. Reward good behaviour with in-game acknowledgement, instead of having every game played under the spectre of some kind of ban. Encourage players to say "GG" (Good Game) at the end of a match.
Whether it works in the long run is anyone's guess - and it'll never work for those dedicated jerks who will always be trolls regardless of what kind of day they had - at least it's trying something new, instead of simply sitting back and always threatening people.
Teamwork OP: Riot on making 'good' the easy choice [Red Bull]