Rosa Carbó-Mascarell, Andreia Gonçalves, Chelsea Howe, Natasha Miller, May Ling Tan
This paper aims to explore the variables and design decisions that go into creating games where players can impact each others’ experiences. This paper favours pro-social solutions that enable high-risk mechanics and provides development recommendations that mitigate risk factors to get the most value out of social gameplay – for players, developers, and businesses.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an ongoing and developing topic, and more work needs to be done to ensure our social spaces are vibrant and safe.
Overall, we believe that social gameplay benefits players, developers, and the broader world. Promoting more methods and avenues of prosocial self and group expression increases the retention potential of a game.
In a study of adolescents, creative self-expression is shown to lead to increased self-esteem, extraversion, and openness to experiences. Students when encouraged to be creative in expressing themselves were found to have more energy or enthusiasm, more ingenuity or mental openness, as well as less negative affect or nervousness.
From a report published using game data extracted from Steam Workshop, the retention potential for UGC-based games is 64% higher than games that do not have UGC after only 2 years. At the 5-year mark, that chasm widens to 90%, showing how player creativity is a force multiplier to engagement. Not to mention, they also show a 23% revenue advantage over non-UGC titles.
UGC games showing a 90% retention over the span of 5 years over games that do not. Image credit GameDiscoverCo.
Games continue to increase in society’s mindshare and are a popular location especially for younger generations to socialize. 70% of Gen Z are interested in socializing in in-game worlds beyond gameplay. Creating better communities and safer social spaces creates kinder, more collaborative citizens for the future.
Eliminating toxicity not only creates healthier communities, it also reduces the churn and negative experience that good actors may experience. This benefits developers, as does the increased sustainability of having players create their own engaging content for each other. We see social content boosting KPIs like engagement, virality, and retention when handled with care and intention.
A player’s ‘Impact’ in a social space is any action that can be observed and witnessed by other players, as well as any change or modification to the world space or gameplay that other players will experience or be affected by. Players can directly ‘Impact’ other players with features like player-to-player collision, or indirectly ‘Impact’ by building a wall in the world that other players will collide with.
| Examples of player impact | |||
 |  |  |  |
| Overwatch sprays Temporary decals that are applied over the walls for players in the match to see. | Sky message boats Leaving messages for others to read if they choose to, as well as being able to react to those messages. | Minecraft building Removing and adding blocks to augment the space where you and others play. | Shooting in GTA 5 Online Shooting and killing players makes them lose money and have to respawn somewhere else. |
Player impact in this paper aligns with the concept of social affordances, as described in this Lost Garden article. The paper notes that “By eliminating the bad aspects of humans interacting, you often also remove many of the good parts” – which will be the focus of our exploration. We want to start the conversation on how to responsibly increase player control; fostering creativity and enabling social collisions without compromising player safety.
Most social spaces cluster around five major archetypes, each of which has different standards of interaction and impact and different associated risks/rewards.
The success of each space can be achieved when the affordances and positive feedback provided are informed by the goals for the space and the frequency and depth of social exchanges that players can have within them.
In modern and large-scale games, it’s common to find more than one of these types of spaces.
Note: These are just the most common archetypes when looking at the current landscape of games. With this paper, we hope to equip you with the tools to create these by following best practices, as well as expand on them by modifying assumptions or creating new spaces.
We can categorize these archetypes based on trust level (from strangers to friends) and their access restrictions. Lower-trust spaces require higher security and consent measures to mitigate potential risks.
As each game might have differing needs, the following is a framework through which a designer can assess the benefits, risks and mitigations when introducing a feature.
These factors are part of the social feature itself. They directly affect the amount of risk and reward when players interact or engage with the feature.
The extent of change a player can affect in a space, on gameplay, or directly on another player when using a tool or feature afforded by the game.
Questions to ask:
| Benefits of a higher degree of impact | Risks of a higher degree of impact |
| Creativity and longevity of the game due to more UGC and emergent social play Stronger feelings of player autonomy and investment | Possibility of creating disruptive/inappropriate content, causing permadeath, trapping other players, destroy others’ content. Conflicting individual goals that cause unintentional overrides/wiping out of others’ content Impossible to prevent even with more closed affordances, as players can still use combinatorics to create negative content (e.g overlapping player sprays to make offensive content in Overwatch) |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? | |
Examples of player ingenuity in Minecraft (masterpieces that players make), pixel painting on Reddit, and player creativity in Animal Crossing. This higher degree of impact allows players to modify the world into habitable spaces that others can experience and visit. |
The far-reaching impact stemming from the actions of a single or group of players and defined by how many people are affected by the changes. There are many different levels at which players can impact the game, its systems, and its community.
Questions to ask:
| Benefits of high scale of impact | Risks of high scale of impact |
| Content creators benefit from reaching a wider audience when UGC increases in discoverability Players have a bigger pool of players to group up with by increasing communication reach The sum of the collective efforts of a community or shared group is multiplied and amplified, making it feel rewarding to be part of something bigger | If the content is negative, then a wider group of players will affected, creating more reactions for the bad actor to revel in If players can impact as a group, they can combine their closed affordances to a greater effect |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? |
Helldivers 2’s Galactic War: Every player/squad’s progress contributes to the overall game’s weekly Galactic War progress, creating a sense of shared community goal and accomplishment. Screenshot of Helldivers 2’s Galactic War console. Image courtesy of Arrowhead Game Studios |
Breakdown of different scales as they exist in multiplayer games:
Anything that applies across multiple systems in the entire game.
Anything that applies within a specific server or world instance.
Anything that applies within a community space, such as a guild, group-owned instance, or a private Minecraft server.
Anything that applies to a 1:1 relationship.
Table: Examples of features being performed by different group sizes and affecting different scales.
| On Game | On Group | On Individual | |
| Game Impact | EVE Online galactic wars | Splatoon’s Splatfest WoW Horde vs Alliance | Traffic lights system in TTRPGs Panic Mode in VR Chat |
| Group Impact | Helldivers franchise (factions affecting game-wide change) Travian guild impacting the server life | Sea of Thieves Alliance Flag system Any 4X game territory | Guild vs Community shopping/tryout Destiny 2 guide tryout before being accepted into a guide community |
| Individual Impact | 1:Public communication, trust and safety preferences Temporary world visuals | 1:Group / party communication, trust and safety preferences Player housing inside of FF14’s Guild space | 1:1 communication preferences & consent, gifting Personal space decoration and design |
✅ Generally, the higher the scale of impact, the higher the level of risk, and the more trust should be generated before allowing that impact.
The speed at which the change/action/modification is seen, shared, and propagated to others. Also includes the rate at which it can be propagated, and if there are any existing stopgaps to remove it or slow it down.
Questions to ask:
| Benefits of higher virality | Risks of higher virality |
| Increased UGC creation reduces the pressure on the dev team to make content, as the community sustains both creators and consumers. Players can play together, communicate and collaborate on creations in real time | With quick-to-publish and viral UGC there are more ways for bad content to spread causing more players to be exposed to it. Real-time creation not having a clear publishing point, making content moderation at scale challenging |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? |
In the survival game Raft, players share a floating vessel with up to 3 other players and must cooperate to expand and improve their space together – real estate is limited so players have to take each others’ needs into account. Example of a customized raft in Raft. Image courtesy of Redbeet Interactive, Axolot Games. |
When players knock over walls in Fall Guys, it helps other players too. However, players’ avatars also have collisions, turning them into real-time obstacles to each other. This immediacy of impact increases the sense of inhabiting the same space, making each playthrough different. Gameplay screenshot of Fall Guys. Image courtesy of Mediatonic |
The length of time where the change/action/modification can be experienced by others. Longer durations result in a bigger scope of impact since the impact can be experienced by more people.
Questions to ask:
| Benefits of high persistence | Risks of high persistence |
| The feeling of autonomy and ownership over the space Higher fulfillment and more creative spaces Investment over time results in greater creations Higher discovery when the change/content is permanently accessible | Players can make permanent obstacles for others Inappropriate content lasts longer causing more players to see the content Higher impact of griefing when creations that took great investment are destroyed |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? |
The persistent nature of Animal Crossing player personal islands, allows players to continually build it over time. The islands do not reset unless players do so themselves, preserving their investment. Example of player shared island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Image courtesy of Nintendo |
Courses in Mario Maker are permanently shared, allowing more players to find them over time and for creators to get more engagement.  Example of a player-generated course in Mario Maker. Image courtesy of Polygon, Nintendo |
These factors revolve around the context in which a multiplayer mechanic happens. Context helps set expectations and can drastically alter the reward, risk, and overall outcome of the game’s mechanics. It also drives which solutions should be used.
The purpose of a space, its goals, and permissions have a direct impact on the inherent risk/reward resulting from the use of the space(see Archetypes of Social Spaces above). When making decisions on the permissions and impact players can have in a space, it’s important to examine those choices through these lenses:
| Benefits of having clearly defined types of spaces | Risks of ill-defined types of spaces |
| New relationships can form out of the function of these spaces Players have spaces to peacock customizations, etc. Players can self-organize and state clear expectations for one another when they understand the rules of engagement within the space (e.g: Players in a ranked competitive match strategize with each other to ensure the best possible outcome for their match) Understanding the rules occasionally leads to the creative pushing of the game’s boundaries, transforming a gameplay space into a creative art project (e.g: The Grannies in Red Dead Redemption) | Mix and matching socializing spaces with gameplay ones: a mix of low and high stakes leads to players’ expectations not being met (e.g: Players trying to complete a raid have a low tolerance for players who are there only to goof around) Ill-defined rules cause players not to understand what they can or cannot do within a space. Public servers provide a low barrier of entry for bad actors as they are easily accessible and this requires more oversight and moderation compared to private servers that are permissions-gated The more publicly accessible a space is, the more easily and rapidly content created within it has the propensity to go viral. |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? |
| Rec Room and VR Chat’s many different private servers and rooms. Minecraft servers enable different types of communities to fully use the space for different types of group expression. Now, the game includes official servers for accessibility and safety  Players transform spaces into digital third places place to belong to in Rec Room. Image courtesy of Rec Room |
| Having more than one type of space:In WoW, deep, lifelong friendships form, like the one Mats Steen experienced and captured in the documentary The Remarkable Life of IbelinThe Rift Trails, a horse-riding, inclusive community in Red Dead Redemption 2 started during Covid because people could no longer go riding and were missing their horses.Final Fantasy 14 has transient PVP-level spaces dedicated to high-skill competition, individually owned home spaces about self-expression, and shared social spaces about building connections and casual fun. 2XKO has transient PVP level spaces dedicated to high-skill competition, but also a shared social space explicitly designed to enable meaningful, emotionally charged 1v1 group formation. It also wraps spectatorship into the space. |
✅ Many games do not have only a singular type of space, but rather many types of spaces that cater to different player motivations and risk tolerances. For more on this, look at Archetypes of Social Spaces.
Defined by how easy it is or how much time and resources a player has to sacrifice or pay to be allowed to make an impact or start creating content in a space.
As an example, in survival or crafting games players must achieve a minimum skill level and acquire sufficient resources to build structures or content. Imposing a high level of sacrifice can have a positive side-effect, leading players to value what they had built more because of what they had sacrificed, otherwise known as the IKEA effect.
Some questions to determine what types and how much investment is needed:
| Benefits | Risks |
| Low cost of entry allows more players to quickly participate in building and editing. High cost of entry, on the other hand, leads players to value and appreciate what they have built even more because of their sacrifice. | A low barrier to entry: Makes it easy for players to troll and grief as it costs them nothing to do so. Makes player contributions less precious/valuable to themselves or other players A high barrier of entry: Makes it painful when another player can destroy/overwrite someone else’s hard work Prevents newer players from being able to quickly participate and contribute equally to a group or community’s shared goals. |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? | |
 Path of Spawn, a rendered image built entirely through Garry’s Mod by player Vioxtar which took them about 7 months to complete. Image courtesy of Vioxtar, Facepunch Studios |
The rules governing a space manifest in the editing permissions exposed to the players. The common belief that when left to their own devices, selfish individuals will wipe out resources in a shared space (known as the Tragedy of Commons) was debunked by Elinor Ostrom years ago. She found that instead, communities can effectively manage shared resources through cooperation and self-governance if they have the tools to do so.
Is a given action seen as acceptable in this space and are explicit rules or mechanisms in place to moderate its use?
| Benefits | Risks |
| A community has the tools and necessary permissions to manage themselves based on their norms and establish their own culture. Effectively captures the wide spectrum of the needs of different types of relationships players have with one another (e.g. whether they are based on action, interest. etc.) | If the gameplay rules are perceived as too restrictive it can have the effect of being too demanding or elitist, pushing away new players. |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? | |
 An example of a clan’s rules in Clash of Clans that sets clear expectations for its members. Image courtesy of Supercell. |
How resources and opportunities are distributed or available to players determines whether a player’s actions can have a direct impact on others by reducing or depriving them of it.
Having a scarce or zero-sum pool of resources can cause strain and conflict between players, but can also present an opportunity to demonstrate generosity or altruism towards each other.
Questions to ask when designing for the distribution of opportunities:
| Benefits | Risks |
| When opportunities or resources are scarce, the value to the player increases. Altruism is amplified when a player makes a sacrifice for others. | Scarce resources mean a player’s selfish actions can cause frustration to others when witheld due to greed, not needs. |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? | |
Player housing within their guild’s plot in Final Fantasy XIV. Due to very limited plots available, a lottery system determines who can purchase them over time. Inactive or dormant players will have their plots taken away Example of a player’s housing in Final Fantasy XIV. Image courtesy of Square Enix | |
In World of Warcraft’s Need or Greed system, players can signal to their raiding party if they need, are interested, or do not want a piece of dropped loot. A screenshot of WoW’s Need/Greed interface. Image courtesy of CurseForge, Blizzard. |
In certain multiplayer games, a player’s actions can cause different scales of impact on the economy or progression system which is sometimes temporary, but at other times, permanent.
Questions to ask:
| Benefits | Risks |
| If players can impact each other in high-stakes situations, they can collaborate and help each other | If the player can lose progression or a reward because of another player’s actions, then the negative impact is amplified |
| Aspiration – What are some successful examples of this? Why aspire to do this? | |
In Destiny 2, the Fireteam Power Level system lifts under-levelled players when they’re in a group, allowing them to participate in the game’s endgame content without having to first grind for Power Levels. They are temporarily raised to the level of the highest player present in the group, removing the need for potentially weeks of grinding to play together Destiny 2’s Fireteam Power lifts under-levelled players to the player with the highest Power Level, enabling higher-levelled players to help those below them while simultaneously removing barriers to playing together. Image courtesy of Bungie. |
To help developers evaluate features based on the different scales mentioned above, they are simplified into a chart below. The points on the scales and assessment factors will differ from feature to feature, so it is best used to evaluate the value of individual features within the game.
Examples using this chart on existing features in games can be found in the Appendix.
The types of impact players can make are driven by the various affordances and permissions provided. The list below attempts to provide a taxonomy of commonly available tools in games and the different ways they manifest:
| Category | Implementation | Examples |
| Presence | Abstract visual presence (non-interactable presence of other players is implied) | UI indicator, Player ghosts in Dark Souls/Elden Ring |
| Direct visual presence (Occupies same physical space of player, usually interactable and/or collidable) | Player characters in MMO | |
| Auditory presence (you can hear when other players are near you) | Proximity voice in Sea of Thieves, footfalls in Overwatch | |
| Communication | Pings/Indicators (visual + audio impact) | Modern ping systems (Overwatch 2, Fortnite, Helldivers 2) |
| Emotes | Character emotes in FFXIV, League of Legends Emotes | |
| Quick chat / Selected phrases | Quick chat in Hearthstone | |
| 1:1 Text chat | Personal or private player chat | |
| Group text chat | Friend group chats, In-game party/team chat | |
| Global text chat | Public or server-wide text chat | |
| Group emotes | Synchronized emotes in Destiny 2 | |
| 1:1 Voice chat | Party voice chat in Diablo 4 | |
| Group voice chat | Team voice chat in Valorant | |
| Physical impact | Avatar collision/physics | Helpful avatars in Journey, Player Avatars in Fall Guys |
| Placing collidable objects | Creating ziplines in Deep Rock Galactic | |
| Removing / Destroying objects | Blowing holes in walls in Rainbow 6 Siege | |
| Altering environment / Terraforming the world | Building in Minecraft | |
| Visual impact | Transient visuals | Holiday toys in WoW that put a temporary cosmetic on another player for a limited time |
| Temporary visuals | Sprays in Overwatch | |
| Permanent visuals | Blowing up things in Just Cause | |
| Audio impact | Musical instruments/noisemakers | Musical instrument harmonization in Sea of Thieves |
There is no singular solution, but this paper presents prosocially focused recommendations based on the experiential design intent of a space and its purpose. Players’ safety and well-being needs must be met to thrive, form new bonds, and creatively express themselves in a shared space.
Through progressive consent or permissions, players gain and give access to increasing degrees of power and impact over time.
Confidence with a choice (even one they may not have explicitly opted into) is driven by two factors which influence a player’s perception of actions and reactions:
The differences between trust and consent are nuanced:
For trust to be present, the design must scaffold towards players being able to build trust towards each other and the developers.
In Sky: Children of the Light, players must navigate a friendship tree that unlocks more ways for two players to interact with each other as they build trust. Trust is built through repeat encounters and reciprocation loops with increasing levels of impact and risk. It is contingent on persistent, repeated, and escalating exchanges.
Friendship tree in Sky: Children of the Light. Image courtesy of thatgamecompany.
Trust is fundamentally a bidirectional emotion, and this applies across all levels of trust.
Players must build up trust with the system and also prove themselves trustworthy to the system.
This can also be considered as an intersection of two questions: “How / what can the player impact” and “How can the player be impacted”?
Players must have control over how they can be impacted, across scale.
The game system or leadership must determine what the player can impact, across scale.
In Among Us, players on temporary or unregistered accounts only have access to quick chat. They have not proven themselves trustworthy to the system yet, and are therefore high-risk players. Full text chat can only be accessed once players have created an account and undergone onboarding, demonstrating they are committed and therefore more trustworthy.
Quick chat in Among Us. Image courtesy of InnerSloth LLC, PlayEveryWare.
In an ideal world, tracking and evaluating trust should be as systemic as possible instead of requiring hand-curation or explicit developer oversight. This makes social systems far more manageable for a development team and allows the community to self-sustain.
✅ Most generally, trust should be a reward for investment. The more investment required, the higher the stakes a player has and the less likely for bad actors to thrive, especially if there are strict ramifications for bad actors.
The assumption is that once a player has spent a significant amount of time in a game, they have a sufficient understanding of its features, systems, and content. Progression systems in games are classic examples where as players increase their level or XP accumulated, they gain more access to features and tools to augment the world. Examples of measurements of gameplay time include:
It’s best practice therefore to disallow most forms of social impact early on in a player’s lifecycle. This shortcuts any intent to act badly that is fueled by in-the-moment emotion or mob behaviour. It also provides new players with sufficient exposure to emulate the social norms of the community they just joined.
However, players should be allowed to bypass early restrictions on an individual level by ‘shortcutting’ progression with established friends outside the game
Imposing an upfront cost to engage is a helpful tool to moderate player impact from a systemic standpoint. This friction helps add a barrier for griefers intent on trolling fellow players, requiring a sacrifice on their end to do so.
In a social space, a player who visibly gives can be seen as being altruist (even when that’s not their intention!) – it’s the impact that counts.
A cost or resource requirement can manifest in many different forms: items, currency, resources, time, etc. As designers, we should ideally balance the price of participation against the size or footprint of the player’s action.
Structure building in Death Stranding. Image courtesy of Kojima Productions, 505 Games.
Having community or outwardly facing signals of a player’s social standing helps others have the data they need to decide how much trust they can have with each other in the absence of established relationships. Examples of such dynamics exist in a stranger to stranger or an individual to group scenarios.
Surfacing information that tracks the lifetime of a player’s interactions with others in a community helps those around them establish a picture of their temperance and contributions.
Information examples that help track a player’s contributions in a game:
Examples: In Sky, when a player shares a piece of content, it first gets shared with their friends. If enough friends like it, it gets shared with the wider community. Splatoon’s graffiti system and TikTok’s sharing algorithm work the same way.
Stats that track a player’s temperament:
While player reporting is a powerful tool to democratize moderation, it’s easily abused and weaponized, especially against marginalized or prominent players. This can be more easily abused if players have quick access to friending or seeing a specific person’s account; mob behaviour could surround a single bad actor and elevate their trust artificially. One potential solution here is only counting ‘likes’ or reports from established players.
Double-checking reports and validating that they are legitimate is a great way to identify bad actors or people who may be abusing/weaponizing reporting. Report validation is crucial in determining if a content or player’s behaviour was legitimately bad in the first place, although the caveat here is that this puts a strain on moderation teams, especially when report volumes are high.
Example of a player reporting system in Overwatch 2. Image courtesy of Blizzard
If players have a defined and persistent identity they curate, they will not want to risk losing it. Associating strong player investment, achievements, social network, and progression with their persistent identity can increase the stakes and subsequently, a sense of loss if players lose access to their identity.
If players go through the effort of creating or linking their existing account to play the game, or their identity can be verified in some other way, they will have shown more investment and also increase the stakes for negative outcomes to their account, which usually results in avoiding disruptive behaviour.
Anonymous users have less investment and less to lose from being reported as bad actors. This can happen especially if the game doesn’t require account creation, making the cost of entry very low.
When players violate the communicated code of conduct, revoking their access to systems and features is as important as granting it. This provides developers with more moderation tools to limit the impact of these bad actors on the community without resorting to punitive actions that may be less effective.
As an example, in Overwatch, if you are penalized for bad behaviour, your endorsement score is set to zero and you lose text/voice chat privileges (outside of whispers from non-friends), custom game privileges, and streamer mode privileges until you gain trust/endorsements back.
To consent, players must have enough information to evaluate risk across scales. As developers, we have to acknowledge the fact that as long as players are socially engaging with one another, risks cannot be eliminated. Instead, managing and mitigating harm as much as possible is critical.
✅ Consent must be given when players fully understand the circumstances under which they will be entering and must have the capacity to make those choices voluntarily. Violation of those agreements must be enforced to ensure players can have continued trust in the system.
Players should be well-informed about the expectations of a space as they enter into it – the rules of engagement, norms, and culture of the community within it.
It’s also useful to provide players with ways to surface their values and playstyles to better create informed consent of individual permissions.
How informing players of expectations looks like in practice:
Rules of engagement and norms can be implicitly communicated through the game’s aesthetics, the design of the space, objects, and features within it. Just like in the real world, where for example, a meeting room has tables, chairs and whiteboards that communicate it’s a space to work in vs a pool with deck chairs which communicates leisure.
Players need to have access to communication and tools to express/broadcast their intentions to others easily. This is key to provide context for other players to make decisions whether they feel comfortable moving forward with engaging with the person or feature.
For example, a quick chat phrase like “Well played” can be perceived as a compliment or sarcastic depending on the combination of the space where it happens and any additional cues perceptible from the player doing it.
Examples:
A player (bottom left) with a sprout icon, indicating their newcomer status in Final Fantasy XIV. Image courtesy of Square Enix.
Players have to understand the options and levers available to them while interacting with other players and content within these spaces.
Groups and communities (clans, guilds) need to have robust permissions on how they want to run their spaces. Some examples of these permissions that help each group customize and organize how they collectively choose to interact and govern themselves are:
On the receiving end, players as individuals need to be able to easily opt in / out of experiences, signal intent, and gradually scale up or down their interaction as examples of player choice and control.
Friendship level bonuses in Pokemon Go. Image courtesy of Pokemon Go Hub, Niantic.
To be able to make voluntary choices, the player must have the mental capacity to understand the impact of their decisions. This is why the gray area for choice arises in games where children are part of the main audience; as unsupervised minors, they do not possess the capability and maturity to make decisions and parents need to have full awareness of the controls available to them and their child.
Players must understand expectations of the spaces and have safe ways to quickly extract themselves as soon as they encounter insecurity or discomfort.
This includes educating players on what to look out for and how to use existing tools such as reporting or resetting for themselves, or for when they witness another player being negatively affected.
Examples of features used to minimize the impact of disruptive behaviour or help players remove themselves from it:
*Note that removing content/access after one report can lead to the weaponization of a reporting system without true anonymity
The larger the community, the more trust starts to break down because it naturally becomes more challenging to build the same level of familiarity with everyone in the group. The dynamics of the group, therefore, become more unpredictable, and consent is then critical to bridge the gaps where pre-established trust does not exist or is low.
These are some examples of how consent is applied at varying scales across a game or systems:
✅ Having room for established trust to fast-track individuals helps. We’ll shorthand this as “cutting the line” when it comes to progression.
Unintuitively, true anonymity, with no persistent recognition like a gamer tag, can also help improve safety. It helps reduce doxxing, harassment, and exacerbation of drama outside of a game because there is no way to identify someone. It also reduces or eliminates feedback for trolls and bad actors who thrive on getting negative feedback and notoriety.
Naming a stranger encountered in Sky: Children of Light. Image courtesy of thatgamecompany.
Multiplayer experiences introduce risk, but also incredible value
More and more people are looking to form connections online and we see that games with more creativity and impact have a high potential for engagement and longevity through novel experiences. They also shift the role of content authoring from only the hands of developers, sharing it with players to craft their own customized experiences.
The challenge
Given the success we’ve seen in these games, developers are pursuing games with high degrees of creative expression, but at the cost of toxicity and possible risk to player safety. Some developers may also shy away from adding these experiences due to the perceived risk and complexity of the space.
Intentional pro-social design enables more player impact in spaces
The prosocial design approach is anchored on the idea that multiplayer experiences can be safe, positive and long-lasting when they are designed with intention and care. This paper builds on the existing knowledge around social systems design and dives deeper into how designers can enable players to have more impact on each other’s experience.
As this is a developing and nuanced topic, this paper is intended to serve as a starting point for further conversations rather than a definitive, one-time solution.
The hope for the future
By designing features intentionally, all the while acknowledging and proactively mitigating risk, developers can partner with players to create experiences that are socially meaningful, culturally rich, and full of creativity within an ecosystem built upon strong trust and consent.
Below are examples of how the assessment template above can be used in feature assessment exercises.
Sprays and Emotes are features with a similar level of Impact, using the assessment table we can see how they differ.
Conclusion:
We can use the matrix to visualize hypothetical scenarios. In the examples below we take Minecraft building mechanics from using it among friends/trusted players, and compare it to a hypothetical where it’s done in public non-moderated servers.
Conclusion: