UWIN CoP Presentation "Managing toxicity in cooperative, competitive gaming”

This UWIN Community of Practice (CoP) presentation took place at 10:00 a.m. on April 10, 2025 (Thursday), via Teams. We were very glad to have Kaushall Senthil Nathan as our presenter this time. Kaushall is a Master's student pursuing a degree in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke and Dr. Daniel Harley in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Games lab. Kaushall's main goal for research is to enhance the medium of video games. 

Abstract:

The goal of this research is to identify what causes toxic, or aggressive, behavior in video games. Specifically, we examine cooperative games - games where teamwork is essential. Previous research has found that teammate incompetence may lead to an increase in toxic behavior but we believe that incompetent teammates shifts the work on the player, causing increased mental workload and thereby, leading to more toxic behavior. Thus, the specific aim of our research is to determine if incompetent/competent teammates predict mental workload, and thereby predicting the number of instances of toxic behavior. The anticipated benefit of this research is uncovering the mechanisms behind toxic behavior, from which in-game interventions can be developed to reduce instances of toxic behavior.  The basic procedure is as follows: Participants are asked to wear an electroencephalogram (EEG) and play a difficult cooperative game with either an incompetent teammate or a competent teammate. The EEG will measure the participant's mental workload and the audio and gameplay will be recorded to be analyzed for instances of toxic behavior.