Tung, Tran Tanh and Librenjak, Sara ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1696-6777 (2020) Analysis of derogative terms usage and toxicity in conversation between players ― Comparison of League of Legends and DoTA2. 紀要論文 / Departmental Bulletin Paper(1). pp. 65-74.

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the verbal behavior of players of two prominent competitive multi-player online games, Defense of the Ancient 2 （DoTA2） and League of Legends （LoL）, focusing on the usage of derogatory terms and toxic behavior. With rising popularity of online games, they are becoming a part of mass culture; League of Legends being world’s most played PC game in 2019. They are considered an e-sport when played professionally, generate huge revenue and have large prize pools for tournament winners. However, online gaming is often accompanied with toxic behavior between players in a match, whether spoken or written. In order to combat the negative atmosphere, a filtering system for derogatory terms was implemented in League of Legends. We argue that the filtering system affects the way players interact in the game, but does not necessarily make them less toxic to each other. We explored this hypothesis by analyzing the chat corpus of 25 recorded matches from DoTA2 without the filtering system, and 25 matches of LoL with one. The transcribed chats were analyzed and compared by examining word frequency and extracting keywords related to gaming. We found that players talk to each other in a significantly different manner in both games, using more neutral and short terms in DoTA2 and more emotional and extreme terms in LoL. They use an equal amount of derogatory terms, but in League of Legends players tend to use more creative and elaborate curse words in order to avoid being filtered. We concluded that the filtering system failed to prevent toxicity, and may even have caused resistance in the players, contributing to more extreme choices of derogatory terms.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/9836

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