Attention to prosocial behavior is increasing in the gaming industry, but confusion persists about what it is and what it means for online games.
- Prosocial behavior refers to actions that benefit others, intentionally or unintentionally.
- Industry interest in prosocial behavior and design is growing, but so is related misunderstanding.
- Prosocial represents a fundamental change in game design; unfortunately, change is always resisted.
Dispelling myths about prosocial behavior
Many game developers and online safety folks are paying increasing attention to prosocial behavior. This shift is a good thing, but it does come with a lot of misunderstandings.
In this article, we will analyze and debunk 10 common myths and misconceptions regarding prosocial behavior in game development. We will both continue and expand on another article in the Playbook: Introduction to Prosocial Behavior.
Here are the most common myths and misconceptions about prosocial behavior in game development:
- Myth 1: Prosocial is about making people be nice.
- Myth 2: Prosocial means trying to make everyone friends.
- Myth 3: Players must be encouraged (or bribed) to be prosocial.
- Myth 4: Developers can’t do anything prosocial while they’re putting out fires.
- Myth 5: Players will ruin anything prosocial.
- Myth 6: We can add prosocial systems after the core loop is done.
- Myth 7: Prosocial is just about chat / communication systems.
- Myth 8: Prosocial is just about competitive games.
- Myth 9: Prosocial will make competitive games easy and soft.
- Myth 10: If we just ban the “bad” players then we will only have prosocial players left.
What is prosocial behavior?
The definition we recommend for game developers is the following:
Prosocial behavior: Actions that benefit others, intentionally or unintentionally.
You may find it interesting that we emphasize that those prosocial actions may or may not be intentional. This is because we, as game developers, can construct situations that produce mutual benefits, even if the individual’s motivation is selfish.
If you’re ready, let’s dive into the myths!
Myth 1: Prosocial design is about making people be nice
This misconception views prosocial systems as a way to create obedience in players. Believers of this misconception seem to fall into two general categories:
- Those who want to exert more control over players in order to reduce disruptive behavior.
- Those who staunchly defend against anything they perceive as a threat to the status quo.
The truth
While it is true that doing things that benefit others can feel nice for all involved, the goal is not to force kindness out of anyone. Prosocial actions should help create trust, not undermine it, which enforced niceness can do.
Prosocial behavior takes many forms, and not all of them are altruistic. Take, for example, how basketball players exhibit cooperation and teamwork by passing the ball. They aren’t doing this just to be nice, but because it’s part of their role, part of the game, and how they help their team win.
If anything, the goal of prosocial systems in games is to help players get more out of their own actions and interactions. This has the business benefit of making games stickier.
Myth 2: Prosocial means trying to make everyone be friends
Related to Myth #1, some people believe that prosocial features are intended to make players befriend each other. Some view this as a good thing, as it could create greater product loyalty.
The truth
While it does foster connection, prosocial action is not, in itself, about making friends. No lasting connection or commitment is required when a person does something that benefits someone else.
Let’s look at a few real world examples:
- Sparring at a martial arts studio — Definitely a prosocial activity, but it doesn’t make you besties.
- Holding a door for someone — Yes, prosocial, but people don’t have to exchange digits.
- Saving a teammate in a video game — Absolutely counts as prosocial. But this doesn’t require both people to get a Netflix subscription together.
While seeking player retention through social engagement is a viable business strategy, companies that have pushed players to make or play with friends in the past have seen less than optimal results. To put it more bluntly, don’t try and force friendship. It’s unnatural, unwanted, and doesn’t work.
Myth 3: Players must be encouraged (or bribed) to be prosocial
One common misconception is that players won’t be prosocial without encouragement or extrinsic reward.
The truth
Prosocial behavior happens all the time in games without encouragement or bribes. Cooperating, helping, protecting, healing, congratulating, inviting, gifting, celebrating — these are all actions that players regularly perform, and they’re all prosocial.
Players have all kinds of motivations for acting prosocially, and some of them are selfish. Here are a few examples:
- Wanting their team to win
- Striving for a great loot drop
- Trying to improve at their role
- Completing a quest
- Hoping to look like a badass
In all the examples listed above, the motivation was generated by the design of the game. Design for prosocial behavior and you’re more likely to see it.
The rise of this misconception seems to coincide with the industry’s shift towards a more proactive, upstream approach to disruptive behavior. With this shift has come an increase in the use of two telling phrases:
- “Carrots and sticks.”
- “You catch more bees with honey than vinegar.”
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases, frequent use may create an unrealistic and unfair perception of players. Without considering game-driven motivations and personal needs, new reward systems intended to encourage prosocial behavior could conflict with existing reward systems. Additionally, they may seem heavy-handed, pushy, or just not make sense from a player perspective.
That being said, encouraging prosocial behavior is a good thing, and some players do respond better to extrinsic rewards than intrinsic motivation.
Myth 4: Developers can’t do anything prosocial while they’re putting out fires
This is a belief that one must choose between addressing disruptive behavior and promoting prosocial behavior.
The truth
Caring about prosocial behavior does NOT mean you stop caring about disruptive behavior. The fact is that if you only care about disruptive behavior, you’re like a fire fighter who never cares about fire prevention or community health — you’re only doing part of the job!
Prosocial behavior proactively reduces the likelihood of disruptive behavior and helps communities thrive. If you truly care about community health, you will care about any behavior that can either contribute to it or undermine it.
Myth 5: Players will always ruin anything prosocial
This myth is common among folks who work in content moderation. Many people believe that creating prosocial systems is futile because players will quickly destroy them.
The truth
It is truly and profoundly sad if you believe that we should never develop anything positive because players will ruin it. If you have reached this point, you may want to think about taking a long break.
Consider this: If players truly ruin anything prosocial, why do so many return to multiplayer games? And if these multiplayer games are doomed to fail, why does the industry produce so many?
The reason is that despite behavior challenges, the positive outweighs the negative. It’s when the balance tips the other way that things have gone too far.
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that a small percentage of players will repurpose “prosocial” features in ways the game developer never intended. But ruin? Highly doubtful.
Don’t give up on players. Try to stay objective. Recognize the good that happens in games while being realistic about the problems that exist. Make the world a better place by creating things that make it better.
No solution will be 100% perfect, but if you have enough systems guiding the expectations of the community, they will have enough resilience to self-govern and effectively deal with the bad actors themselves.
If the overall impact of a feature is positive, it’s probably worth doing.
Myth 6: We can add prosocial systems after the core loop is done
Some developers think prosocial systems should only be thought about after the “real” game has been designed.
The truth
Technically this is true. You can add prosocial systems later. However, by waiting you will have missed the opportunity to make your game as satisfying as it could be.
As illustrated above, when prosocial design isn’t integral to a game, the social experience can be out at odds with the personal. While there has been focus on making the personal experience more satisfying, the social experience, largely defined by the personal, can only be made less dissatisfying. This is less than ideal.
A proactive, prosocial approach can avoid this situation and increase the likelihood of satisfying social experiences. For more on designing for social satisfaction, see Evaluating the Stickiness of Game Elements with a Social Satisfaction Matrix.
Prosocial design can provide solutions for many behavior and retention problems in games. It’s not just about making a separate system for prosocial, but instead looking at how current / planned systems can be improved by thinking about prosocial behavior.
Prosocial design works best when it is foundational to the game, not tacked on after the fact. Like team sports, when cooperation and teamwork are integral, prosocial action is never a question — it’s simply how the game is played! Here are a few examples:
Valorant launched without a solo queue to encourage teamplay. Image courtesy of Riot Games.
Teamwork is what matters most in Call of Duty WW2 War Mode. Image courtesy of TIGG.
Playground carousels invite multiple people to spin, which helps everyone. Image courtesy of iStockPhoto.
Split Fiction was designed bottom-up to be cooperative. Image courtesy of TIGG.
Gauntlet (1985) pioneered the ability for other players to drop in and out. Image courtesy of TheKingOfGrabs.
Myth 7: Prosocial is just about chat / communication systems
This misconception proposes that prosocial requires talking.
The truth
Prosocial behavior takes many forms, and most of them do not require talking. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Debating, deciding, and implementing strategy.
- Coordinating in battle.
- Protecting a member of your group who’s under fire.
- Congratulating someone for a good play.
- Inviting others to play.
- Healing an injured teammate.
- Trading gear.
- Sharing build-outs.
- Lifting someone up.
- Pulling someone out of a dangerous situation.
The misconception that prosocial only involves chat and other communication systems may stem from the industry’s shift “upstream,” as described in Myth #3.
But as you hopefully now see, there’s clearly more to prosocial than talk.
Myth 8: Prosocial is only for competitive games
Another pervasive misconception is that prosocial behavior only matters for PvP games. Additionally, some people believe that co-op games are inherently prosocial, therefore prosocial behavior will take care of itself.
The truth
Prosocial behavior matters wherever multiple people come together. Let’s take a quick look at the broad landscape of games:
- Solo player games — Though they play solo, players often share knowledge about games on social media (a prosocial activity).
- 1v1 games — One-on-one games have their own prosocial opportunities, including showing respect to opponents and encouraging cooperation in the game’s community.
- Co-op games — Cooperative games are all about teamwork, which requires a lot of prosocial action.
- Team-based competitive games — These games have all the above attributes and opportunities rolled into one.
- Watching live streams — People co-watching live broadcasts is yet another time where prosocial behavior can manifest.
Reviving a teammate in Left 4 Dead 2. Image courtesy of InterfaceInGame.
Player housing in World of Warcraft. Image courtesy of Blizzard.
Building a bridge in Death Stranding. Image courtesy of TIGG.
Hopefully you can now see that prosocial is not exclusive to competitive games. Think: Wherever there’s social, there’s prosocial.
Myth 9: Prosocial will make competitive games easy and soft
Variations of this phrase are often spoken by hardcore competitive gamers who are defensive of their genre. To a certain extent, this is perfectly understandable — they don’t want to hurt what they love.
The truth
The idea that prosocial features will make games easy or soft is not true and not the goal. As a matter of fact, players and teams in highly competitive professional sports exhibit prosocial behavior and personal achievement ALL THE TIME. The following are all examples of prosocial actions in American football:
- Blocking for a quarterback (protecting)
- Throwing a ball to a wide receiver (cooperating)
- Cheering for a teammate who scored a touchdown (celebration, acknowledgement)
None of the above behaviors reduce competition or make the game any easier. If anything, the need to cooperate increases the challenge. Working well with teammates takes effort and doesn’t minimize anyone’s personal achievement.
Furthermore, prosocial actions actually increase the number of ways that players can gain competitive advantage. Working together opens more avenues of success. From this point of view, more prosocial action leads to greater ability to compete.
Myth 10: If we only ban the “bad” players, we will only have prosocial players left
Some people believe there is a clear line between good and bad actors, and by removing the bad actors, communities will be prosocial.
The truth
The truth is that “bad” is a subjective spectrum. Are you bad because you’re having a bad day? Are you bad because you’re in a bad mood? What’s the line between being a good person and a bad one?
At the extreme end of the spectrum, bad actors are fairly easy to spot. But elsewhere, identification is more challenging because even the most prosocial people can be disruptive to someone at times.
Furthermore, previous attempts by game companies to divide playerbases into good and bad has met with failure. This approach is generally called “Prisoner’s Island,” which you can read more about in Anti-Strategies for Dealing with Disruptive Behavior.
Prosocial is not about reducing the bad in people; it’s about engineering to bring out more good.
Final thoughts
This article has outlined and described ten of the most common myths and misconceptions about prosocial behavior in our industry. There are other myths we didn’t cover, such as how prosocial is “too academic” (counter argument: everything is academic until you do it) or “no company is doing this” (perhaps not knowingly, but there are a wealth of examples above).
Ultimately, prosocial design suggests we fundamentally change how we make games, and fundamental change is rarely welcomed with open arms. But a change is needed, just the same, and the industry is becoming increasingly aware of this.
Now what?
If you would like to learn more about prosocial behavior and how to design for it, check out the following articles:
- Introduction to Prosocial Behavior
- Chapters Method for Prosocial Design in Session-Based Multiplayer Games
- Evaluating the Stickiness of Game Elements with a Social Satisfaction Matrix
- Rafting: A Business Model for Player Behavior
- Anti-Strategies for Dealing with Disruptive Behavior
- Shifting from Reactive to Proactive Design
