Online multiplayer games frequently take place among strangers. This creates challenges — without trust, people are less likely to have a good experience together and more likely to be disruptive. While trust-building is a gradual process, these heuristics can help players overcome their natural skepticism about those they don’t know.
Trust is the invisible glue that holds thriving communities together.
Create positive shared experiences
Design elements can help players see their history together as beneficial and collaborative:
- Call back positive moments players have shared like successfully executing a strategy, or overcoming a challenging situation together.
- Highlight points where a player helped someone to emphasize how people support each other.
How to design environments where players support each other, celebrate diverse contributions, and ultimately build a thriving community.
Facilitate good communication
The right tools can enable effective communication amongst team members:
- Look for ways to help players improve communication and understand each other, especially during high-stakes moments
- Recognize the limits of communication in games and look to facilitate successful communication through context-aware pings, emojis, or other high efficiency communication tools.
Learn how communication design can empower seamless interaction, reduce friction, and cultivate greater harmony.
Design toward shared humanity
It’s common that players are regularly strangers without authentic or shared connection. But as designers we can seek out opportunities to reveal the humans behind the game play:
- Re-humanize the experience and remind players that they are playing with people, not opponents, bots, or characters.
- Support creative self-expression, create shared social spaces, encourage player-driven content, host community events, and embed gameplay narratives focused on compassion.
Delve into design techniques that can help players overcome skepticism and build connections.
Build reciprocal features
In team-based games, the features we design can foster trust through the reciprocal actions or opportunities they afford:
- Have players share resources, back up their teammates in conflict, or collaborate to solve problems.
- Enable small reciprocal actions, like a shared high five, to engender trust.
The quality of the interaction between players is key to the experience we are trying to build.
Establish accountability
Trust thrives in communities with clear and consistently upheld norms:
- Start with a code of conduct, hire community moderators, and look for opportunities to educate and provide shared perspective.
- Be careful to avoid celebrating counterproductive behaviors — this sends mixed messages and disincentives people from speaking up.
- Employ a penalty and reporting system, give players options like muting or kicking players to enable limited self-management.
A suite of proactive and reactive methods for addressing disruptive behavior.
Make use of social proof
People follow the lead of others, modeling their actions on the established norms of the group or behaviors of leaders. We can use this tendency, which psychologists call social proof, to motivate prosocial behavior:
- Highlight the positive or prosocial actions of other players.
- Create systems that showcase the most trusted or helpful players. As players witness and mimic others, the overall percentage of prosocial behaviors in the game will increase.
Quick and easy checks for prosocial behaviors you may want to support in your game.
Smooth over high-risk areas
By predicting areas prone to frustration, miscommunication, or abuse, we can proactively mitigate damage to the community:
- Analyze your game for high-risk areas and look for ways to smooth over those interactions, or if necessary, prevent them.
- Provide systems like voting on a game strategy to help players participate without exposing them to a high-risk negotiation unlikely to go well among strangers.
Tools for visualizing and designing for social experiences.
Fostering trust responsibly
While expecting universal harmony is unrealistic given the inherent complexities of human interaction, fostering trust through intentional design can significantly improve the social landscape of your game to encourage more prosocial behaviors. (For a more in-depth look at design, see Encouraging Trust by Design.)
Delve into design techniques that can help players overcome skepticism and build connections.
High-trust environments, while desirable, can nonetheless have unintended consequences. These may include echo chambers, groupthink, or increased vulnerability to exploitation by bad actors. It’s essential to be aware of these potential pitfalls and implement robust trust and safety measures to mitigate them. This involves having a clear plan for addressing harmful behavior, providing resources for players who experience it, and maintaining ongoing community management and moderation.
When creating shared spaces, we have a duty of care to prioritize the safety and well-being of players.
Building trust is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort, adaptation, and responsiveness to your community’s needs. Each game and community is unique, so tailor your approach accordingly. Prioritize clear communication, establish fair and transparent rules, and empower players to contribute to a positive environment.
By investing in trust-building measures and remaining vigilant against potential risks, you can create a space where players feel safe, valued, and empowered to build meaningful connections. This can lead to a more resilient and self-regulating community, ultimately enhancing the overall player experience.
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