Using an artificial intelligence learning system, Clutch has scanned the Reddit gaming communities to find out which games have the most toxic players, and the top place has gone to the Payday community. Traditionally, CS:GO most frequently discussed for their toxic fan bases.
Of course, no game is immune from toxic fans and players, but games that usually require microphones and team communication are naturally more likely to expose players to bad behavior – at least while playing the game. However, there are other ways of measuring how toxic a gaming community is, and one method is to look at their online community forums and see what their posts are like, what words they use, how many posts are insulting to others, and so on.
To better measure this, Clutch used an IBM AI Classifier, an AI specifically designed to detect toxic comments. This AI was taught toxicity via Wikipedia comments that were individually rated for their toxicity by humans. This included obscene language, threats, insults, hate based on identity, and much more. Primed with this knowledge, Clutch set the AI onto the gaming subreddits to study 1.3 million comments by Redditors. Their findings showed that instead of more traditional team-based shooters some may think of when they think of toxic gaming communities, the significant winner was actually the subreddit for Payday: The Heist, an FPS designed for single-player or co-op crimes, which apparently attracted the worst sorts of online comments.
In fact, the FPS genre overall did poorly, with other toxic front-runners including game communities like DOTA 2 are simply more active than others.
In other words, the AI isn’t perfect, but it does suggest the first-person shooter community (and Payday) may have its own serious share of toxicity, particularly when mics aren’t involved. As AI gets more intelligent, perhaps players will see more accurate results from these kinds of surveys – and searches which extend beyond the borders of Reddit would also be interesting to see.
Source: Clutch