I have been thinking a lot about what makes a game fun, and why some want to spoil that fun for others. Yesterday, while playing L4D2, I (shamefully) admit to have started trolling. I would like to explore why and how trolling comes up in vidoe games.

Looking back at yesterday, one reason may be the broken ballance of the game. When one side seems superior, be it due to skill or non-player related issues (connection, better FPS rate, better headphones or mouse), the other can react by trolling. It felt like crossing an invisible barrier from "determination, ambition, wish of victory" to "laid back, meh, trolling". The game once again became fun, but only for me and another person who picked up the troll factor. So at it's root, trolling is the last resort for keeping up the fun of play, without quitting.

Trolling can be generated by boredom, unballance of power or just a game predisposition to be trolled. I imagine each person has an individual capacity for errors and in-game hazards -- frustrations such as buggy controls (F.3.A.R. is a great example of how slight interface glitches frustrate), lag, someone huffing into the microphone (for gods sake, people, turn that mic OFF if you don't use it at all) -- all these factors contribute to increasing the likelihood of converting someone into a troll.

Innately, some people are more inclined to become trolls than others. I can't imagine someone coming into a game with the sole purpose of ruining someone else's fun. But if such a scenario does happen, I can only justify it by real world frustrations. A person who had a heated conversation and wishes to play can either be very angry during play or troll.


I know all of the above has probably been said before and I'm not discovering America over here. My question to you, dear gamedev community, is how could a designer (or gamemaker in general) try and minimise the troll factor?

For me, one of the obvious answers is "don't make multiplayer". An NPC couldn't care less for a player that trolls him. It's not trolling if everyone is calm about it.

Another possibility is penalties, but those are rather tricky. It's like with the forbidden fruit -- you know you are doing something wrong, but it tastes all the better. So, generally speaking, a troll cannot by stopped by light penalties such as in-game score decrease or life take-away. At the same time I think that severe penalties, such as server bans, can be to harsh. This is a weapon one would use way too often, even against people who have been taken as trolls but were, in fact, ordinary people making ordinary mistakes. That is how I see Black Ops when my brother plays it -- at the slightest twitch or mistake, a ban or kick is issued (which, on it's own, can corrupt a player towards the troll side of gaming)

There are other systems I can't recall right now that try and prevent trolling -- but overall I think it's difficult to make such a fool-proof game. It would take too much time to design the safety mechanisms alone in any multiplayer game.

So what say you? Is it possible to make a troll immune game? Or must we endure this side of our gaming nature with calm?



EDIT: Grand apologies, I thought I wrote this in the correct forum. Please change this to the Game Design forum. Again, sincere apologies

Well... I believe trolling simply comes down to human nature. So that would mean so long as you have multiplayer and a means to effectively communicate in a game, there will be trolling. I really don't think I have to explain that much further... some troll people because they don't get a good impression of others, or maybe they troll someone because as a person they feel the need to convince themselves that they are above someone else in some aspect. I could go on, but that's my general idea.

In terms of minimizing it, I believe co-op as opposed to competitive multiplayer can help, but even in your case you were playing L4D2 which is co-op (though you may have been playing the competitive mode and talking to the other team), but obviously co-op doesn't fit with all games, and even for those it does, a multiplayer mode in addition often helps. L4D2 is a good example once again. Many people enjoy the co-op, but the multiplayer keeps many coming back.

I think giving bonuses to people who are behind like in Mario Kart (better items are given to players in a worse position) can help minimize trolling, but I wouldn't say it is good game design for games that look to be competitive. I suppose the same could be said for many Mario games. Mario Party for example has a ridiculous amount of luck, so while people could still troll in that game if it were to be online, it would likely be minimized as one person wouldn't always be dominating with all the luck involved.

Simply having servers rather than match making may also help. Often admins of servers won't tolerate people being jerks and will kick or ban them simply because that is not the atmosphere they want. Votebans can also work, especially if each person has to personally voteban someone. If a voteban is started by a few people, but then everyone votes whether or not to ban them, they may choose to just ban the person because they don't care, which would obviously encourage trolling on the other end as I believe you suggested.

One last thing that comes to mind on the top of my head would be a reputation system. People could be voted up for good behavior and down for bad, but once again this can be abused by trolls. It would be difficult to monitor whether or not people are down voting people who weren't misbehaving or not. Another similar option is simply having a report feature where with enough reports it can be investigated (which has obvious downsides) and the person can be warned or temporarily banned.

So once again, when a multiplayer game allows players to easily communicate, I feel there will always be trolling unless each player were to have a completely unbiased moderater watching them play or something ridiculous like that.

I can't imagine someone coming into a game with the sole purpose of ruining someone else's fun.
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There is an entire personality set of people who do just that. Not just in games, but in forums too.

Can you define what you mean by trolling?
Do you mean posting inflammatory messages in order to annoy people and/or bait emotional responses?

You can easily get rid of this kind of trolling by allowing players to opt-out of (or force them to opt-in to) the game's chat services.
IMO - being able to opt-out of the game's chat should be an essential feature of every online game. If communication is a key part of the game, there should be easier ways to convey messages than typing.

In sports games, it's common these days for the match-making system to keep track of a "ragequit" statistic. If players repeatedly leave the game early while losing (robbing their opponent of the chance to play out a full match), then those people will become more and more likely to only be matched up against other rage-quitters. This splits your player base into good mannered and bad mannered players, who each can play the game in their own preferred (or 'karmic') way.

There's other anti-social behavior, like working against your team. Most online shooters these days will kick and/or ban players who repeatedly team-kill.

In BFBC2, I've worked against my own team before in an attempt to balance the game -- the teams were unbalanced (mine had twice as many players as theirs), so I gave them an advantage by blowing up one of my own objectives. This got a lot of angry responses from players on my team, but I think it made the match more fun ;)
If this behavior had any kind of consequence (e.g. friendly damage made you lose XP), then I'd probably think twice about it.

In Starcraft 2, there's a lot of etiquette in the online community, which has been built up over a decade. For example, when you lose a match, it's customary to compliment your opponent by saying 'GG'. It's also customary for the winner to show respect by reciprocating the 'GG'. When I play against people who show poor etiquette, I'll try to drag the game out longer in response to their bad manners. Amazingly, I'd guess about 90% of my opponents show good etiquette, and less than 1% show any kind of trolling.
If someone is trolling in SC2, you can simply add them to your blocked players list.

I can't imagine someone coming into a game with the sole purpose of ruining someone else's fun.

There is an entire personality set of people who do just that. Not just in games, but in forums too.
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You'd be surprised how many shades that reality has.

1. Can you define what you mean by trolling?
2. Do you mean posting inflammatory messages in order to annoy people and/or bait emotional responses?

1. I am so glad somebody else asked that! Thank you Hodgman!
2. Or do you mean killing newbies? Or what? Zethariel?

I guess I should be more specific, true.

For me, trolling is the act of spoiling someone else's fun, breaking the game rules or working against them, be it verbally or through actions. F.e. the trolling I mentioned in L4D2 was both, "accidentally" causing explosives to incap team-mates and then responding to their rage in a humorous way.

I find that most people when they use the word "troll" they mean anyone that disagrees with them or has unfavorable opinions and talk about them.

The word "troll" just like DMCAs and the flagging system on youtube, and the reputation system on a number of forums are all about power games that people pull to not face someone head on. They use the word or whatever and let whatever system is in place to silent that particular opinion or person they don't like regardless of how right or wrong they are. It's disgusting and it's just a new form of bullying and censoring that has taken root on the internet.


If you are talking about actual "trolling" as in purposely posting/doing inflammatory, aggravating, insulting, dishonest things and generally acting as prime motivation to cause discord, strife, flaming, bedlam, chaos, annoyance, and other such things (which does not including disagreeing honestly and discussing) in a digital setting.

That's easy, it's attention seeking, and there is research papers and such that are written about it. Basically, You have someone who can not get their required attention they need to stay stable so as a preservation method, along with the fact that the internet is anonymous for a good number of people (or they believe it is) the seek attention there by either crafting a new identity which people like or don't like and this feeds back on itself either with someone being obsessed with new personality OR causes the person to say "if they're not going to like me I'm going to make their life hell" and after this happens it just spreads across to other people.

So it's more an illness that has no solution. You ignore them and you're risking pushing them into more self destructive behavior to get attention or you react to them and they get worse for you because now they got what they crave from you and the more they can get it out of you the more they'll do it.

When two or more players meet each other in the game world. The more players that meetup, the higher the chance for a troll to be born. Internet + Anonymity + Unknowing Victims brings out the worst in some.


The more "serious" a game is, the worst the trolling effect becomes. By serious I mean players are totally immersed in the game, investing their time and hard work, pouring out sweat and tears into the game they play. A tiny hitch in the game caused by another player's innocuous actions which "spoils their fun/immersion/hardwork" can be seen as trolling by them. On the other hand, you have some that sees trolling as fun. I admit I was guilty of it in FPS games with friendly fire turned on and the ability to purchase multiple flashbangs. I just couldn't resist aiming my gun at an open target that is next to me, or throwing a flashbang in the face of my teammates when they are shooting something. Its just so damn fun to see them rage and scream and swear and whatnot.

Perhaps its a problem of players playing a different game in the same world, or having different objectives within the same game. A game is just a game. Unlike sports where teamwork actually matters, and where you never want to shoot the ball into your own goal, a game just doesn't have the same kind of "feel" which makes players want to do good to each other (or do good to their own teammates). In a game, its every man for themselves, until such time the troll deems necessary to "play nice" when their objective coincides with another player. In sports, you are graceful enough to accept your loss if the other team outclass you (broken balance of the game, yes?). You don't go around screaming "IMBA! NERF!" everytime you lose in sports, do you?

Convert the "Report" function into a "Reputation" function, but retain the "Report" name. That way each time a player "Reports" another, the reported player gets -1 Point. If the player accumulates enough "Reports", bad things starts to happen to them. It can by anything from "muting" the player (taking away the player's ability to chat), to "slowing down" the player's travel speed (subtly, bit by bit, of course), to reducing their HP/MP regen speed, right up to "unable to cast spells" and completely "rooted" to the ground, unable to move at all. And then you can start selling "Troll Potions" to remove those effects one by one to the troll. (Secretly, via email, away from the public eyes. No one needs to know the dark side about trolls anyways). The best thing about this is that the troll will think the "Report" button is really a "Report" button, so they (hopefully) won't go around "reporting" every player they come across.