Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games

Abstract

Extensive research has examined the prevalence and potential effects of potentially harmful video game content produced by game developers, such as violence, profanity, and sexualized portrayals, but much less research has systematically examined the large range of potentially problematic content produced by players in increasingly popular online games. This player-generated content may actually be of more social concern than content programmed in the games, as it is largely undocumented and unaddressed by industry ratings and consumer advisory groups. While potential effects of such antisocial and offensive online game content are not well understood, a first step toward exploring this concern is systematic documentation of offensive user-generated content in online games. To that end, a pair of large-scale systematic content analyses documented a range of offensive user-generated content, including utterances, text, and images, from a total of more than 2,500 users in popular first-person shooter video games. Findings indicated that some content, such as profanity, were frequent among users who spoke during games. More offensive and potentially harmful content such as racial slurs was proportionally very rare but frequent enough to be encountered often by regular game players. Implications for further research and practice are discussed. Results should be interpreted tentatively based on this relatively unprecedented systematic investigation, should not be interpreted as evidence that online shooter games are harmful or lack healthy elements, and should not be extrapolated to other online game genres and communities until further research is conducted.