The toxicity problem is not a new thing in the world of online multiplayer video games. Behind the veil of anonymity on the internet and in the heat of intense competitive battles, a certain group of gamers often find themselves resorting to toxicity and harassment towards other players in-game.
The issue of toxicity has bothered players for decades now, but it looks like Amazon has come up with a rather interesting solution to deal with toxic players: pairing them with other players who exhibit similar toxic behavior.
“One mechanism for dealing with such players is to isolate all ‘toxic’ players into a separate player pool, such that one toxic player is paired only with other toxic players,” a patent by Amazon that has been recently brought to light says.
The method involves isolating groups of players who display toxic behavior in-game and make separate queues for them in the game so that they’re matched against each other.
The popular MOBA title by Valve, Dota 2, has a method that’s quite similar to this. Players have a ‘behavior score’ attached to their accounts which fluctuate depending on their performance in games. Players with exceptionally low behavior scores are placed in a ‘low priority’ matchmaking pool where they have to play a fixed amount of games with others having similar behavior scores.
From the initial looks of it, the new method by Amazon can certainly go a long way in curbing in-game toxicity in multiplayer video games, with a small downside of longer queue times for both the normal and ‘toxic’ groups of players.
