Less Talk, More Trust: Understanding Players' In-game Assessment of Communication Processes in League of Legends

2025-02-25

AI Summary

This study investigates how players in *League of Legends* ranked matches dynamically assess four communication modalities—text chat, pings, emotes, and vote-based actions—and how these assessments inform real-time trust judgments. Employing real-time observational interviews and thematic analysis of in-situ decision-making data from 22 high-elo players, we identify a novel cognitive paradigm: “communication-as-risk,” wherein players routinely interpret communication acts as early indicators of team breakdown. Five critical evaluation dimensions emerge: temporal sensitivity, modality appropriateness, accountability attribution, contextual alignment, and normative adherence—each reflecting the dynamic interplay of situational cues, shared expectations, and community norms in trust formation. The findings advance a player-centered framework for game communication design, grounded in empirical trust dynamics. This framework yields actionable, system-level optimization principles for multiplayer online games, emphasizing risk-aware interaction design and context-sensitive feedback mechanisms.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

In-game team communication in online multiplayer games has shown the potential to foster efficient collaboration and positive social interactions. Yet players often associate communication within ad hoc teams with frustration and wariness. Though previous works have quantitatively analyzed communication patterns at scale, few have identified the motivations of how a player makes in-the-moment communication decisions. In this paper, we conducted an observation study with 22 League of Legends players by interviewing them during Solo Ranked games on their use of four in-game communication media (chat, pings, emotes, votes). We performed thematic analysis to understand players' in-context assessment and perception of communication attempts. We demonstrate that players evaluate communication opportunities on proximate game states bound by player expectations and norms. Our findings illustrate players' tendency to view communication, regardless of its content, as a precursor to team breakdowns. We build upon these findings to motivate effective player-oriented communication design in online games.

Problem

• Understanding players' in-game communication decisions
• Assessing communication media in League of Legends
• Designing effective player-oriented communication strategies

Innovation

• Observation study with players
• Thematic analysis of communication
• Player-oriented design motivation