In this explorative study, the pragmatic differences between players in Virtual Reality and players in the normal gaming space are to be explored. The hypothesis is that VR spaces are less toxic than traditional or 'flat' spaces, which can be linguistically proven by analyzing speech acts (see Austin 1962), performed by the players.
Before that can be done, first the concept of toxicity must be explained. "[T]oxicity damages all it touches" (Tirrell 2017: 14) and the available research indicates that it is part of the online gaming community. Even if there are aspirations for a less toxic environment, like the "Fair Play Alliance coalition" (Beres et al. 2021: 1), it is clear, that the problem is persistent. While it is hard to pinpoint exactly, what toxicity means, it broadly includes
"abusive communications directed towards other players, and disruptive gameplay behaviors that violate the rules and social norms of the game" (Beres et al. 2021: 1).
Toxicity in this sense is not a one-time occurrence that immediately hurts a person. Toxic speech acts rather inflict damage over time and create a more toxic environment. In this regard, one must look at the "Epidemiology of Discursive Harm" (Tirrell 2017: 139) and not only the immediate reaction. "Moral disengagement" (Beres 2021: 3) is key regarding toxic behavior and studies show that many players can disconnect easily when in a game.
In Virtual Reality, however, the disengagement is difficult because of the immersion. Toxic speech acts are harder to accomplish face-to-face or headset-to-headset. Even things like physical threats are taken more seriously in a VR environment. "[VR groping] is harassment and assault, but it's assault of a virtual body rather than a physical body" (Sparrow et al. 2019: 450).
To elaborate this, the study will consist of various media to show the difference in toxic speech acts. First, there will be a corpus of videos to compare toxicity in VR to flat gaming. This corpus will consist of YouTube and Twitch videos uploaded by the users. Secondly, we will play some of the most played VR-Titles (Pavlov VR; Contractors) and study the toxicity firsthand.
The hypothesis is, that it is easier for the players to morally disengage in a flat game than in VR. With the linguistic tools and a conversational analysis, we hope to illuminate this phenomenon.
References
Austin, John (1962): How to do things with words. The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beres, Nicole et al. (2021): Don't You Know That You're Toxic: Normalization of Toxicity in Online Gaming. In: CHI '21: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-15.
Sparrow, Lucy et al. (2019): Apathetic Villagers and the Trolls Who Love Them: Player Amorality in Online Multiplayer Games. In: OZCHI'19: Proceedings of the 31st Australian Conference on Human-Computer-Interaction, 447–451.
Tirrell, Lynne (2017): Toxic Speech. Toward an Epidemiology of Discursive Harm. In: Philosophical Topics 45 (2), 139–162.
