Online video game players believe the behavior is known as “Smurfs“is generally wrong and toxic to the gaming community – but most admit it and say certain reasons make the behavior less reprehensible, new research shows.
The new study suggests that debates about gaming toxicity can sometimes be more complex and nuanced than is often realized, researchers say.
Online video games use so-called “matchmaking systems” to match players based on their skills. “Smurfing” is when players cheat these systems by creating new accounts in order to play against players of lower skill.
The practice is controversial in the gaming community, with some people defending it while others say it ruins the game.
This study suggests that this practice is widespread, even though many players claim to hate it, he said Charles MongeFirst author of the study and doctoral student Communications at Ohio State University.
“Players say they don’t like Smurfs at all. They also say they do it, but they don’t ruin games and they only do it for valid reasons,” Monge said.
Monge co-conducted the study Nicholas Matthewsassistant professor of communication at Ohio State. The research was recently published in the journal New media & society.
“Gamers put smurfing in the bad category, but bad has nuances,” Matthews said. “It was really interesting to see people saying that smurfing made them ‘bad’, but only a little – as opposed to others whose behavior was much worse.”
The research began with a baseline study of 328 people from gaming-specific subreddits on the social media site reddit and a gaming club in the state of Ohio. Participants reported playing video games an average of just over 24 hours per week.
The results showed that participants were more likely to perceive Smurfs as toxic than other players – such as trolling and flaming the weaker players who dominated them.
But 69% said they smurfed at least sometimes, and 94% believed other people smurfed sometimes. Still, relative to themselves, participants thought other players were more likely to be toxic when smurfing.
However, researchers were surprised by the responses they received when they asked participants if they had any comments at the end of the study.
“There was a flood of comments that basically said, ‘Hey, sometimes I smurf, but actually it’s not always bad,'” Monge said.
“It piqued our interest in finding out more about what sorted the Smurfs in their heads and under what circumstances.”
In a second study, researchers wanted to examine how players determine blame for Smurfs. They had 235 participants from Reddit who were heavy gamers participate in an online experiment in which they assessed smurfing in competitive, team-based video games.
Participants were presented with various reasons for smurfing to evaluate. Some reasons were less blameworthy – such as wanting to play with friends who had less experience in the game. Other reasons were more blameworthy – such as simply wanting to “destroy a bunch.” [lesser skilled players].”
In some cases, researchers attempted to distort participants’ judgments by suggesting scenarios in which players’ stated reasons for smurfing could be ignored.
In general, the study found that participants fairly judged people who smurfed based on the reasons they gave – and showed no clear evidence of bias in any scenario.
The reaction of participants in this study is consistent with what scientists call a “socially regulated” perspective on guilt, suggesting that there may be some nuance, that there are reasons that can make an action more or less blameworthy.
This is not what the researchers expected.
The response the researchers expected was based on the predictions of most online surveys and is called the “motivated blame perspective.” In this perspective, what is to blame is clear, and who is responsible is black or white, says Matthews.
“This perspective says that if something is wrong, no matter what the reason for doing it, it is always wrong.”
Monge added: “The idea is that it shouldn’t matter if you’re just smurfing so you can play with your friends. You made me lose this game and now I’m angry.”
A third study included a group of non-gamers to see whether they would have the same views on blame, even if the meaning of the games was not as important to them. It turns out they did – they also used the socially regulated perspective.
The problem of smurfing in the gaming community has only recently increased, the researchers said. Valve, the company behind the gaming platform Steam, has banned 90,000 Smurf accounts in their game DOTA2 and publicly stated this “Smurfing is not welcome.”
However, this study highlights that many players may have a more complex relationship with smurfing and that saying it is undesirable may be an oversimplification for them, the researchers said.
The issues examined in this study could be applicable beyond gaming, the researchers explained.
“Games could be a really powerful tool for testing things that don’t involve games,” Monge said. “The way we assign blame in the online context can allow us to understand how people assign blame more broadly.”
Matthews added: “Social scientists can use virtual gaming environments to test human interactions at scale. We can understand people in these social contexts when the mind is normally a black box.”