Handling Misconduct In Grassroots Esports: Beyond The Cis Perspective.

Organized esports at the professional and collegiate levels have a variety of stakeholders invested in community integrity. For example, colleges that receive federal funding must follow Title IX policies on gender discrimination within their esports clubs. At the professional level, esports developers profit from consistent gameplay which is reliant upon positive in-game experiences. Esports teams often include conduct clauses in their player contracts to protect the reputation of the team. Accordingly, professional organizations and colleges often dedicate resources to defining and/or enforcing player and community policy.

In contrast, grassroots gaming is organized by and for players. Without major developer support or funding, these communities decide policy collectively. While collective agreement may be sufficient to decide game policies like tournament-legal stages, more complex issues of player behavior and misconduct are so fraught with disagreement that collective consensus is seldom reached. Ultimately, each local tournament organizer decides who attends their private events and who is banned. Because grassroots tournament organizers are simply volunteers who are not hired, trained or licensed by any formal entity, decisions addressing the very same instance of misconduct vary widely and are susceptible to individual bias.

In many cases, players who feel that their local TOs have not done them justice instead garner community support with callout posts on social media detailing the perceived harm. While such callout posts can be a powerful tool of accountability for unheard people, they can also result in unchecked vigilante justice, reactionary rather than careful decisions from leadership, and huge violations of privacy for all involved people. Like with individual TOs, personal bias also affects how each community member reacts to accusations and chooses to promote or disparage the statement writer and accused person. On top of individual bias, social media algorithms prioritize sensational content above measured opinions, thus extreme opinions on instances of misconduct are broadcasted widely even though they may not be representative.

In short, the lack of formalized misconduct policy or established best practices within grassroots esports communities results in biased judgment by community organizers and community members, with inconsistent results for both victim and accused.

To help you as a TO make these decisions in a way that upholds justice and fosters inclusivity, we conducted a survey study of grassroots esports communities, to see where they stand on misconduct. This guide will be divided into three sections based on the three sections of the survey we conducted to gather this data. The first section asks tournament organizers how they have handled misconduct over time. Next, we will look at what players and community members as a whole have to say about improving processes surrounding issues of misconduct both online and offline. And lastly will be examining the differences in perspectives between the cis male majority opinion and that of gender minorities to gain some insight into issues that may affect these groups differently. Alongside merely presenting the data, we will make recommendations on how to make your scene a more welcoming and inclusive place for gender minorities. Before all that, let’s briefly discuss the demographics of our survey participants.

Demographic Info

We had 265 people respond to our survey. 70 were TOs, 203 were players, and from those groups, 230 gave us their opinions on vignettes about misconduct in the community. The average respondent was between 22 and 25 years of age and had been in the community for between two and five years. We had good TO responses from every level of organizing, from small locals to international events. Nearly all of our players reported attending events in-person, and about half reported playing in online tournaments as well. About 20% of our respondents had been involved in misconduct cases themselves, either reporting someone else or being accused of misconduct.

Additionally, 227 people reported their gender: 198 of them were cisgender men and 29 were cisgender women, transgender women, non-binary, or genderqueer.

The cis men and gender minorities in our sample were similar in most ways: they had the same average age, and number of years in the community, and the majority attend in-person events. They agree on average punishments for the majority of misconduct cases we presented. But, as you’ll see, cis men and gender minorities differ in a few key ways: the frequency of harassment and misconduct they experience, how safe they feel at in-person events, their opinions on the severity of some specific misconduct events, and the role of some power dynamics in misconduct events.

TO Responses

As you probably know, when it comes to upholding justice in grassroots esports communities, a lot of responsibilities fall on the shoulders of community leaders and tournament organizers. Additionally, as volunteer workers, they receive little to no financial compensation for their effort, often even going negative! Something else we learned about TOs in this study is they don't get any formal training, most commonly learning through trial and error (90%) - although about 60% of TOs are lucky enough to have direct mentorship at some point. On top of this, they also end up being the ones responsible for upholding justice, as the main way to enforce rules is through banning players who violate from attendance. This might seem like a normal thing to ask of them at first, however, behind the scenes, things can get pretty crazy. Tournament organizers receive complaints from everything as insignificant as a player having bad body odor, to addressing a player who uses slurs, to property damage, or even actual criminal offenses. The scope of the issues they face is massive, and that requires a bigger skill set than just running a bracket.

If you still somehow aren't sold on the fact that being a TO requires a lot more skills and puts you in a lot more situations than you might have suspected, I think you'll find this study result puts that idea to rest: when asked what the most serious complaint they had to investigate as a TO, 30% of respondents said sexual assault. If it surprises you that this many TOs have had to deal with sexual assault allegations in their regions, you should talk to literally any woman in esports and then you will no longer be surprised.

Tournament organizers aren’t just responsible for their own events though, as community leaders, they are asked to address the behavior of community members in all spaces - not necessarily just at tournaments. And when asked where the events players report as misconduct take place, online was the most common on average, with in-person events being closed behind and in-person not at an event being pretty clearly the least common. This indicates that players care about what people say online and do online more than you might have thought. We shall discuss more in the player section but I want you to keep this information in the back of your head until then.

The community is still changing and growing over time, and having to learn how to handle misconduct accusations has caused tournament organizers and Community leaders to change the way they uphold justice in their scenes. They’re definitely learning to make it more of a priority than it used to be. More specifically, when looking across responses from tournament organizers who they've changed their policies on misconduct over time, one consistent friend has been that as a whole, they are getting stricter about enforcing rules. Only 20% of tournament organizers said that they'd had little to no change over time. And if you find yourself in that 20% maybe it's time to consider changing some things - especially if you’d like to improve the experiences of minorities in your scene. Get with the program it's not 2008 anymore and we should ban people for transphobia now. The two most common ways they changed over time were either by better enforcing existing rules or creating some kind of group of people responsible for handling misconduct cases instead of just leaving it to one person. This division of labor as well as formally stating rules are things that were nearly unanimously stated as something that helps. Additionally, many TOs reported that they have been investigating complaints more seriously than they used to. This is really encouraging and I hope the trend continues!

Player Responses

We had three questions for the players. The first of which is asking generally what can tournament organizers do to improve your tournament experience. The second question asked about how Moderators and admins could improve their experiences in semi-public online spaces, such as regional or character-specific discord servers, Facebook groups, or subreddits. And the final question we asked the players was: What policies in online spaces would improve their experience. Will be looking at these in that order starting with the IRL tournament experience.

There were several trends in the answers to this question. Overall among the players who commented on misconduct enforcement, a very strong theme was a call for more and stricter enforcement of rules. Specifically, about 40% of players responded that they wanted stricter enforcement of rules When asked what tournament organizers could do to improve their experience. To highlight some specific examples I'd like to show you what one player wrote“It's very rare that I feel any of the TOs would do anything about transphobic comments or remarks” I hope that you aren't one of the TOs that they were talking about, however, whether you are or not I believe tournament organizers should be more explicitly and proactively banning people for being transphobic.

Another recommendation we stand with 100% is always putting pronouns on stream displays. Only about 25% of tournament organizers do this currently and I don't think there's an excuse for it being this low. At the very minimum, you can put the pronoun to the players who have their pronouns listed on start.gg on stream. I understand that you might only have cisgender people in your community, however by proactively putting pronoun time display on stream, not only do you help normalize this practice, but you also signal to trans people who may want to join your community that it will be a welcoming place for them. I think this is a super simple thing you can Implement that will make people feel more about them in your scene. And if anyone is opposed to this I would ask them to think about why they're opposed to this. If they don't want transgender people to feel welcome at tournaments, maybe they’re who shouldn't be at tournaments. Please take the time to edit your stream overlay to add pronouns, once you do that, it’s so simple to just check the player’s start.gg profile and add whatever pronouns they put there.

The last major recommendation I'd like to make before we move on to our next section is based on another theme we found. Many players want an easier way for them to report misconduct. Having a safe and easily accessible person to report things to is incredibly important for upholding justice within our communities. The only way that you as a TO can know when action needs to be taken is if your community tells you about what's going on. I believe it is a TOs responsibility to make sure that there is a simple, easy, and safe way for players to report misconduct. It's not just enough to say you have your DMs open, I would encourage you to make sure to explicitly and proactively tell the people who attend your events that if they have any problems with any attendee at your event that they can talk to you as a TO and you will listen to and take action on what they have to say. Other recommendations I would make would include having a code of conduct posted visibly at the TO desk or the venue entrance with a bit.ly link or QR code to a report form. Pin the same report from in your Discord server channels, and make it easily accessible. Maybe also write up a short blurb about maybe the process of reporting people who may be nervous or unsure about just DMing a tournament organizer they don't know well.

Moving on to results about semi-public online spaces like Discord servers and Facebook groups!

Across the board, the number one trend in answers to this question is improved moderation. Specifically, players want TOs to crack down on bigotry and harassment. I’d like to share some of the answers we felt represented the theme here the best. One player suggests TOs do better at “Enforcing rules in harassment and homophobia/sexism/racism and try to cultivate an environment for everyone rather than a "boys club" mentality” Another observes that “Casual racism and sexism seems rampant in certain communities, while it’s not tolerated in others … well-moderated spaces seem to provide a better experience for players and community members” A concrete recommendation from one player was “Giving out more frequent, short-duration bans for poor behavior.” We (and the data) encourage you to be willing to give someone a short ban for toxic behavior, nipping it in the bud and not letting the toxicity fester will make your communities a better place. Another strong theme was that players want the moderators of their groups to be more active and willing to step in and intervene, this was a very common answer. Overall I think the data speaks for itself. Please moderate your discord servers and encourage your mods to proactively act on things. If that means you need more mods, find people in your scene you can trust to do that. Some resources and training guides that may help with that are here and here! Action is the road to building a better, safer, and more welcoming community.

Finally, results about public online spaces like Twitter and Twitch!

The theme here is once again overwhelmingly improved moderation, however, players did acknowledge that spaces like Twitter are public and that they are so much harder to moderate than semi-public ones like Discord servers, and many of them understand and accept that there might not be anything you can do in some instances. But one public space that TOs have more control over is their Twitch stream. Many players said that one thing that would 100% make it better would be better moderation of twitch chat. If you have ever turned on a twitch stream of a major tournament whenever a woman or trans person is on the screen you know exactly what I'm talking about. PLEASE moderate your chat, or put it in emote-only mode if you don’t have enough mods.

The next recommendation I want to make may be more controversial but I would encourage you to be willing to ban someone for a tweet they made. I know that may sound crazy, but hear me out. I think that if someone says something online it should be treated as if they said it in person because ultimately they said it. Why should the words they say on Twitter have less weight than the words they say to your face? Maybe they take them seriously, but those same words can still hurt people. Someone being racist or sexist or transphobic on Twitter should not be allowed at tournaments. By allowing them there you are signaling to everyone who is affected by those comments that their comfort is less important than having this bigoted player in attendance. I believe and I think all of you will agree with me when I say that making a community that is welcoming to everyone is far more important than pandering to the very few people still clinging to their old ideas of what the world should be like. If someone doesn't want a space to make everyone feel welcome they should be the unwelcome one. One player who directly addressed the topic asks that TOs “Acknowledge [that] online encounters influence comfort levels at in-person events” Another player put it this way “I think the community would benefit if there was more of an effort to direct harmful posts, like anti-LGBTQ+ content, towards community leaders, even in smaller, local scenes.” The people want, and common sense demands, that you as community leaders stop turning a blind eye to what happens on Twitter and in twitch chats, and be ready and willing to punish people for their toxicity on those platforms. Now obviously a Twitter comment is simply not on the same scale as something like assault. However, a short-term ban or warning is also not on the same scale as a permanent ban. Keeping community members accountable for the words they say is crucial to making sure that minorities feel safe and welcomed in your scene.

Differences between how cis men and gender minorities feel about misconduct

Before we get into the data from this study itself, I want to bring some background context. This shouldn't surprise anybody but believe it or not, the Esports Community and gaming culture as a whole is not a very welcoming environment for gender minorities. A 2020 study titled “Exploring the Contested Notion of Social Inclusion and Gender Inclusivity within eSport Spaces” investigated this very topic and found that “research suggests that women continue to face stigmatisation, discrimination, and entry barriers into new virtual sporting paradigms and gaming networks. the ‘male gamer stereotype’ and ‘cultural inaccessibility’ of eSport has led to discrimination and toxic practices towards females” In a formal report by the Scholar Strategies Network, they say that “problems are worsened by gaming community leaders who claim that gender-based harassment is a ‘non-issue’ and dismiss their responsibility for fostering rape cultures” they also warned that “unless hostile online behaviours are reduced, vulnerable people, marginalised groups, and the public generally will all be further harmed” (Emily Jane Hayday and Holly Collison)

The evidence of all of this is really obvious if you go to a tournament. I am a Super Smash Brothers Melee player, and most of the time when I go to tournaments, I am the only feminine presenting person competing. To help remedy the lack of gender minority perspectives currently, take a look at this data.

The last section of our survey consisted of 20 scenarios of reported misconduct and asked respondents to say what they believe the appropriate action taken would be, assuming the report was correct. Their choices were no action needed, a warning, a short-term ban consisting of six months or less, a long-term ban being more than 6 months, or a permanent ban. Here is the full data of responses to all 20 scenarios, I will go over the most interesting and significant results here as well as compare the answers of gender minorities to cis men.

For the most part, these results are expected, however, I'd like to highlight one fact. I mentioned this a moment ago but the only situation of all 20 that not a single person answered that no action was needed for was a player bringing a modified setup that gives him a major advantage in the tournament. That is a disturbing fact to me, well obviously I believe that bringing a setup that gives you a major advantage should be against the rules and is a ban-worthy offense, it is simply not as severe of an offense as some of the other things below it. Cheating in-game is bad, however, it's concerning that the community as a whole believes that cheating in-game is worse than intentional transphobia. While over 97% of respondents believed that some length of a ban was needed for cheating in-game, less than half did when asked about someone intentionally misgendering and deadnaming their opponent after losing. I would ask you as Community leaders to take a harsher stance on transphobia and other issues within your community. It is your job to stand up for gender minorities in your scene and make sure that they feel safe and welcome and the way you do that is by punishing people for making them feel unsafe and unwelcome. Now let's look at how the results differed between cis men and gender minorities.

The first major difference I'd like to highlight is that gender minorities are less likely to feel safe in their local scene when compared to cisgender men. Specifically, gender minorities are much more likely to experience harassment in public spaces. This is important to keep in mind when you are investigating a situation and even just keeping an eye on things in your community. As far as differences and what they value when punishing things gender minorities are more likely to recommend harsher punishment when the victim is a minor a gender minority or significantly younger than the accused, this I believe is because at render minorities due to their status in society are just more aware of the power imbalances that those kinds of situations can bring. You might not see that if you're coming from the position of a cis male but the power dynamics of a situation matter when we are considering what the most just thing to do is. The only other major difference between cis men and gender minorities as far as what should be punished more harshly is that in general 6 men believed that new players to the scene should be given more leniency in bans whereas gender minorities did not. Overall this difference is statistically significant but maybe not as crazy as you might suspect, for the 20 situations that we posed a hypothetical the average recommended punishment by cis men was between a warning and a short-term ban whereas the average recommended punishment by gender minorities was a short-term bad. So it's not like women and trans people are advocating for an authoritarian Crackdown on all violations, it's more so that as a community we would like to see the rules that exist be enforced a bit stricter to make the scene more welcoming for all!

Wrapping up

Ultimately Grassroots communities rely on their Community leaders and tournament organizers to thrive. If you have that role in your own scene congratulations! I appreciate you and I'm sure your players do too. But you also have a responsibility, a responsibility to foster a welcoming and Safe Community for people. I hope that this article has provided you with some helpful information and recommendations to maybe give you a bit more confidence and how you want to enforce Justice in your scene. I believe that in general, the scene has gotten better over time, but we need to be careful to make sure it continues that way. I would ask you as tournament organizers and Community leaders to really think about how your perspective might differ from someone who is a gender minority. If you can and don’t already, I would recommend putting women and trans people in leadership positions (if they want to of course) because not only does it give other gender minorities someone they’re likely more comfortable going to, but also because it gives you a perspective that you otherwise wouldn’t have.

In conclusion, I would ask you to consider changing how your scene operates. In order to build a more welcoming and inclusive scene for years to come, we must make sure everyone feels safe. When looking at the data it becomes obvious it is time to act now. Making sure that gender minorities feel welcome in your scene is a crucial step toward the development of the Esports Community as a whole. If you got anything helpful out of this guide, I would appreciate it if you send it to any TOs you know. I hope the next event you run is amazing!

The full data from the survey can be found here!

Research and writing done by Kyle Nolla and Ellie Reaves. Kyle Nolla, PhD (she/they) is a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at Northwestern University. Her research examines skill learning within the Smash Community and how factors like anxiety, identity, and social support shape a person’s path to Smash expertise. She also directed the SSB Conduct Panel, a grassroots justice initiative that was active from 2018-2020. Ellie Reaves (she/they) is a transfemme Melee and P+ player from Alabama. She loves volunteering to help run events and is planning to get a computer science degree at University of Alabama Huntsville.