Raising Awareness Through Games: The Influence of a Trolling Game on Perception of Toxic Behavior

The use of video games for purposes other than entertainment has become an appealing area of research. In recent years, games have become actors that support social and political change by raising awareness, i.e., persuasive games. In this study, we focus on a persuasive game that portrays toxic online behaviors, often considered as trolling: spamming, flaming, trash-talking, misdirection and using offensive language. To observe the influence of a trolling game that we designed as a tool for raising awareness about toxic behavior, we applied a single-group pre-test and post-test design in a quantitative manner. We collected data via an online questionnaire (N = 111) to have a descriptive view at the results. Even though self-reports did not show a change in awareness and knowledge acquisition by playing the game, participants had a more negative perception of toxic trolling after the gameplay. All five of the types of trolling were successfully represented in an immersion-neutral but realistic setting. We aim to bring more insight into persuasive games literature by discussing the implications of this study.