Sweatlords are one thing. But griefers and bullies who harass, intimidate, and threaten other players or share harmful, offensive, or misleading content are another. Toxic behavior has the power to not only ruin the gaming experience but cause deeper damage to players and the broader community – which can hurt your bottom line.
Digital harassment, bullying, and abuse are at an all-time high. Sutherland’s own research in our whitepaper, The New Content Safety Paradigm: Impediments and Competencies of Gen AI in Content Moderation, found close to half of all teens face some form of cyberbullying. Marginalized groups face even higher levels of mistreatment, with 76% of users that identify as transgender reporting online abuse.
Harassment is equally commonplace in the gaming world: 86% of players in the US in 2022 said they were harassed while gaming – an increase from 74% in 2019.
This cannot continue. Trust and safety rightfully serve as the bedrock of gaming – and, in fact, any business. Players and customers simply won’t support a brand they don’t trust, and will avoid any games that don’t make them feel safe or comfortable.
Gaming companies need to prioritize creating game worlds that are free from harassment, bullying, and child grooming.
Maintain A Positive Experience Through Advanced Moderation Capabilities
Content moderation lies at the heart of trust and safety in gaming. However, moderation can be stressful and is rarely straightforward. The volume of content generated, from livestreams to stream chats, has proliferated as more people continue to join the world of gaming. And in a virtual world, context matters when making a fair decision. Is it just friendly trash talk, or something more serious?
There is a balancing act that studios need to get right: making games feel safer and protecting players without removing the spirit of fun or gameplay.
Studios and game publishers need a personalized, end-to-end solution that combines human intelligence, and an understanding of how gaming communities build their own languages, with advanced moderation capabilities augmented by AI.
Unleashing The Power of AI
AI’s capabilities are developing rapidly, and it has become a critical tool in content moderation. When serving our gaming industry partners, we leverage AI as an enabler for:
- Language Understanding, and Image and Video Recognition at Scale: Advancing models and training on trends means AI can interpret text in different languages, identify hate speech, abusive language, and trending slangs and slurs, as well as screen explicit or graphic material. It can also reduce the exposure of human moderators to highly disturbing content by blurring and other masking techniques.
- Real-Time Moderation Around The Clock: AI can instantly and automatically detect harmful cases before live streaming, as well as provide 24/7 coverage.
- Sentiment Analysis And Built-In Controls for Content Moderators: AI can anonymously monitor the data points of human moderators to spot any early warning signs of stress or overexposure to egregious content. It allows a proactive stance on wellness, with pre-emptive action to protect content moderators.
AI cannot replace the value and holistic impact of human oversight, however, especially where finer nuances of human nature and intent are at play.
Combining the capabilities of AI and human moderators can give gaming companies the boost for next-level success.
Win At Content Moderation With Customized Support
Gaming is a unique world, with communities that have their own rules of engagement and ways of communicating. Sutherland understands the need for those communities to be safe and protected. Part of this includes providing support services that are reliable, easy to use, and trustworthy. We offer a suite of services in addition to Content Moderation, and Trust and Safety, including:
- Game Launch Support: Harness a single source of customer support so developers can focus on the game without distraction for a successful launch.
- Playtesting and Games User Research: Leverage deep expertise and powerful research to expedite game development, improve player retention, reduce risk, and create revenue opportunities.
- Cloud Testing with Sutherland CloudTestr™: Enable end-to-end software testing, modernize applications, and achieve AI-driven digital assurance.
No two games are exactly alike, so no two content moderation solutions should be either. We’re dynamic and flexible, adopting the culture of the leading brands we work with so gamers see only one unified brand when they reach out for support or help.
Trust and safety is not a game. Leave content moderation to us while you focus on making your games the best they can be.
Want to learn more about how Sutherland’s services can transform your content moderation efforts for safer games players can trust.
Dimple leads the Content Solutions horizontal at Sutherland and brings a wealth of experience in partnering with global enterprises in areas of Content Moderation, Trust and Safety, Ad Ops, Online Community Management and Knowledge Management. She has been instrumental in building a strong Trust and Safety practice with ‘Human-Centric’ focus and ‘Safety by Design’ at its core.
Jason brings more than 20 years of professional experience to create and analyze content solutions that focus on keeping people healthy and happy.
