Young Video Game Players' Self-Identified Toxic Gaming Behaviour: An Interview Study

This interview study examines self-identified toxic gaming behaviour among 12 Finnish young players aged 16 to 27, recruited at a gaming festival and analysed through a lens of affect and affordances. Its central thesis is that "toxicity" is an ambiguous umbrella term arising from intense emotional interplay among players, game mechanics, and social norms rather than from individual malice alone. The authors position the work as a perpetrator-focused, solution-oriented complement to existing victim-centred and quantitative research on the topic.

Findings indicate that games function as affective spaces where tensions can erupt into verbal or physical outbursts, often followed by regret. Affordances such as anonymity, text and voice chat, ranked modes, and high-stakes "clutch" moments heighten situational intensity and facilitate negative conduct. Gender emerged as a significant axis: women and non-binary participants identified men's sexism and misogyny as a major problem, while men more often attributed negative behaviour to immaturity. Women frequently reported harassment and used avoidance tactics such as "dodging." Participants placed substantial responsibility on developers for moderation, while also describing self-regulation practices like post-game conflict resolution.

The authors argue that emotional intensity, aggressive conduct, and deliberate malicious behaviour should be analytically distinguished rather than conflated. Perpetration and victimization were found to overlap considerably, and negative conduct sometimes served purposes such as self-defence or gatekeeping. The study proposes seven remedies, including developing emotional and social skills, matching players with compatible expectations, strengthening reporting and moderation tools, promoting positive conduct, and creating safer spaces for vulnerable groups. Its scope is limited: the sample was small, entirely White, and not especially malicious, so the findings are not generalizable, particularly to players who embrace negative behaviour.