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[debvon]

toxic post alert ^^^ report

[frostshotgg]

It's difficult to tell the exact details of what the namechange/survey process entails, because all I can find about it is RL's article, and I don't have enough grains of salt in a 3 mile radius to take with what he says about League/Riot.

My guess is the process looks something like
>Player chooses name which Riot dislikes through it's process of magic and alcohol
>When they next log in, they're prompted to change their name
>They're emailed a survey
>Survey holds questionnaire

I can't be assed to dig through it, but there's probably some mention of surveys in the EULA that provides some amount of paper defense against stuff like Germany's laws.

The big thing is that, if nothing else, this is probably sponsored by some university because they love this kind of research and it went through an IRB there so someone somewhere gave them the okay.

[IronyOwl]

Can you explain to me in more detail why this is this creepy and/or outrageous again? Really spell it out for me. How is this even remotely unethical? The survey is optional. They're not banning people (from a free video game) for not taking it. I think the premise of it is fascinating and I hope they publish the results. It probably won't show any correlation at all, even so it's fine. Everything's going to be okay. Your kids are going to be okay. They've already taken similar personality tests of their own volition. This kind of thing has never been shown to damage child psyches. Besides, if your kid is signing up for free games with names like "fukUm8" etc aren't there more pressing matters to worry about than personality surveys? I must be missing something.

What if they're signing up for games with names like 'FABULOUS GAY DAD', or 'OsamaSpinLadin'? Are they pressing matters to worry about?

Frostshotgg brings up the fact that Lyte has a PhD in Psychology. Surely he should know then about the importance of informed consent? And frankly I don't think shoving a personality-test at a 13 year-old with the manipulative stick-and-carrot approach of 'You had a bad name (pls Buff Shaco, that's a future school-shooter right there!), we've changed it. But fill out this survey and we'll let you choose your new name.' qualifies as 'informed consent' in any way.

EDIT:
From the British Psychological Society's Code of Human Research Ethics (Dec. 2014)

The consent of participants in research, whatever their age or competence, should always be sought, by means appropriate to their age and competence level. For children under 16 years of age and for other persons where capacity to consent may be impaired the additional consent of parents or those with legal responsibility for the individual should normally also be sought.

Okay yes but why? You've repeatedly called giving people a survey "inappropriate" and "appalling" and so on, especially with regards to children, but when asked to explain in careful detail your reasoning appears to be "it's against the rules." What specifically is wrong or unethical or creepy about this?

[IronyOwl]

I don't know how to explain it clearer than that it is wrong to be giving children a personality test without parental consent.

You're right - I haven't explained it any clearer than that. And I can't. I can't give any reason beyond 'It's wrong. Many players are children. It *feels* wrong and creepy to do this to children without parental consent'. And beyond pointing to the official rules on such things (which exist for a reason, and are taken very seriously by practicing mental health professionals), I can't explain it.

Then it's bullshit, likely cultural. If Rito tried to explain their War on Racism by pointing out that FABULOUS GAY DAD was wrong, it felt wrong, and beyond pointing to their official rules on the subject couldn't explain any clearer why it was wrong, I assume you'd start laughing at them and never stop.

This is the exact same thing. If it "feels" wrong but you can't explain why, you haven't thought about it enough to understand your own reasoning and/or you know the reasoning you do have isn't a good argument, which in either case probably means your reasoning has more to do with arbitrary feelings than any kind of legitimate rationale.

How about this though:

Would it be okay if a group were to use a similar method (with equal pressure/enticement as Riot are doing in this scenario) to give your 13-year old child (I say '13' because League is rated as a a Teen game) a questionnaire that asked them things like if they'd ever had sexual thoughts about a member of the same sex? Or other personal sexual questions, like how often they masturbated? Presume that the questionnaire in this circumstance would be for some 'legitimate' goal, similar to Riot's one of 'reducing toxicity', as opposed to being sent by just some random weirdo, and that it's going to be used with the best intentions and with no leaks or similar issues. Would you have no problem with them sending out that 'survey' to your children without your permission? What about a survey that asked them if they'd ever thought about killing themselves, or cutting themselves? Would that be okay?

I'm presuming you're going to answer 'No', here; I certainly would. And I'm not saying the two are equivalent. But I think the same difficulty exists in explaining an opposition to one as the other.

To pre-empt the answer of 'Sexuality has nothing to do with playing League of Legends' - neither does giving players personality tests for picking 'inappropriate' names, particularly given what some of these 'inappropriate' names have been revealed as. I don't want a 13 year-old given a personality test for picking the name El Chapo Jr any more than I want a child at school given one for swearing in the playground.

And the idea that 'I'm sure someone at a university/someone qualified has given this the okay so it must be fine' seems to rely on a large degree of faith. And if that's the road we're to go down, I'd rather put my faith in official psychological regulatory institutions rather than in Riot Games.

Yes. Why wouldn't I be? What's going to go wrong with this situation? They're going to think about whether they want to have sex? They're going to feel embarrassed writing down on paper that they masturbate? I don't see what negative thing and/or risk is supposed to result from this scenario.

The only complaint I'd have would be the insinuations with, say, giving my kid a test to see if they're a sexual deviant because they drew a penis in class. But that's got nothing to do with the test itself, it's just social bullshit surrounding the one giving the test being a jackass. In the Rito case, I could see a definite "Fuck you" response if they felt like the sole point of the survey was the assumption that Lucian 8 my kfc was the moniker of a deeply abused and troubled individual and they'd like to confirm that. But again: Nothing to do with the test, everything to do with the one giving the test.

[RedKing]

I don't see the issue. It's not like Riot has the player held captive in a room or any other substantial form of coercion. If the player doesn't want to answer the survey, then they just stop playing (or register a new account with another email address, which it will take all of 25 seconds to obtain for free).

I'd also love to see your source for all these "offensive" names that really aren't which are supposedly being targeted. When I see shit like "pu55ym0nster" or "H1tl3rW4sR1ght", yeah I'm going to report it, and honestly, yeah I'd be fascinated what makes doucheballs like that tick. Perhaps just the presence of the survey will serve as a concrete wake-up call, a literal "What the fuck is wrong with you?" email.

[Putnam]

(or register a new account with another email address, which it will take all of 25 seconds to obtain for free).

And then another few weeks or months to get to the point you were at before.

[Flying Dice]

Or, y'know, suck it up and save the IP for a name change if you're so horribly offended by the thought of an optional pop-psych survey.

[Putnam]

okay lyte is probably legitimately capable of making a proper, scientific psych survey

really my main opinion on this whole situation is that i'm impressed that they actually finally gave him a job that he's probably really good at

this seems more like, say, the valve economist studying the holy grail of economics that is a market where every single transaction is tracked than the valve economist being thrown into the situation and saying "SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF SCAMMING" that their approach with lyte seems to have been so far

[frostshotgg]

Yeah. I mean, between the fact that LoL is entirely free and optional, and the fact that Lyte's Psych PhD that people love to bitch about him mentioning is finally directly relevant I really have no issues with this.

Plus I'm really, really interested in what comes from the results of this and similar surveys. The research you can do on human behavior through video games is unbelievable and it's been largely untapped. Last I checked, pathologists still discuss the WoW plague thing.

[Neonivek]

I learned not to long ago that PHD can often stand for Pedantic Hedonist who is Dumb

PHD is a license to talk out of your butt So... they often do.

[RedKing]

(or register a new account with another email address, which it will take all of 25 seconds to obtain for free).

And then another few weeks or months to get to the point you were at before.

If you made it that far with an offensive name, either the system is broken anyways, or you've been playing for days straight. And as Dice said, if it's that big a deal, maybe just change your name? It's not like people are that wedded to their LoL identity, and if they are, they probably need to be psych-tested anyways.

[Stuebi]

My DuoQ Partner just ditched me today. Which sucks big time, because we reached Gold 5 together not too long ago and were allways on the same wavelength.

I stopped playing this game solo long ago, it's less frustrating that way and also more fun, when you can talk to someone while playing. And now I dont really know what to do. I wanted to get to Gold 4 or 3, just so tehres less chance of me dropping again. And now I'm stuck.

[debvon]

I stopped playing this game solo long ago, it's less frustrating that way and also more fun, when you can talk to someone while playing

For me playing duo is more frustrating. When I make mistakes I feel like I'm frustrating my friend so I get hung up on it, and that ends up frustrating me, and I start to make more mistakes. I guess getting over that takes more experience or something. Even in games where we do well and coordinate through good plays I still feel on edge.

Why did your partner ditch you?

[Stuebi]

I stopped playing this game solo long ago, it's less frustrating that way and also more fun, when you can talk to someone while playing

For me playing duo is more frustrating. When I make mistakes I feel like I'm frustrating my friend so I get hung up on it, and that ends up frustrating me, and I start to make more mistakes. I guess getting over that takes more experience or something. Even in games where we do well and coordinate through good plays I still feel on edge.

Why did your partner ditch you?

No reason. That's the thing that upsets me.

We didnt play for a while, we both bought Town of Salem and were doing our Divinity - original Sin Playtrough. And he never asked to play LoL, and I was happy to get a little pause, the game can be infuriating after all.

Now, a few days ago he suddenly asked if I still played it, or if I was even willing to start playing again. I said yes, we could start anytime he wants to. Today I asked him to play a couple normals, just to get back into the swing of things. Then he revealed that he just reached Gold 2 and had played with another Duo partner, and he probably wouldnt play ranked with me anymore this season, because they want to reach Platin together.

I'm a little miffed, especially because it isnt the first time. He started a 5 man Ranked team maybe a year ago, and when I didnt play enough together with them, they just silently booted me out of it. Without a word. I mean, he could just say if I didnt play enough, isntead of just replacing me right away.

It also sucks because hes the only guy in my friend circle who regularly plays LoL. So I dont really have any backups. It's kinda sad, I was so thrilled to finally reach Gold and maybe go for Platin. And now that's all in the gutter.

[Flying Dice]

Sucks to lose someone that you worked well with.

I'm in the same boat as debvon, I hate playing with people I know because most of them (with a handful of exceptions) are salty as shit, caught up in "no, Gold is different!" syndrome, and I can't get away with muting them or trolling them.