作者：Dmitri Williams

从用户到用户的社会影响力是一件美妙之事，但并非所有人都会有得体文雅的举止。在任何社交网络都不难见到这些令人讨厌的人。毫无疑问这些人的确存在，并且会产生危害。如果你曾经在射击游戏中与随机队友连接XBox Live语音聊天功能，相信你就知道我在说什么了。这些人基本是12岁左右的孩子（或者一些举止像这个年龄段的人），口里不断吐出污言秽语，一直在说你逊比毙了之类的话。

互联网上对这类人的称呼当然就是“troll”。有些此类玩家很糟糕并且没有意识到这一点，还有些玩家则无视这一点并不断骚扰别人。这应该如何用科学来解释呢？与其他事物一样，这也是一种可衡量的行为，在这种过程中我们还可以得到解决对策。

gamer(from columbusalive.com)

在衡量玩家的社会价值时，要先清楚这一数据并不总是乐观的。真正的troll定义是社会消极性超过其社交积极性的人。某些间接衡量方式就是看这些人的登录情况同其他玩家流失、抱怨情况的联系。我认为开发者通常认为这些玩家是公开推出的游戏所需承受的代价，但我们其实还可以用一些科学方法解决这个问题。

我们的多数方法是建立在传染病的逻辑之上，我们知道事物是通过网络传播扩散的。这可能是病毒，或者行为，文化基因，想法，甚至是一种情绪。troll是一种糟糕情绪的化身，让troll与快乐的玩家接触，就像是网络感染了一种传染病，传播一种糟糕的情绪，将快乐的玩家转化为不快的玩家。不快的玩家在游戏中投入更少，并通常会退出游戏。

以美元为单位计算，我们可以看到许多玩家拥有消极的社会价值。这意味着与他们互动会直接导致其他人减入投入游戏的时间和金钱。并非每个遇到troll的玩家都会出现这种情况，但要获得一个消极的社会价值，你得成为一个对他人来说是纯消极的人物。属于这一范畴的玩家比例大约为5-10%，但不同游戏题材和游戏文化的这一比例也不尽相同。比如《企鹅俱乐部》中的troll玩家比例就不可能同《光晕3》相同。

那么这5-10%就是“坏”玩家吗？不，他们甚至有可能成为好顾客。重要的是将其消极社会价值提升到与其终身价值（以下简称LTV）相当的水平。如果相比消极社会价值，他们的LTV更高，那么从长期来看他们不会让你太费钱。如果他们的LTV极高，那么他们很可能成为非常有价值的顾客。现在姑且将其称为“中立troll”。

当然，这一群体里面也不乏烂苹果之辈。在较少情况下，多数游戏中的此类玩家仅占2%，他们的消极社会价值超过了LTV，因此会让开发者耗财。相比他们在游戏中花的钱，开发者为其亏损的钱更多。这是极少数你需要其将排除出去的玩家，我们将其称为“邪恶troll”。

为什么不永远禁止邪恶troll？因为他们仍在游戏中花钱。这里我们要返回到网络扩散，以及“池塘涟漪效应”的逻辑中。你并不想让具有社会消极性的玩家污染整口池塘，那你会怎么做？你会将其置于一个独立的池塘。你会根据游戏的文化和机制，试图将他们整合到一个Troll池塘中。

让他们去相互污染，然后再看看他们的LTV有何变化。某些情况下，他们会一起退出，因为他们被剥夺了自己的主要快乐来源（即他人的痛苦）。但要注意是否将中立和邪恶troll放在一起。因为中立troll毕竟仍然是你不想流失、有价值的顾客。他们可能可以彼此快乐相互，也可能不喜欢与纯粹讨厌的人在一起，或者他们可能很想象一般的玩家。记住，中立troll对你来说仍然是一种积极的玩家类型。

你最了解自己的游戏，所以这里不存在万能的解决方案。脱离实际情况的分析可能导致一场灾难。因此要考虑其中的变数：你可能要关注一下troll群体是否创造了一种令新玩家对游戏避而远之的氛围。有些玩家对troll更没耐心，就很容易因为糟糕的体验，甚至只是因为听到好友说：“不要去玩《Knights of Evil》，因为里面的氛围太恶劣了。”而离开游戏。或者你的游戏可能具有鼓励troll的文化，或者太放任自由了，导致玩家行为追踪丧失了意义。

也许你会考虑使用这种消极社会价值的思维，通过一些反馈机制来引导玩家行为。Riot Games在此方面表现突出，他们鼓励玩家报告积极和消极行为，甚至由玩家进行裁决。有时候，有意义的惩罚可以改造troll，有时候则确实应该将他们隔离起来……（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

“Troll Pooling” Game Players with Negative Social Values

by Dmitri Williams

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

The social impact from customer to customer is usually a beautiful thing, but well, not all human beings behave beautifully. In any social network there are going to be those who–how do I put this delicately–are assholes, as immortalized in this classic Penny Arcade gem. There is little doubt that these people are out there and that they cause harm. If you’ve ever made the mistake of connecting to XBox Live voice chat with random teammates in a shooter title, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It’s some 12 year old kid (or someone behaving like one) screaming obscenities, telling you you suck, etc., etc.

The Internet parlance for this sort of person is of course “troll.” Some of these players are awful and don’t realize it, while others take direct glee from the way they harm and annoy others. What does science have to say about this? Like just about anything, it can be measured, and in this case the process also suggests a solution.

When measuring the Social Value of players, it’s important to know that this number isn’t always positive. By definition, a real troll is someone who’s social negatives outweigh their social positives. Some indirect measures of this are correlations between their sessions and others’ churn, high complaints, etc. I think far too often developers assume that they are the price one must pay to have a public game, but there are some science-based ways to deal with them.

Most of our approach is built on the logic of contagion (we’re far more prepared for the zombie apocalypse than you are, truly), and in that tradition we know that things spread through networks. It may be a virus, or a behavior, a meme, an idea, or even a mood. Well, a troll is a bad mood incarnate, and letting a troll interact with happy players is an infection in the network, spreading a bad mood and converting happy players into unhappy ones. Unhappy players play less, spend less and often quit.

In dollar terms, we see many players who have negative Social Values. This means that interacting with them directly causes others to play and spend less. Not everyone who comes into contact with them experiences this, but to get a negative Social Value, you’d have to be a net negative on others. The % of players who fall into this category is roughly 5-10%, but it varies wildly by genre and by the culture of the game. You would probably not find the same %s of trolling in Club Penguin as you would in say, Halo 3. We hope

Are these 5-10% “bad” players? No, and they may even be good customers. What matters is putting their negative Social Value up against their LTV. If they have a higher LTV than that negative, then they aren’t costing you money in the long run. And if their LTV is huge, they may actually still be very valuable customers. Let’s call them “Neutral  Trolls.”

But of course there are some apples who are more bad than others. In rare cases—less than 2% in most games–these players literally cost the developers money because their negatives outweigh their LTVs. They lose the developer more money than they spend themselves. These are the very, very few players who you might want to flat out ban, or, you know, send to the cornfield. Let’s call them “Evil Trolls.”

Why not always ban the Evil Trolls? They still spend money. The logic again goes back to the network, and to the “ripple on the pond” metaphor. You don’t want players who are socially negative to pollute the pond, so what do you do? You put them in a separate pond. Depending on your game’s culture and mechanics, you might try experimenting with putting them together into a “Troll Pool.”

Let them pollute only each other and see what happens to their LTV. In some cases they’ll drop out altogether because they’ll be deprived of their main source of enjoyment (the suffering of others). You should be careful about whether you put both Neutral and Evil Trolls into these pools. Neutral Trolls after all are still valuable customers you don’t want to lose. They may be happy with each other, or they may dislike being with the pure haters, or they may actually miss the regular population. Remember that the Neutral Trolls are still a net positive to your bottom line.

You know your game best, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. Analytics without context are an epic fail. Consider the variations: you may be concerned that having any trolling will create a culture that keeps new players away. Some players are likely to be less tolerant of trolls and could easily be lost with one bad experience, or even hear about it from their friends: “Dude, don’t bother playing Knights of Evil because the culture is so toxic it’s not worth it.” Or you may have a particular culture that celebrates trolling or is so laissez faire that player behavior tracking is besides the point (*cough* EVE Online *cough*).

Or, you might think about using this negative Social Value thinking to guide player behavior through some kind of feedback mechanism. Riot games has done some fantastic work enabling their players to play a role in reporting positive and negative behaviors and then even passing judgment. Sometimes a meaningful penalty can reform a troll. Other times they really need to go into their own special pool…（source：gamasutra）