[maltyr]

In my experience, ONE thing will cause a game to trend towards toxicity - higher stakes. The more "important" the win or loss feels to the player, the more toxicity shows up.

It's pretty easy to filter out "toxic" games if you filter out anything which has a ranked mode and is not designed to be played infinitely.

Unfortunately, games in the online era have trended in that direction, because they are the most profitable.

For example, some variables that affect toxicity: - competitiveness, often implemented by sort of ranked system, but also just any sort of head-to-head competition. Tournaments and betting will do this as well. - longer investment (via playtimes, either of a single "run" or in total) - people won't get mad at a 5-10 minute game as much as a 1 hour game. Games as a service like MMOs where people have 1000s of hours of playtime are the extreme end of this. - punishing gameplay, where a mistake can cause you to lose a lot of progress (Hardcore modes where dying means you have to restart your character, for example) - tone (casual vs serious tone, e.g. Fall Guys vs Call of Duty) - More serious generally results in more toxicity.

Adjusting these variables can even turn a single player game into a toxic one (e.g. self-imposed challenges/achievements, Dark Souls, Jump King or Getting Over It).

Similarly, you can lower the stakes so that the gameplay doesn't devolve into toxicity, even with multiplayer (e.g. Animal Crossing)