Creative Assembly’s Grace Carroll Talks About Fighting Toxicity

total war mount orcThere’s an age old saying that when the cat is away the mice will play. A fitting quote when talking about toxicity in forums and comment threads which, more often than not, quickly escalate into full-blown flame wars given half the chance. But, according to Creative Assembly’s Lead Social Manager Grace Carroll, managing and cleaning up a toxic community is easier than people might think.

In her Developer:Brighton talk last week, Carroll stressed the importance the importance of a game’s community and “visible presence of moderation.” Creative Assembly, the developers of the Total War series, were able to turn their forums around in just a week with the idea of “visible presence” in mind.

“Just having that visible presence of moderation, knowing that someone was deleting threads and banning people, turned it around in about a week. People start to self-moderate. They tell each other off. They start reporting things.”

According to Carroll, simply replying to a toxic comment was enough to initiate a change in behavior. “If someone posts a really awful comment, and I reply - 'oh sorry you feel that way, feel free to not buy our games' - they're like, 'oh my god, I didn't think you'd read it, I didn't think you'd reply to it',” said Carroll. “The attitude can turn from horrible to apologetic straight away."

You can check out a summary of the Carroll’s enlightening talk on GamesIndustry.biz.