No More Cheats or Jerks – Reputation on Xbox One

I’m Micheal Dunn, program manager on Xbox Live. I’ve been working on the team for five years. I spend my days – and many nights – helping create technology that will help make Xbox Live an even more kick-ass multiplayer community. In addition to Smart Match technology, which helps you find the perfect match and more control, we’ve been working hard on a community-powered reputation system that helps filter out people you don’t want to play with.

No question that Xbox Live is a distinct community of passionate gamers. We love that. But just like in life, there are all types of people – some shy, some polite, some aggressive, some snarky, some annoying and some that can’t avoid swearing at #$%^ happens to them. Most Xbox Live players are polite online and know how to socially adjust to people they’re playing with. But not everyone does this. And, it can be challenging to pick up on social cues when you are connected online and not face-to-face in the same room.

With the new community-powered reputation model for Xbox One, we want to help you avoid the players you don’t want to play with. If you don’t want to play with cheats or jerks, you shouldn’t have to. Our new reputation model helps expose people that aren’t fun to be around and creates real consequences for trouble-makers that harass our good players.

So, how are we doing this? We are simplifying the mechanism for Xbox One – moving from a survey option to more direct feedback, including things like “block” or “mute player” actions into the feedback model. The new model will take all of the feedback from a player’s online flow, put it in the system with a crazy algorithm we created and validated with an MSR PhD to make sure things are fair for everyone.

Ultimately, your reputation score will determine which category you are assigned – “Green = Good Player,” “Yellow = Needs Improvement” or “Red = Avoid Me.” Looking at someone’s gamer card you’ll be able to quickly see their reputation. And, your reputation score is ultimately up to you. The more hours you play online without being a jerk, the better your reputation will be; similar to the more hours you drive without an accident, the better your driving record and insurance rates will be. Most players will have good reputations and be seen as a “Good Player.” The algorithm is looking to identify players that are repeatedly disruptive on Xbox Live. We’ll identify those players with a lower reputation score and in the worse cases they will earn the “Avoid Me” reputation. Before a player ends up with the “Avoid Me” reputation level we will have sent many different alerts to the “Needs Improvement” player reminding them how their social gaming conduct is affecting lots of other gamers.

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