The Dark Side of E-sports: The Role of Player Emotions and Cyberbullying in MOBA

Within the context of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena video games (MOBAs), Cyberbullying Behavior (CB) has become a complex and yet unsolved socio-technological challenge. While significant work has been done recently, there is a lack of studies in relation to the role of players’ emotions and CB as well as a lack of theory-guided approaches for curbing CB in MOBAs. In this work, we developed a holistic framework for understanding the relationship between player emotions (achievement, challenge, and loss) and their CB in different phases (early game, mid game, and late game) of MOBAs. For this, we used a qualitative approach comprising 1,048,575 chat logs and interviews with 21 MOBA players. The preliminary results indicate that different emotions arise at different phases of MOBA games that gives rise to cyberbullying behavior in the players