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Strategies for Safer Gaming Environments with Sharon Fisher
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Episode Description: In this episode of Player: Engage, Greg interviews Sharon Fisher, the Head of Trust and Safety at Keywords Studios. Sharon shares her extensive experience in building and managing trust and safety teams, the challenges of moderating online communities, and the role of technology and AI in preventing harmful behavior. The conversation also covers strategies for creating safer gaming environments and the importance of well-being for trust and safety moderators.
Timestamps & Key Takeaways:
- 02:12.22 - 04:11.27: Moderation and PreventionSharon discusses the importance of preventive moderation and the tools needed to support moderators in identifying and addressing real-time threats.
- 07:02.04 - 09:54.65: Collaboration and Community SafetyEmphasizes the need for developers to collaborate with community teams early in the game development process to anticipate and mitigate potential risks.
Highlights the importance of preventive measures to create a safer gaming environment from the start. - 11:33.78 - 14:37.91: AI and Human Interaction in Trust and SafetySharon talks about the integration of AI in trust and safety, stressing the necessity of human oversight to ensure accuracy and context in moderation.
Discusses the challenges of training AI models and the importance of balancing AI and human intervention. - 18:37.93 - 20:33.75: Incentivizing Positive EngagementSharon proposes focusing on rewarding positive behaviors in communities rather than just punishing negative actions.
Suggests creating systems that encourage constructive interactions and reduce the appeal of trolling.
Key Concepts:
- Preventive Moderation:Sharon emphasizes the importance of having preventive measures in place to quickly identify and address harmful behavior in real-time. This involves using advanced tools and technologies to support moderators in their roles.
- Collaboration Between Developers and Community Teams:Highlighting the necessity for developers to work closely with community teams from the early stages of game development. This collaboration helps in identifying potential risks and implementing safety features proactively.
- Balancing AI and Human Oversight:The integration of AI in trust and safety is crucial, but it must be balanced with human oversight. Sharon discusses the challenges in training AI models and the importance of human moderators to ensure accurate and contextually appropriate decisions.
- Incentivizing Positive Behavior:Instead of focusing solely on punitive measures, Sharon advocates for systems that reward positive community engagement. This approach can help in shaping a healthier community culture and reducing the impact of negative behavior.
- Moderator Well-being:The well-being of trust and safety moderators is essential. Sharon shares how Keywords Studios has implemented programs to support the mental and emotional health of their moderators, leading to improved retention and overall job satisfaction.
- Brand Protection and Community Safety:Sharon discusses how proactive trust and safety measures can protect a brand’s reputation and create a safer environment for all players. She emphasizes that companies should invest in these measures not only for legal and ethical reasons but also for long-term community and business benefits.
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engage podcast. Greg here. Today, we are joined by Sharon Fisher. She leads the Trust and Safety Department at Keyword Studio. She's been a guest on our podcast before and a bunch of webinars. She's all over the place at Keywords. We're excited to talk Trust and Safety because it's always been near and dear to our heart. And there's some cool stories that's come out recently, and not cool, scary stories that's come out recently in the world about Trust and Safety. So let's talk about them. But before we go on, Sharon, thank you for joining us. Again, anything you want to say about yourself? I love the energy. We just much energy. So this is always very
Sharon's Work in Trust and Safety
00:00:40
Speaker
explosive. So hi, thank you for having me back here. I'm really happy to say hello to everyone. Sun is shining, it's summer, and it feels like it. And yeah, well, it's me, Sharon Fisher, lee ah the head of trust and safety here at Keywords Studios. We're going into two years of building this solution here at Keywords. And what we can share from last year to this year
00:01:03
Speaker
in everywhere, internally at keywords and externally. It's very exciting, so happy to join and let's talk about what's happening in the world. Just say exciting. Interesting me will be my word, but it's also what we deal with every single day, in trust and safety. One more thing, one more line to the tiger, I think is the saying.
Trust and Safety in Daily Work
00:01:25
Speaker
You know, it's funny because we did ah another trust and safety a few weeks ago. And all of a sudden, there's a story that comes out that a New Jersey man from New Jersey, so maybe not proud to say this story, i was playing a game flew down to Florida.
00:01:40
Speaker
threatened to try to kill someone. There's another story this morning, and and this is on what month is this, June 28, that someone's threatening Nintendo. There's a lot of it seems to be around kind of these games that are exploiting. Maybe it's not exploiting that this gets dopamine and people get very serious about these games. So before we even talk about the players, right, ah there are trust and safety people that are watching these things going on. How do how do trust and safety people even monitor this
Role of Moderation in Real-Time Cases
00:02:08
Speaker
stuff. ah And maybe this isn't even a question that can be answered. Like how how do teams get in front of this? How can they look at tools that may be trying to prevent stuff like this from happening?
00:02:16
Speaker
And I think that's the the key thing, prevention, right? So first off, moderation by this design is so important in these cases. In every case of trust and safety, but in these specific ones where literally is real time and real life threatening, we have to make sure that we get to these cases as as soon as possible. So there's many pieces here to speak about. How do we get to those things and that kind of conversation, right? In this case, Let's assume that it's an interchange there of like, well, you and me and blah, blah, blah, well, I'm going to go kill you. There has to be some kind of intelligence there.
00:02:52
Speaker
that is able to look into it and get these signals. There's ah signals that we call where it's like there could be voice chat there, there could be text, there could be images that change. This is what I'm going to do with you, links, all of those pieces where technology is really key for our superhero moderators to actually get that alert. So when you're looking into creating this kind of preventive moderation, you have to think about this. How can I give the superheroes moderators as many tools as possible to make a call and be like, I don't need to make a call because this is about the game.
Tools for Effective Moderation
00:03:30
Speaker
I'm going to kill you. I'm going to do this to you within the game versus, hey, alarm here. alamder This user is known by being violent. This is like getting to a certain trigger and then the moderator actually
00:03:43
Speaker
looking into it and and creating her report so authorities can do something about it or at least look into it. so And then there's the other side to your point. theyre They are exposed to these kind of challenges very often, right?
Well-being of Moderators
00:03:59
Speaker
So how do you keep a superhero moderator well-being after being exposed to this and all of the stress that comes with it, putting together reports in order to be as fast and efficient as possible because this is something that hopefully we can get to a point that we can prevent this guy actually showing up at somebody's door and like threaten ah somebody's life, right? so
00:04:25
Speaker
There's the other side of well-being of the superhero after dealing with these kind of cases. Pause. Thank you for doing this for the world. Now, let's make sure that you have the elements necessary to come back and try to literally make your soul better after being exposed to all of this. This is a weird direction to take it, but we are a business, and we are business to business, so I want to talk about it. But it's a terrible situation when someone travels to someone to try and kill them, especially over a video game. But but ah in when this other instance, it was actually called out that it was Nintendo
Brands and Trust and Safety
00:04:58
Speaker
being threatened. And often, it doesn't seem like the brand is in focus. Do you think there's a way that it can not tarnish, but can it be ah a negative point on a brand's reputation if they're not
00:05:10
Speaker
doing proactive stuff like this like i'm trying to think why a company wouldn't and maybe it's a budget restraints and whatever it's just a safety but all of a sudden you start taking a look at the brand image and be like oh. This was nintendo and who would think this would happen but do you think brands often look at their image when they think about this or or. enough I think in in my career, I have faced like the two sides of the coin, let's say it, where ah there's companies that before anything, they put the well-being of their gamers over on top of everything. Then there's the other ones that are more thinking about the brand protection. At this point with trust and safety, I don't really mind.
00:05:48
Speaker
which one is it that you're going for, but do something about it. In the case of Nintendo, I believe that um they have always been very, very serious about protecting not the brand, but also the users and very restrictive. if I may say when it comes to social, like they are very true How do you say it? They go through many details in order to make sure that any kind of content that is posted is safe for the users. I gotta say, in 2024, maybe too restrictive, right? But that's what they stand for. So when the brand itself
00:06:25
Speaker
is ah targeted in these kind of
Challenges from Social Media Environments
00:06:28
Speaker
situations. And that's something that we have to kind of like put ah back in perspective because, again, Nintendo itself is doing a really good doing a good job for the users. 2024, social media, everybody is out shooting and you will be a target regardless of how they manage it and how they react to it. I think that that's something that is more on the social environment rather. yeah Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's a dangerous environment we live in where people are are
00:07:03
Speaker
showing these things and talking about these things. And from a studio's perspective, right?
Starting Trust and Safety Measures for Small Teams
00:07:08
Speaker
Say they don't have a big budget, right? And they want to get started. Like, are there tips you could recommend? And I don't know if maybe these were tips you were at when you were at Club Penguin or before that. But like, what are what are some of the tips that maybe a ah small team that wants to make sure their community's safe? What's something that they can just do themselves to help protect their community? First off, talk to your
Collaboration Between Developers and Community Teams
00:07:28
Speaker
developers. like Developers, talk to your community people, even if it's a team of five. right like You all have your expertise. And I think the biggest gap that we are trying to close now is understanding that the way that developers ah create the features of the game is going to impact all of this. So it always has ah been seen as death very different pieces. And then community comes once the game is ready to go better, blah, blah, blah. But if developers were to come and say, like hey, these are the futures that we are planning to put out. There's going to be voice chat. There's going to be this. People is able to upload their content.
00:08:08
Speaker
Community number one can adapt and be ready for it, but they can also say, hey, by the way, when you upload an image, have you like thought that this image can be like cell abuse? Developers do not have that focus, right? like They're like, no, I was thinking they will like upload their cool maps. That's it, right? so Having that conversation at an early stage is not to hinder the creativity or put the roadmap in a define different direction, but it's rather to be like, oh, OK. So when I create this feature, let's make sure that there's image detection there.
00:08:42
Speaker
also is going to save them so much time rather than you are in beta and all of a sudden like oh shoot like we have to come back and try to fix this that from the beginning if we were thinking preventive moderation we could have ah really avoid never mind the fact that when you go to beta and then your community comes and it's so hard to get community nowadays attention into ah your game or your platform, once you go live and you have already all these set ah ah rules and also an environment where no matter what a try or a bad user wants to put in there, it's not happening. So you are also creating an environment that people can thrive and actually go there and have fun without like the fear of like this person being horrible to you because you are
00:09:33
Speaker
a woman, like a race, or they don't like what you're wearing, right? Like do everything when it comes from the creation and the ideation. If you think about moderation on the preventive side, there's so many ups to this that I think that's tip number one. You don't have budget, at least have the understanding that there's some tools there.
Scalable Safety Tools
00:09:57
Speaker
They're going to be very out of the box. They might not fit your use case 100%, but let's make sure that those ones, even if they're the free ones that are out there, out there
00:10:07
Speaker
as your community grows, as your revenue grows, then you can start um going up on on on the brand. I call it like you are not going to want the Ferrari, by the way, if you don't have that budget, just starting the very basic Kia, but at least you have something there and then make your way up as your community um starts growing. I love this in multiple points. And sorry, I was taking some notes here. right First is just talk to your developers. I mean, that seems like such common sense. But I mean, ah every company, for the most part, I've ever worked at it. There's is disjointed places between each each side of the company. And that can be a company of 50 people or a company of 10,000 people. And I think it gives you a reason to talk internally and and align on these things. Because yeah, you think of, oh, they're going to upload
00:10:55
Speaker
a terrible picture, whereas the developers like no, they're probably just gonna upload a map or a new skin or something like that, right. And then you're also talking about your community because the community is something we've always been talking about on the podcast where you want to grow a community, you see some of these big games that are coming out there, got communities on discord, in app, online, all different places online. So I love this tip of just talk to these people talk internally will help grow internally. ah And You know, you talked about things like
Integrating AI in Trust and Safety Teams
00:11:20
Speaker
image detection. Now we're in this whole new world of Gen AI and other AI tools coming into place where people can adopt these types of things probably fairly simply into their tool. But from a trust and safety, you know, you start to grow and then all of a sudden you realize, you know what?
00:11:35
Speaker
we're really good at making games, there's other people that can help me with this trust and safety things, right? So then you have a trust and safety team that of superheroes that you're working with, Sharon, you are looking at AI tools. ah And can you tell me how your AI plus your AI, the human interaction, the human element of it, how they are working together and maybe how things have been improving over the past few months? I think ah the last ah two years have been really impactful when it comes to the adoption, obviously, of AI, but also the understanding that AI cannot just run the show, right? So when you are talking about all of these different variables, and just to name some because I could probably take an hour on it,
00:12:18
Speaker
languages, the kind of ah game that you're putting out together or platform, ah the nuances ah between spain from like Spanish from Spain and Mexico, the pop culture that is changing literally every single minute, the environment that is happening, elections are happening. like There are so many pieces that are now reflected on gaming because gaming at the end now, if you think about it in a very cool way, is also a way of social platform, right? Like while you are in game, you are also talking about everything and anything that is happening around and is impacting that. The fact that AI is able to sort this kind of conversation, all of this kind of content,
00:12:59
Speaker
and actually bucket it in different pieces so the superheroes or humans can come and like actually pick or be alerted about pieces that need immediate attention. That is key to us, right?
Challenges of AI in Moderation
00:13:13
Speaker
Especially again on this era. There's also the other side where um AI is obviously going and growing and learning and at a pace that I cannot even ah imagine today. There has to still be some human intervention there in to make sure that, number one, the models are being trained ah properly. We can go again.
00:13:36
Speaker
10 hours into who trained that model? How was that model built? What's the intent of the response of this AI? like We need as humans to keep challenging and not just like go blindly to it. It's like they're going to make the best decision ever when you think about AI and the way that it's being trained. Let's say that somebody posts something and the first one is goingnna be the first comment on that post is going to be against that. Well, what do you think that the second one is going to be? probably the same. and And the third one is going to be just people looking at it and just eating popcorn. If AI understands that as like, yeah, humans don't like each other, and the other ones don't really mind, like we we are training with our behavior AI on that sense. So
00:14:22
Speaker
being more involved, and this is where the superheroes come more become more um and more important, and why I believe ah when people ask me very, very often now, are humans going to be replaced by AI?
Balancing Human and AI Roles
00:14:35
Speaker
Sure, they can. They can be replaced. However, do we want them to be replaced? Do we want AI to make all of the calls when you don't even have an understanding of who trained and why yeah are these models in place, right? So um there has to be a balance there. I do believe that we have, ah we will be facing many challenges and on this specific topic, especially when you think about AI costs and AI costs and all in like AI doesn't get sick. a You know, like there are so many pieces
00:15:09
Speaker
that people is now considering, especially in gaming when it comes to cost. But there is the other side of value that the superheroes bring with the gray areas, the real-life threat, understanding, and just even the community building. Nobody understands your community better than a human and can engage human to human. Wait till AI starts to learn that it can take PTO. We'll be ah how out of office. have where we are It's funny. We just did up a webinar with Stephen Peacock, which I'm supposed to talk about. So we did a webinar with Stephen Peacock, where he actually brought up the point that you know more commercials are starting to, especially in FinTech. We're seeing a lot of commercial to say, you can talk to an advisor. You can talk to an advisor. And you know at Helpshift, we love chatbots. But it's not always the right fit always to have a chatbot. And what Stephen pointed out was that,
00:16:01
Speaker
There's just some people that are, I'm gonna say lonely and I don't mean it in a terrible way that just want to find someone to talk to it. And I actually imagined in my mind that there's probably a lot of people on trust and safety that that probably just are being mean online to end up talking to someone and like, I don't know if it's some sort of therapy, but do you think there's a potential that there's, I mean, there's always going to be a need for human in my mind because you always need the human element. I think it's hard to replace it if you look at Zappos over the years, they always got their thing about customer service, having a human there, right? Like, yeah, you can automate it, but you still need that face. You still need that presence. And do you think from that perspective of just needing a human there for company is something that's a value of trust and safety? Or do you think that falls more into a customer support side of things?
00:16:43
Speaker
I mean, I think that the fundamental of it is like you are monitoring social interactions, right? Like that's that's what you're doing here. It's social. So there has to be the other side that it's also like a human that is able to bring that to the table. I don't know. Like I think to your point, I much rather sometimes to go into the bank and talk to the teller because I feel like there's this nuance or this there's this piece and my experience is
Reforming Bad Online Behavior
00:17:12
Speaker
much better. Sometimes I'm in a rush and I just go to the like ATM, right? But there's there's this element that I believe we are all craving at the end where you are 10 hours in your computer working and this is like all and then you go and relax by scrolling. There is this social element that is now, I feel,
00:17:33
Speaker
actually needed by ah by other a human when you connect with someone, when you actually go for a walk, and like there there still need to be that social element. Also, I want to really, really cold-hardly believe, because otherwise, like the separation that we're creating of like actual human interactions might not be the best way to go moving forward. Have you put thought into and, well, I guess you know, typically in ah in a when it's automated, right? It's either gonna ban someone's gonna mute someone or it's gonna just let them be depending on what they're doing, right? Are there other ways to try and help these types of people or try and fix because, ah you know, we just did a podcast and I was talking about bullying, right? And a lot of the things that reminded me of bullying in school, it's like, the problem is in school, you can't just mute someone, right? Like, are there other methods you think to help individuals online that that can be explored by these companies or
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think like for the last I will say five years, the one push that I've been trying to get our clients and like help our clients with is like, let's make sure that trust and safety or moderation is not look as like the nanny and the hand slapping and the policing and stuff like that. If you look into the different studies that are are have been put out there like the bad actors within a community can be between four percent and eight percent in a very very bad community right so that means that ninety six percent ninety two percent of the users are there for the right reasons so
00:19:08
Speaker
What if instead of like muting, banning, and all of it, that will remain in place? We were to incentivize the positive engagement, right? So actually focusing on like, hey, like this guy didn't say, hey, no, we get the F here, right? Like actually was like, oh, you should go into this store and you will get the new blah, blah, blah, right? Like what if we were to incentivize that rather than just like punish the bad? i i I have a ah um an understanding that by shaping that, like the the people that is there just for the trolling and stuff like that at one point is like, well, why are they getting these badges? Because blah, blah, blah, right? They might just get tired of it and move on into another thing. Or
00:19:55
Speaker
the behavior might be um also changing because that's part of building community. That's part of not being a horrible person. The same way as um education, right? Like, all Mexicans should die, enter. Hey, are you sure you want to send that? Because it could be seen as racist by anyone else. right? Yes, I do. Okay, there's all the jackasses that do that. But there's also it was like, oh, I didn't mean it like that. I mean, like, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, right? A little bit of like, pause and think kind of a situation where obviously at one point, and and you need to really know who are you proposing these two and how like, the use of experience is going to be. It's not just something that you just push there, but more focus on the positive, more focus on the
00:20:42
Speaker
again, 96% that is there for the right reasons, so ah and then shape on that way. It's like when you have a brother, right? Like, if he gets a dessert every time, why i don't? And I'm just going to finish my food so I get dessert. right Yeah, it's tough. And I like the way you put it, of kind of rewarding positive play. I think that's a ah great way of looking at it. And it comes down to the studio or developer wanting to implement tools like that to make sure that they're doing that. As you you know, again, you you've been in this for a number of years.
Trends in Proactive Moderation
00:21:13
Speaker
are there Are there new things that you're seeing, new trends that you're seeing? Are there new things that worry you or making you feel better about kind of what the environment is looking like? There's probably a little bit of touch and we can sit here for an hour.
00:21:24
Speaker
I think yeah i think the near the new trend or ah um the new the new process that I'm excited about is the fact that people actually thinks about moderation, at least before going live. For either reason, right the good of the war, or because I don't want to be ah in the news scene or find by the new policies. ah So that's that's a win for somebody that has been like trying to tell people you need to do this. When it comes to technology and AI, I think my biggest worry here, I will divide it in two. Number one, coming back to that understanding like 12 years ago, machine learning can't do anything and everything. Forget about the humans and AI is going to take over the world. That's worry number one for me. And at the same level, ah how
00:22:17
Speaker
AI on the dark side literally is being developed in order to take harassment, terrorism, any of these pieces like to the next level, right? So you understand me so much as a user that you know exactly how to get here in order to ah radicalization or child learning like all of those dark sides that sadly we continue to see growing how technology in this case AI is going to be ah making our job harder. Thankfully we have the other side which is like our technology partners and we're trying to partner as much as possible to try to get ahead of the curve but
00:23:02
Speaker
I mean, this is not breaking news. like they All of these behaviors continue to scale to a faster way that we can make them decrease. And very ah in time here, or or very tied to it, i when I talk to developers and I tell them, did you know that if you were to create these features with these specific as safety features, ah these numbers will
Developers' Role in Reducing Online Harm
00:23:28
Speaker
decrease. right and they are like mind blowing like, you can actually help or child learning or child abuse to decrease if you were creating these tools with all these sets and these standards. What really is amazing to me, and maybe it's just my naiveness, is like when we first spoke years a year or two ago, right like I didn't realize the number one thing online was trafficking and abuse and stuff like that. I always just thought it was jerks threatening people. and and Then I started reading more into it and just like
00:23:58
Speaker
wow there's a lot of this going on like and again my evening series like. Why would any studio want anything like this anywhere near what they're doing like is it just is it all on social channels that can't be controlled like. Why would anyone have any sort of leniency for this. So there's a few approaches that I have noticed. Number one, you don't know why you have because you don't know, right? So if there's no technology and if there's a close one-to-one chat and stuff like that, and it there's no ah reporting process, you are totally to your point. They are totally like this. They just see the chat going and everything is like so far, so good. There's nothing actually looking into these kinds of cases when you talk
00:24:45
Speaker
about child learning, for example, it's a process. right like that the the The predator is not just going to come to the kid and say, hey, I want to blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a process where they learn about like the behavior of the kid. Where do they go to school? The parents, like they gain their trust. like Technology, pretty much, is the only one that can actually look into those patterns and actually give us a red flag so we can look into it. But if there's no technology, or the studios are not, oh there's the other side, the other reason why I've i've heard and sadly continue to hurt hear is um I don't want to know.
Financial Aspects of Implementing Safety Tools
00:25:26
Speaker
Because at the time that I know, I have to do something about it, which is the saddest and worst answer, but
00:25:35
Speaker
There's corporations out there making millions of dollars that actually when I go and try to push for technology to be implemented, that's the reaction. I don't want to know because if I know, I have to do something. It's crazy. never for them it is. But ah yeah, it's it's it's it's crazy. And those are the reasons why studios want obviously the financial sit situation, the financial is also big for them. um But again, I think at this point, there's no excuses. There's ah tools out there that yes, they're not going to fit your 100% use case.
00:26:11
Speaker
But they will give you a layer of security for ah for the users and for you to be aware that these things are happening so you can actually um the decrease these cases. Yeah, there's another story that came out I forgot yesterday or two days ago. And I know nothing about this guy, but this guy, Dr. Disrespect, he's a Twitch streamer that was caught messaging and in a minor. It's just like, First of all, it's disgusting. Second of all, it's like, is it good that these stories are coming out or bad that these stories are coming
Highlighting Parental Awareness Gaps
00:26:41
Speaker
out? Yeah, it's good that they're getting people like this ah away, but like, this stuff shouldn't even exist, but I guess you need to know about it to prevent it. And it's just, it's a scary place to be.
00:26:52
Speaker
And it's a very scary one, too, because you and our parents, and what I see out there is also a disconnection, a total disconnection of what parents know, to your point, very naive, right? And what's happening out there. And I hate to lead with the scared parents, But reality is like what's happening there and what you're allowing your kids to get into and how you're opening doors for your kids or or teens, ah in this case too, to be um subject to. It's something that i I don't think anybody can imagine and you should not.
00:27:32
Speaker
but the gap of education even with schools, right? Like my daughter comes the other day and she comes with a user profile for a math something something app with her full name on it when and I talked to a teacher and she's like, is her name misspelled? No, that's not the point. It's her whole name, right? So even the education for teachers and For everybody that is around kids, it's just the gap in technology, understanding and what the dangers are out there. It's something that ah it is, I think, the biggest challenge that we have today, because if the people that is around the kids don't understand what's in the Internet, then it's very hard to prevent.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's well said. Again, it kind of goes back to ignorance is bliss. But I feel like you always set the example for the the generation beneath you, right? And if you're not paying attention, if you're not active, if you're not keeping an eye on them, because we know about the internet, because we grew up with the internet, it's, it's still new to to our parents and to like, so so we we can understand, and I'm sure our kids know things that we don't know about the internet. So I think it's, it's communicating with them, conversing with them, understanding what's going on. um In your experience now you've worked with a number of different communities that have been moderated.
Proactive Moderation Enhances Community Health
00:28:47
Speaker
ah what What happens with the overall health like obviously at the end the goals improves but like how does that and this might be too big of a question but how does that process even begin like how does proactive moderation help the health of a community?
00:28:59
Speaker
It's everything, to be honest. like and and And I say this like in a very wide way, because it's is's very wide. It's good, obviously, for the good of the world. It's also good for the even understanding of how your users are imagining a game that is just put into beta. And you don't have any way to actually track what people are saying, what they're thinking. like they ah goodness of these conversations happening like, oh, yeah, this is cool, but it's missing ABCD. When you are developing a game, like that's gold there that you can really utilize in order to ah make ah the game for the users.
00:29:39
Speaker
Then you go into the the next one, which is, again, creating this space that is good not only for humans, but also for business. It's fierce out there, right? like You go to the app store and there's like so many new games that... like people to get into your game. And the acquisition cost continues to go higher and higher. You finally have a user there. You want them to have the best experience. And when I say this, sometimes I like get some pushback. I don't mean like the rainbows and unicorns. And this is not the La La Land that I live. You can still be like a gamer. And based on whatever environment you want to create, you want people to swear that's fine.
00:30:24
Speaker
You don't want people to swear at each other. You don't want, like, racist slurs in there, right? So there needs to be a base there. Again, just if you're in a playground, you're not going to be swearing. ah Like, do you behave like um hopefully around like in the in the environment that you are. I'm in a bar, maybe I'm going to be swearing a bit. Like do you have to make sure that when we talk about trust and safety, moderation is not that we want to like just change everything for you and be again in La La Land.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's more, how do you do it? Because it's a fine art to understand what your community wants, what do you want out of this game to be the community like, and how do we make sure that it benefits you not only on the creating and building a strong community, but at the end, when you do that, your money and your revenue goes higher because people want to be there. They want to spend money there. They feel like ah you are protecting their interests. And just, again, why would I come into the house after being stuck in traffic for an hour, swearing, blah, blah, and go into a game to get more of that? like No, thank you.
00:31:34
Speaker
I there's a few things you said there that I really like it. And I mean, know the setting where you're in and be prepared for that setting. I remember when we used to be on sales calls, and one of our colleagues would always say, if I'm playing a shooting game, I tell you I'm going to shoot you in your head, you're not going to report me for that. But if we're playing solitaire, and you're telling me that there's clearly a problem there. And I think it's really important for people to understand like, moderation isn't big brother. It's not trying to prevent conversations from happening in game.
Importance of Moderation for Company Reputation
00:32:03
Speaker
It's trying to protect individuals from real world threats that are being made against them. And I think companies need to realize that and maybe open their eyes and see that, you know what, there are real threats. When you go into a Discord server of a game that has hundreds of thousands of users, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. so There's going to be some negative conversations that are happening there. And
00:32:24
Speaker
you might find one of your VIPs who's getting picked on and all of a sudden that person that was spending a few thousand dollars in game every month is now leaving to go to a competitive game because they don't like it there. And I think companies don't really kind of see that that this whole community building, this whole protecting your community, this whole supporting your community. really I mean, obviously we we talk about it at keywords, but I mean, as a gamer, like that's something that's important to me because that's what I look for in a game. That's what keeps me coming back to a game. And I think there's a lot of great stuff there. And I think when what what is challenging from this and what I will um say it for everyone, when you are in this space of trust and safety, it's so hard to prove the ah ROI of this, right? So, yes.
00:33:06
Speaker
Cool, you avoided somebody telling me kill all the Mexican. how do you How do you measure this, right? like It didn't happen so you don't leave. like there's like There's so many components that trust and said you save a life, what's the ROI of it? i've asked I've been asked that question, right? It's like, well, Yeah, sorry, I don't have a number for human life. But ah this is where we continue to get pushed ah very often, which is like, yeah, it's good for community, but like, how much, right, like, or you're going to trust one, but how much, right, like, it's, it's, there's, there's, there's these steel,
00:33:47
Speaker
and ah Of course, this is a business and gaming is going through like a phase that cost is really important for us to look into. But um we have gone years and years to try to educate people and that's why I say, now I'm excited that either because you're going to get fine or because you actually understand why it's important, you are doing it. Now, how do I demonstrate the ah ROI at the end? is trying to make sure that this is such a good environment based on your game that you are starting to like your profits are starting to to show and your growth is there. That's there pretty much the only one, but it's not because only what we're doing. It has to do with like the updates and the matching and all of this stuff. So it is a component of it that we are having a really hard time on.
00:34:37
Speaker
ROI for the decision makers and the leadership to actually see it. Yeah, it's almost like you need like an active community members metric on who stays active. But even then, right, like if you don't create a good game, you can have the greatest environment in the world, the greatest, greatest community in the world. But if you create a crap game, it's going to be a crap game. And what was I going to say something about ROI, but it's gone. I forgot it. Oh, you know, the thing is, it's one of those expenses that companies look at. But your thing is, if one negative thing happens, that reputation
00:35:09
Speaker
can be ruined forever, right? Like, there's been companies that have done such terrible things or that like, they're just gone. And like, yeah, it's a minor inconvenience. And even if you don't want to hire someone to do it, if you're not doing it internally yourself, right, like, maybe it puts a little extra work on your plate, but you are protecting this reputation that you built so hard to, to protect and to grow strong it and to think that you're just so lenient with it is something that's just like, why? That is one of the pieces that I think we we work on a few years ago when I was a two-haired, which is like, okay, so the ROI is really hard to figure out, but what's the cost of doing nothing, right? So again, I hate to lead with the scary side of things, but
00:35:52
Speaker
hey, however, like I don't know what the cost of a human life is. Sorry, I don't have a number. However, if you don't do it, now there is all these policies. There are all these fines that they're going to hit you, and it's going to be this percentage of your annual revenue. Is that scary enough? Would you do something about it? And that's the point that, like sadly, when sometimes it's hard for leadership to take in, that's where it's like, OK, that's a big risk. I'd rather spend X amount of money in the in a year than this amount that is not comparable even to to this, right? So we have to find some tricks there. We have to get creative. So let's change the topic.
Growth and Well-being Programs at Keyword Studios
00:36:33
Speaker
Let's talk about your superheroes. How is your team of superheroes doing? Anything new going on there?
00:36:38
Speaker
i I think this is one of the pieces where I get very emotional about it because we are I am at Keyword Studios two years and a half now. And as you know, there was no trust in safety before. There was agents that were used as moderators. Today, what we have is obviously a whole role for a moderator. Moderators are called moderators, but we also have developed a whole everyday wellbeing program for them. there had to be some change of culture, obviously, because of like, who is a moderator, what is a moderator to today, even from the led lead leadership ah perspective, where I was just talking to my team this week, where it's like, I feel like now we have to back off with leadership, because we've been in like, well-being and well-being and well-being. And now it's on their DNA now where they're like, yes, I get it. what They now understand and they do. And they're disciplined like on the everyday asking and like the different pieces that we have. But when you ask about how the superheroes are,
00:37:43
Speaker
That's where it gets like really exciting for me, because when we built this, my whole point was, like let's make sure that they see as less as possible. And when they do, they have ah the support that they need. But now what we are seeing as ah as a result of that is something that I have would have never imagined. People stay longer, obviously, with us, and there's not that rotation. But there's also, even in their personal life, reaching out and saying, hey, like because of that, like and like um I'm going out more. My family notices like the impact that we're having in their actual everyday life is something that I would have never imagined because you are checking on you every day. You are actually like ah going through practices.
00:38:32
Speaker
We created a calendar every month with different topics that, again, also understanding that well-being is not just yoga and meditation, right? So ah we have like different webinars every month that everybody has to go through, and some of them will be very impactful for one. Maybe the other ones won't be like so attached to it. but Through these, we are also feeding their soul on ways that they are making positive changes in their life. We're supporting them on ways that we never imagined. And it is just and the fact that these practices are also now being ah pushed into other companies outside of keywords, and I've always said it, they are superheroes and then they are not just ad keywords. The idea is for everybody to also look into this,
00:39:23
Speaker
no matter what company we're talking about. And yeah, I can go 10 days with this. Superheroes, thankfully, at Keyword Studios are thriving. They're excited. They are committed. And um they are um having their souls taken care of as much as as as we we wanted them.
Maintaining Positive Gaming Communities
00:39:42
Speaker
You know, you're you're talking through all this and and we're talking about kind of building a community and and protecting the community, keeping the community safe. And that's what you're doing within Keywords. You're kind of, for lack of better words, eating your own dog food. And you're seeing that how green the grass could be when everyone's cooperating, how happy everyone is. And it's just wonderful to hear that that that you're leading this drive and and you're seeing the results and and hopefully the customers that are using it see it as well. So I give you the utmost credit because that's,
00:40:09
Speaker
Beautiful to hear and it's fantastic to hear and I give you nothing but congratulations for that. It's not me it's the team like that's the other piece where I continue to be amazed because as you can imagine in such a big company there's also a lot of challenges were even implementing these new things right and. Thankfully, the core team that supports all of these efforts has gone to battle. But the one thing that is clear to me is that whenever you do something for the right reasons, in this case, it's superhero soul and well-being, good things happen because of it, right? So ah that has always been the goal of the trust and safety team. The company sees it.
00:40:51
Speaker
I hope, ah but the superheroes themselves coming to their leadership and saying, Hey, this is happening in my personal life. This is how you help me. Like, it just creates more and more of a synergy to try to do more and more and more. And we even have people that is outside of our department saying like, Hey, like we have this situation, FQA, like pieces like that, how can we benefit from these programs? And that's what hopefully we will be working towards in the next year. So Sharon, thank you so much. If there's anything I took from this one, it's you have a whole bunch of happy superheroes because you're building that great process, which is is great. But what every company should be looking into is even if you're not outsourcing, or you're hiring, and you must internally do some stuff with trust and safety, whether it's talking to your developers, talking to the other people in your company, because
00:41:42
Speaker
Every game has a community and this community needs to to be protected. There's kids, there's there's all different types of people that just need protection out there. And I think when you communicate and you talk with both your internal sources as well as your community, you learn more. If you are too big to grow and you're looking for external help, Sharon is available.
Encouragement for Collaboration and Advice
00:42:01
Speaker
We can talk to Sharon, we can set up these calls, but do something because something is better than nothing. And again, protecting everyone. So Sharon, thank you so much for joining us again today. I'm looking forward to our next one. But is there anything you want to just talk about or share?
00:42:14
Speaker
I think I'm just going to tag along on that one. um It doesn't matter the size of the project that you have on and people won't let me lie. Reach out to me. Reach out to me on the LinkedIn. I'm happy to have a 15, 20 minute conversation with you where I can add value. You can ask the questions. I'm happy to support that because at the end, it doesn't matter who you are. If you have it, if you don't have it, the more that we do to the world, the better chances that we have to reduce all of these cases and to be more successful. so Yeah, reach out to me. We will have all Sharon's information, keywords, information everywhere and how you can contact everyone. But again, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of the show today, Sharon. I hope everyone has a great rest of their day and weekend.