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ENCORE - How AI Technology is Helping Detect Toxic Behaviors in Gaming Communities with Tim Cook
40 Plays1 month ago
🎙️ Guest: Tim Cook, Head of Solutions at Spectrum Labs
📌 Topic: The Future of Trust & Safety in Gaming
Episode Overview
In this episode of the Player Driven Podcast, we dive deep into the world of trust & safety, audience building, and AI-driven moderation with Tim Cook, Head of Solutions at Spectrum Labs. Tim shares how AI is revolutionizing content moderation, the impact of data-driven decision-making in gaming, and why community management is more than just banning bad actors—it’s about fostering positive engagement.
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ AI & Trust & Safety – How Spectrum Labs helps detect toxicity and positive behaviors in user-generated content across gaming, dating, and social platforms.
2️⃣ Understanding the "Movable Middle" – Why segmenting online communities into positive users, neutral users, and toxic users helps shape safer gaming spaces.
3️⃣ The Future of AI in Gaming – Tim explores how generative AI will shape player engagement, content creation, and moderation strategies while tackling ethical concerns.
Why Listen?
✔️ Learn how data and AI are shaping trust & safety in gaming.
✔️ Discover best practices for building healthier online communities.
✔️ Get insights on how gaming companies can measure and reward positive behaviors.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Encore Presentation
00:00:01
Speaker
Good afternoon. It is the week of GDC, meaning today we have an encore episode coming for you. We're going lots of new great content coming out on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok, on all our sites. So if you're not following PlayerDriven on different social channels and you want to understand what's going on at GDC, make sure you follow us at PlayerDriven on most of the channels.
00:00:20
Speaker
ah Today we're going to replaying our second episode ever with Tim Cook. Tim was with Spectrum Labs at the time, and we we talk about the role of AI in trust and safety and why it's important to understand both your toxic and positive behaviors in your game.
00:00:35
Speaker
We talk about data-driven community management, understanding the three different types of users, the positive users, the movable middle, as well as the toxic users, and making sure you understand what those segments are, as well as the future of AI in gaming. We talk about the power of AI, and this was about a year and a half ago, so things have changed since then. but hear what our thoughts were on AI at the time.
00:00:54
Speaker
And it's going to be a great week. So make sure you take a listen to the podcast with Tim. Make sure you check out our social channels. And I hope you enjoy the episode and we'll come back to you live next week. So see you then.
Who is Tim Cook?
00:01:10
Speaker
Today, we have with us Tim Cook, the head of solutions at Spectrum Labs. With his extensive experience in trust and safety, audience creation, and marketing analytics, Tim brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to our conversation.
00:01:21
Speaker
Tim has some tremendous data-driven stories to share, highlighting the power of analytics and its deep impact in the gaming industry. We'll be diving deep into the world of gaming, discussing the latest trends, technology advancements, and the crucial role of trust and safety in creating a positive gaming environment.
00:01:37
Speaker
Get ready for an engaging spot... get ready for an engaging discussion and exploring all the different assets of gaming. So Tim, thanks for joining. I'm excited about our conversation today. Anything I missed, anything you want to touch on about yourself or you want people to know?
00:01:50
Speaker
No, I really appreciate you having me, Greg. Excited to be here. I think I'm pretty hopped up on a big coffee from Dunkin' Donuts and then half-calf coffee, so I'm ready. I'm raring to go.
00:02:01
Speaker
um I think there's lot that we can get into, so i'm I'm happy to just dive right in. I think your intro was spot on. Spoken like a true East Coaster with their Duncan all ready to go. or Tim's from California, originally from Jersey, and then California. and sure he's missing
Spectrum Labs and AI in Gaming
00:02:18
Speaker
Duncan. i don't know if they made it to the West Coast yet.
00:02:20
Speaker
There's one. And i'm I'm originally from Long Island, just for the viewers to just know the real, the real, real. My wife's from New Jersey, though, so respect, respect. We've got to wrap New Jersey a little bit here. So but give us ah give us a heads ah a high level kind of what is Spectrum Labs so people understand what you guys do. Can you kind of do ah explain like i'm five type of thing, right?
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So Spectrum Labs is an AI technology that is leveraged by our customers to detect toxic and positive behaviors in user-generated text in any place that user-generated text exists on the internet so those places may ah include gaming social websites marketplaces it may include dating if i didn't say that already um that's a big area where people are having conversations back and forth via text and there is
00:03:15
Speaker
you know with With human beings being the way we are, there's the potential for positive interactions, generally, neutral interactions, and then also the potential for toxic interactions, which we really try to surface for our customers so that they could...
00:03:31
Speaker
figure out how they want to action on those given users or those messages. I think it's crucial tools to have for almost any app that has a community these
Tim's Journey to Trust and Safety
00:03:40
Speaker
days. You hear about toxicity all over the place.
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm going to want to come back and speak more to Spectrum, but I have questions about you first, Tim, because I'm pretty sure, and I don't want to make assumptions here, that people don't go to school or or grow up dreaming to be working in trust and safety. I'm sure it's it's super cool these days to be able to see this stuff, but but how do you get into this? What's your background? What what brought you here?
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's funny. Everybody has a different story about how they ended up in trust and safety. And lot of folks may have ended up in the field and the field based on experience working, you know, if they love a game and they become part of the community, they volunteer to be a moderator for that community.
00:04:22
Speaker
And then they end up eventually actually working in trust and safety, which is weirdly enough, ah a bit of an emerging space that's been around in some form since the advent of user generated content. But I think the the coin of trust and safety is only few years old and ah the the space itself is being maybe more widely recognized with everything that's happening with Twitter. For me, it was a a bit of a long road to end up in this space. um You know, I really started in the advertising operations space in the beginning of my career.
00:04:57
Speaker
So I was at a company in New York City, super excited as ah as a Long Islander. i can I'm sure you understand as ah a New Jersey native, you know the potential ah prospect of working in New York City as a 20 year old, what the all that excitement entails.
00:05:11
Speaker
I got to learn the ins and outs of what actually happens with advertisements on the web in the background, um which was something i really didn't know anything about.
00:05:23
Speaker
Really interesting space. That eventually led me to um dive deeper into the data space, which just so happened to be blossoming in 2014.
00:05:34
Speaker
um I worked at a company called Crux, which was considered a data management platform, the acronym that we so lovingly use was DMP. Some of y'all might be familiar with that.
00:05:47
Speaker
um So I work with them really to expand the data strategy for content publishers. And this is really before the advent or the popularization of influencers. So the content publishers that I'm talking about are the likes of, um you know, like the New York Times and companies that are producing news media content or special interest niche content, maybe about sneakers or about music, um really trying to figure out how to compartmentalize those audiences so these publishers could effectively sell ads to them at a ah higher higher rate. Ultimately, and thankfully, Crux was purchased by Salesforce in 2016, which ended up being just a ah great
00:06:30
Speaker
situation for all of us involved. And it was through Salesforce that I actually started, I learned about this opportunity in the gaming space. um So I, you know, just a little context, I've always been an avid gamer, um really more of a casual gamer.
00:06:47
Speaker
And at the time that I learned about this opportunity, I didn't even know what that a casual gamer was. um I learned a bunch. You know, I ultimately was at an event called Salesforce Connections.
00:06:59
Speaker
And I went to a famous Chicago pizza place. And I'm probably going to get the name wrong. So anybody listening in Chicago is going to be upset. But it's I think it's Lou Malinati's.
00:07:12
Speaker
Lou Malinati's. Come on. lua Gotta respect the deep dish. I respect it, man. It was really good. ah But my colleague was actually telling me about a position that she was interviewing for.
00:07:23
Speaker
on the West Coast. And i it came about because I was telling her about how um horrible the New York winters were on my mental health and that I had visited Los Angeles to see some clients. And it felt like even if the hope may have been superficial, people at least had hope. So she had told me about a position she had interviewed at a small gaming startup called Activision Publishing.
00:07:47
Speaker
and That's a joke. And she she mentioned that you know, the they were really interested in her for the role, but they required that whoever took the role moved out to Santa Monica where their headquarters is located.
00:08:02
Speaker
And it just didn't, the cards did not align for her. So she said, you should give it a try. And, you know, it sat with me for a little bit. And i was like, ah, I don't know, maybe. So ultimately, um you know, I had talked to my wife about the prospect of moving to the West Coast.
00:08:21
Speaker
It was either going to be Los Angeles, the Bay Area, any place that has seemingly consistent weather year-round. um you know but If that's not the case anymore, and I can go on.
00:08:32
Speaker
about it, but I won't. So she said, we can't move out there unless we visit together. So I say, okay. So that that makes sense. That's totally fine.
00:08:43
Speaker
um i I ended up having to buy a suit for my friend's wedding and it was one of those two for one deals with men's warehouse. I got this blue suit that I actually liked better than the suit I needed for the wedding.
00:08:55
Speaker
And there's relevance to this, I promise. So I go out to California and I had this vision of myself in this blue suit, giving a just a kick ass interview to Activision, that gaming company that I had heard about.
00:09:10
Speaker
um And i then I also had a vision of me in a Mazda Miata with the top down on the 405 in traffic. on the phone in that same blue suit. So it it had a crucial kind of impact on me, that that suit itself.
00:09:26
Speaker
So i at that point, I just decided to just reach out to the recruiter for the role. I had the um the blessing from my coworker, the recommendation from her, which I think helped.
00:09:39
Speaker
And immediately I heard back from the recruiter. ah you know i still keep in touch with him. He's a bit of a LinkedIn influencer now. Very good great guy. So then I hear from the folks at Activision that they want to do effectively six hour interview.
00:09:56
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, this is this is something. But ultimately, I needed to prepare for it as well. I needed to create a deck and I needed to convince the folks that were interviewing me that I'm the right person to basic and and effectively what they needed me to do and what got me into the gaming space was um implement their data management platform. And since I had the experience at Salesforce and Crocs implementing data management platforms for publishers and marketers alike, and they were a marketer, I fit the bill.
00:10:29
Speaker
I was able to, you know, this is probably too much of insider information, but my colleagues at Crocs had tried to pitch Activision at one point.
00:10:40
Speaker
So they had a extensive deck where they had research and and all of the things that Activision was trying to accomplish. So was able to take that information and distill it into a deck I created for my interview, which was ah very fortunate to have, and explain to them how I would basically make all of their dreams come true.
00:11:00
Speaker
which I had some inside baseball on because we had tried to pitch them previously. um So ultimately the the interview went well. um you know It was six hours, which was probably the longest and interview process of my life.
00:11:15
Speaker
And then old you know ultimately they made the decision to hire me, which was great. And so then i move they moved myself and my wife out to Santa Monica, and that's why I'm there now. And that's when I started to learn about things like casual gamer and that that started to set the stage for how I ended up in trust and safety.
00:11:34
Speaker
But before I go on, because I can continue on forever, I wanted to give stop and give you a chance to ask any questions you might have about that experience. There's a lot of information to take in there, but I think it's all awesome stuff, right? I mean, you know, years ago, like you were saying, when there were before influencers, being able to understand in marketing, right? What's going to get you the most to reach? What's going to get you the most engagement? What's going to you the most... These are things that I think, unless you're in marketing or or measuring this stuff, you don't understand. Like, a like in Facebook isn't equivalent to a ah reshare or stuff like that. And how do you start measuring this stuff? And then you can talk, too, about building audiences, which I'm sure that data...
Data Management in Gaming
00:12:11
Speaker
that you learned from Crux helped you kind of build out these audiences, right? and then That's right. I can see this theme going on, right? You go to Activision and they say, hey, you know data, you know audiences. We can start to put this together. And then I'm assuming and that whatever, right? But we assume that then trust and safety is a division of an audience. There's an audience of...
00:12:34
Speaker
bad characters that are out there or good characters, right? And then you start building that out. So I do have a few questions based on this stuff, right? Absolutely. If you're starting a company today, right? You're going to start ah a gaming company.
00:12:45
Speaker
What are some of the key metrics you think you want to start collecting from the beginning? Yeah, I think out of the gate, it's important to have, um you know, the the term is your telemetry set up correctly.
00:12:56
Speaker
And that is effectively just your data library. um You know, ah Activision was an established company for 39, 40 years before I joined, they did a lot of things right.
00:13:08
Speaker
um But they're also kind of facing... a new world where data-driven marketing, data is data-driven decision-making was happening and their competitors like Epic Games with Fortnite, um even Apex Legends under EA, they were making decisions with data.
00:13:25
Speaker
um so So Activision realized they had to evolve. and And part of that is creating a data library that captures extensively what you need without maybe exceeding the cost of what that what maintaining it would be.
00:13:39
Speaker
Now, the the good news is that the cost of storing data from a cloud perspective is relatively cheap. So at this point in time, you could create a data library that's extensive enough to capture everything you need and then kind of whittle it down if you see necessary. But you never know what potential use cases could come out of data that you may not even think you you need.
00:14:01
Speaker
You know, I love data. I'm a numbers guy. I love analytics. I love all that stuff. And I talk with a lot of people and they want data. But what happens is all of a sudden you get this data, right? And maybe it's formatted in a Power BI or a Tableau or a Looker, right? But like, how do you drive insights from that data? And I think that's what people forget that just because you have data doesn't mean it's going to equal insights. So there are tools. It's just something with time you learn.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so ultimately, the it starts with having a relatively clean data set. Otherwise, it becomes very onerous to derive those insights. And then you have a clean, explainable data set, you're able to start to pull together insights based on, and it really comes down to time and then the metrics that you are looking at. So, you know, the going back to specific metrics that I'd recommend that people pull is if you're a gaming company, you want to make sure that you're recording your revenue.
00:14:55
Speaker
So any of the MTX transactions, if you're able to record a box transaction, if you're a premium game or even... ah game that sells yourself for twenty dollars if you're able to record that information it's important and the the reason why these things are important is because you can be they can be applied to what we call lifetime value of a user and that's the revenue plus time plus you know you need to also record the user's information in some way shape or form so
00:15:27
Speaker
When I was at Activision, one of the things I pushed for, um you know whether it was popular or not from a privacy perspective, is just being able to record a persistent identifier for a user.
00:15:38
Speaker
and One of the things that is also important to do, and I think i would recommend this for any gaming company that's starting out there, is to make sure that you're respecting any of the laws, the privacy laws, whether it's GDPR, CCPA, anything else that may arise around that user's information.
00:15:55
Speaker
um So that, you know, but it is important to capture that information. So whether it's an email address or if you generate a ID that's associated with that particular user or if it's a username, the that information just becomes very critical to understand your users behaviors you can tie that back to revenue you can tie that to specific behavior within your game so you may be able to measure what kind of modalities within a game your users interact with the most it helps with so many different things it's it's hard to even list but it helps with decision making as far as assets within the game to create it helps with
00:16:40
Speaker
um creative decision making. It helps with advertising, personalization. There's so many different things that understanding your user can help with that, it you know, it's almost invaluable.
00:16:52
Speaker
And I think from, you know, it's ah it's a necessary investment for any startup gaming company that's out there. Yeah. I like what you're talking through, right? I think lifetime value is something that Maybe people think about, but they don't really know what makes up lifetime value. Maybe they just think it's how much time Tim or Greg spends in my app. But if I'm out there promoting your app, if I'm out there praising your app and bringing people to it, but maybe I don't spend a dollar an app, there's still value there in understanding that and be able like being able to measure that.
00:17:20
Speaker
And it's funny that you you talked about this next one, which is the persistent identifier. Because I that have been been working in this industry now for probably... five years, I always thought, why don't we have just this common identifier? So if someone logs on on their phone or if they log on on their browser, if they log on on their Xbox, we don't know who that is. And it seems like it's such a, I know there's tools out there, there's things like PlayFab that might be able to help with that, but it's just becomes, it's such this interesting problem that I see in this market that it's not easy. It's not easy to understand who is who cross platform. So it's interesting to hear that.
00:17:55
Speaker
So now that you've kind of transitioned from, this audience building and these data-driven kind of decisions to spectrum, what, I guess I have multiple questions, right?
User Behavior and Community Impact
00:18:07
Speaker
But what what learnings have you come from audience building that do translate well? Because it does seem like it's kind of two separate worlds. it's You still are dealing with an audience, but go go on.
00:18:17
Speaker
Of course. So they're there there's a big overlap um between the two. And I think it's it's super interesting to think about communities more holistically, You know, um when I was at Activision, we really focused on communities based on their interest, based on you know, certain propensities, propensities to churn, propensities to but to buy. the The kind of sentiment layer is another component that can be added. um And it's I think it's important to think about when you think about your community holistically is in the trust and safety space, we now have the ability to to identify a couple of different things. So there are positive users.
00:19:02
Speaker
which is you can kind of quantify as maybe you can, and you can decide on a sliding scale what you want it to look like, but you could have 10 to 15% of your users be what you may consider positive. And there's parameters you could set around that.
00:19:16
Speaker
Then there's this percentage of users which are neutral. Then there's this percentage of of users that may dabble in toxicity a bit. um And we we call those folks the movable middle.
00:19:30
Speaker
um because there's a belief and it's, this translates really into audience as well as that, you can change behaviors within your community.
00:19:40
Speaker
And those are the folks that are worth investing the time and effort in changing. And then you just have your your ultimately toxic cohort, your trolls.
00:19:51
Speaker
And that percentage of your community, depending on how you started, could be as high as 5% or as low as sub 1% of the community. And you want to be really thoughtful about how you go about handling those users. Is it as simple as just banning everybody?
00:20:08
Speaker
Probably not. ah um Because unless you're doing um ID verification, which most gaming companies don't do, and I wouldn't recommend it because it creates a huge barrier to entry, they're going to be able to come back.
00:20:22
Speaker
So i you know ultimately, you want to think about how you slowly... shift those behaviors over time or you continue to weed out some of those trolls. The movable middle is really interesting because I think through engagement um and creating a a bit of a two-way communication platform,
00:20:42
Speaker
between your audiences, your community and yourselves, it gives the opportunity to potentially change behaviors for the positive. um And what we've seen is working with some gaming companies social media companies by implementing some auto redactions for hate speech, by implementing some redactions for other and nefarious behaviors and and letting those in the community know the reason why these things might be redacted, um it it's actually shown a positive impact incrementally as far as the community itself. um you know theyre they
00:21:22
Speaker
there's been It's taken notice that these communities are less toxic um and you could measure that by the amount of messages that are coming through. But there's also been, and this kind of of ties back to the audience work that I did from a measurement perspective,
00:21:39
Speaker
you know, incrementality testing with a test and control group that shows that if you eliminate the toxic talk users or you change those behaviors, the propensity for people to churn actually lessens.
00:21:54
Speaker
um So you're able to retain more users, which is, you know, like it or not, it's it's an important metric. that gaming companies need to continue to track because um ultimately, like you were saying before, engagement, there is a strong correlation between engagement and spend on a platform.
00:22:14
Speaker
So the more, and I don't think it's secret to anyone, but the more time that someone spends on platform, the more likely they're gonna actually spend money. So it's important to, especially for free to play a platform is to make sure that users are in a comfortable place and that they are able to engage and and feel like they are having a positive experience so that they engage for as long as possible, as long as necessary.
00:22:42
Speaker
Is there a metric that looks at user retention compared to those classifications that you were mentioning, right the movable middle, the positives, the negatives, maybe at maybe ah 35% negativity of an audience or of a game, then we start seeing user retention drop from four months to, I don't know, throwing numbers out there. I don't know what the appropriate numbers are, but is there a direct correlation to that?
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. it's So we haven't done that level of measurement with a customer. I'd love to, um you know, the, the, Biggest thing is I don't think our a lot of our customers are currently segmenting our users based on that level of toxicity.
00:23:24
Speaker
They use the signals um for actioning and they use the signals to kind of either bad users or reward users based on their behavior. But I don't think there's been a direct...
00:23:37
Speaker
tie back to the segmentation that they have on their end. And I think that could be very interesting because it's it's completely possible from a technical perspective. I think it's really a matter of convincing folks to measure um And the the only challenge that we're up against, which I think is like, and I say only challenge, and and I don't want to minimize it, is just competing priorities. And you know we're we're in a space right now where you know we In 2020 2021, and even trailing into 2022, you had this ultimate captive audience because the world was locked down.
00:24:15
Speaker
so if you look at the numbers, it's incredible. there's this There's this unbelievable growth because effectively people had nothing else they could do. um The world opened up and people went back to their lives and priorities changed.
00:24:31
Speaker
And now every, you know, I would i'd call them to say that most gaming companies, if they were measuring based on those numbers, they're going to be in panic mode because that growth that up into the right is now basically going straight down. And then you, you add a ever looming recession on top of that.
00:24:50
Speaker
um And so it it starts to change folks' priorities and they're not thinking about you know how potentially trust and safety might be on their audience. They're thinking about, okay, this is a red alarm fire. We need to cut costs and we need to think about areas where we can focus to drive more revenue.
00:25:09
Speaker
But i do I would recommend that if if if a company is able to prioritize that measurement, it's important because I think they'll see the correlation between you know changing behaviors to positive and the extended time people spend on platforms.
00:25:26
Speaker
which I think you have some strange outliers that also occur though, right? Because some of the most successful games end up being the most toxic over time, right? You got Siege, you got League of Legends, you got all these games that going be top top of their class right making the most money and and everyone knows that for the majority of them they are toxic communities but i think that just comes with time is with popularity comes the negativity along with it yes and it's super interesting and i think part of me thinks that a lot of what happens is gaming is a great tool that facilitates a space for
00:26:01
Speaker
people who may be the lone wolves of society, let's say, people who are typically rejected in their normal life. And I'm not saying this is every single gamer because a gamer profile is extensive and way more extensive than it was in like 2006. It could be anybody's a gamer basically.
00:26:20
Speaker
But, ah you know, there are, i think gaming invites people that, it gives people an opportunity and it gives them an outlet that they may not have in their normal life.
00:26:31
Speaker
And mean these are potentially hurt people. And there's that phrase, hurt people, hurt people. And I think that they may not know how to interact with people beyond putting hate in the world, putting toxicity in the world.
00:26:48
Speaker
And i I really, what I would really love is for us to use technology as technologies like us, um our customers to really try to address these people and give them a place where they feel belonging.
00:27:03
Speaker
And I think, I think, you know, maybe, hey, that's not okay to be terrible to somebody. But we, we love you, we care about you. And it's going to be okay, you have a home here, I think um there's, there's something culturally that we can do and to shift behaviors of these people because we just live in and and we may have always lived in this age where there was a lot of lonely people out there, but they just didn't have the ability to connect.
00:27:32
Speaker
They just sat at home and maybe read books or lived in a shed like, you know, Ted Kaczynski and we don't want anything like that. So now these people have the ability to connect and they have an outlet.
00:27:43
Speaker
I think if we're able to identify an area of hurt for these people and and give them a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and not jeopardize that or, um you know, change or make them question the trust that they have, I think it could help maybe, ah you know, this might be a stretch goal, but, you know, heal some of the pains in society. You know, if I think if we could get to somebody who's being radicalized before they end up on 4chan and start reading, you know, racist, you know, um you eugenic material and start believing things.
00:28:24
Speaker
Because what's what's happening in that situation is they're feeling accepted by some community and it's not a good community to be accepted by. So if we can use gaming, which is a community that they're able to join at their will,
00:28:35
Speaker
to try to change these behaviors, give people a sense of belonging, give people some type of purpose, I think, you know, we can do some real good in the world. i So I want to connect a few points here. I agree wholeheartedly with everything that you mentioned. I really would love to kind of do a push and I've been talking to people about it as like rewarding good in gaming, right? And yeah I want to get to a point where we can talk about how you measure positivity because that's an interesting one. It's easy to say you're a hateful person based on what you say, but how do you measure that? But A while ago in our conversation, you brought up the fact of user journeys and customers' experience, right? And I think this is going to be essential for your quote-unquote movable middle, right? Because these are the ones that we can influence. And if we give them the right space, we give them the right surroundings, we give them the right journeys,
00:29:22
Speaker
they'll be positive, right? And by rewarding the positives, you can also then help sway that. But it's all about these custom journeys. And when you're working at Spectrum, do you ever go or think out loud or go to a company and strategize and say, hey, if we create a specific journey, and I feel like this is outside your purview, but like you create these specific journeys and with your audience background, we think we can help shift the tone of this subset of the movable middle.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to the extent that we can, you know, i I do that. um And we have seen some success there. I think what happens is we tend to really work with the trust and safety folks.
00:30:02
Speaker
And, you know, the the people who are facilitating journeys are either product or marketing teams. And at the times where we can get in front of them and work with them on these things, I think, you know, we we are able to implement positive change and you know leverage positive behaviors and positive measurement to encourage people to do good things.
00:30:27
Speaker
Now, therere you know and i was lucky enough when I was at actually the DICE conference and i was lucky enough to be part of a roundtable about rewards and awarding people, which was a super interesting topic.
00:30:40
Speaker
A thing that, especially in trust and safety um and and and just shifting behaviors that you want to be really cognizant of is making sure that people are doing things for the right reason.
00:30:52
Speaker
So not you know, what happens what happens in gaming is people will game a system. So if we have a reward for being positive, you may create, and it's the the right thought or right process is not built around it.
00:31:08
Speaker
You may create an environment where people are actually just gaming the positivity and it it creates almost like this toxic positivity. ah in a pursuit of just getting whatever the reward is.
00:31:20
Speaker
So i it's it's such an interesting dynamic, but I think there's there's ways to do it that um you can be thoughtful, mindful of that. And and to your question, though, I'd love to do more of it.
00:31:33
Speaker
It's just a matter of getting in front of marketers, product people, the people who have the pull to make these things happen in-game. Yeah, and...
00:31:44
Speaker
Tim and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago and we're around the same age. And think we both grew up in the era where GTA 3 was mind-blowing came out. But then all of a sudden everyone came started coming out and talking about how video games are helps or encourages violence and guns. And gun I think as a gamer back then, im just like,
00:32:04
Speaker
how are you making that connection? Like that doesn't make sense. And I get where people are coming from, but it's completely wrong. But if we, we, we need to change that stigma, but, but it's an interesting point. I didn't really think about it.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah. People are going to gain the system. If you're giving away a prize or something and and people see that you're going to create this new, terrible subset of possibly negativity, positive positivity, and negativity. i don't know what's right. Like yes it's a,
00:32:27
Speaker
interesting dilemma to be in. It's an interesting dilemma and that's why I think any decision it just has to be really thoughtful. But yeah, going back to your point about the stigma around gaming and you still see it today um and it's happening again, um it's it's easy.
00:32:42
Speaker
it's And it's with movies, it's gaming, it it's very easy if something happens, just pick something to blame, right? It's easy to make ah extremely complicated issue and then pick something to blame.
00:32:55
Speaker
And you know, there's Am I going to just turn a blind eye and say that like the ability to maybe kill a hooker and get your money back in a game is not going to have any impact on somebody's psyche?
00:33:08
Speaker
um I wouldn't it would be kind of foolish to say it wouldn't. But I would also say like, and and and this is a really impactful area for me. It's a really meaningful area for me because when I worked at Activision, you know, the number one game that we we put into the market was Call of Duty.
00:33:25
Speaker
And Call of Duty is a game where if people don't know, it's a first person shooter. And those are typically the first games that get blamed in an event that, you know, a shooting happens. And unfortunately...
00:33:38
Speaker
you know, over the last few years, these things have been happening. And, but it's, I think it's easy for groups to just throw it at gaming and say, that's, that's it. That's the culprit. That's the only thing.
00:33:48
Speaker
And ignore the deep rooted societal issues that allow for these things. So, ah and, and the thing that brought me comfort in those times was, okay, well, you know, these games are available in Australia.
00:34:03
Speaker
These games are available in Canada. They're available in the UK, they're available and we're not seeing the same ah impact. So, you know, you could easily blame gaming, but if you look at the control group, which are different countries, you you can start to understand that there's more of a societal issue at play.
00:34:23
Speaker
And that's why, you know, going back to my earlier point, I think there's an opportunity as for gaming as an outlet, because I do think as whatever impact it may have on folks,
00:34:34
Speaker
In a negative way, there's probably 10 times more of a positive effect, one, because of that outlet for people, but also i think too, because it just it it gives people a sense of community.
00:34:45
Speaker
I think there's an opportunity for us as trust and safety professionals and as a gaming community world, that a generator, I think to really change behaviors in ah in a society where you know things have maybe gone awry and and ah behaviors that it would not be acceptable at all in, you know, before nineteen ninety s are now just commonplace.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, there's definitely the need for trust and safety these days with the growing, growing communities, both online, on Discord, Facebook, forums and stuff like that.
00:35:21
Speaker
ah But how does it, you know, I'm changing the topic of discussion a little bit here, right? Like how does an indie company with maybe few people working on a game, how do I manage a community with these tools? Like, are you, are you providing resources? Is there best practices that like these companies that may not be fully staffed that that can help do this?
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's so difficult. And um you know, we, And this happened before I got here, but ah you know we were we had the foresight and the understanding that the a lot of these companies, the trust and safety folks might be the only person at the company that's representing that.
00:36:01
Speaker
And if you've ever worked at a company where you're the only person or you're the only person in the department, there could be a level of frustration that's unthinkable because people may not understand what you're going through. um So we've created a trust and safety community called the TS Collective.
00:36:17
Speaker
that allows trust and safety
Supporting Trust and Safety in Indie Companies
00:36:20
Speaker
professionals to tap into the brains of folks, veterans that have been in the space, other trust and safety folks to kind of bounce ideas off of each other, throw best practices out there. um we We have resources around transparency reports and and other policies that can be created um for people to tap into.
00:36:40
Speaker
um So just trying to create an environment for people who may be on their own island to tap into to be able to actually do the hard work and think about things.
00:36:51
Speaker
um And, you know, I think because it is a bit of an emerging space, there's not a lot out there. So, you know, we have our communities. I know that there are other communities that are out there to support this. So I think The more of that, the better, and maybe the more open source resources that are available um are important as well.
00:37:10
Speaker
I think there's this notion of a transparency report, which a lot of sites have voluntarily. The DSA that's coming out of the European Union is going to ah effectively...
00:37:22
Speaker
um you know, make sure that anyone who's participating in the space has transparency reports. So I think those will be resources that companies and and practitioners can tap into to understand policies and and things they need to enact.
00:37:37
Speaker
But it's still tough. ah um Like there's, I've seen policies that contradict each other. I've seen policies that, you there's a lot of gray area and there's going to be a lot of gray area. So that trying to mitigate, it's not a, nothing is ever black and white, and unfortunately.
00:37:56
Speaker
So trying to figure out how to best navigate that gray area is super important. Yeah, especially when we go global, right? Every country is have their own laws. I mean, we already have that with GDPR, which is great, but it's only in Europe right now. but But we need these more standard things. And it gets me thinking, right? I love this idea of a TS collective because emerging space, ah I used to work in compliance. I know compliance officers were also kind of their own individuals that would get hate on because they were...
00:38:24
Speaker
the but the in charge of making sure everyone stayed safe, right? but Right. How is trust and safety in the TS Collective, how does that... Are the comments same KPIs measured across verticals? So gaming, dating, shopping. there different KPIs that you take a look at?
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think the there's definitely a need for maybe consistency in KPIs across the board um to measure. But I do think there's probably common themes.
00:38:53
Speaker
So... Any website, any platform can measure engagement, can measure retention. Those are things that, you know, if you're a data-driven company, you should be measuring out of the box.
00:39:07
Speaker
The areas that they may not be measuring are around, um you know, those audiences and how to label those audiences if they're toxic or if they're that movable middle, if they are positive.
00:39:19
Speaker
You know, they they would need to license a tool like ours or they would need to, you know, look for other tools that might be out there or audience segmentation tools um to create their own logic.
00:39:30
Speaker
So I think those are not as common, but some of the other metrics like retention and and LTV, those are pretty standard across companies. that The thing is that trust and safety folks may not actually even have the the clearance to tap into those types of things, or they they might not have access to the data teams to run analysis to prove out effectiveness of their efforts.
00:39:54
Speaker
Do you think that type of data always matters? So for example, no matter how much my lifetime value is, right? If I start doing something, I became become part of that negative set.
00:40:06
Speaker
Do you want the trust and safety team to be able to understand, hey, Greg is a high value customer. we have to take it easy. and I think to myself, yes, that is important. But also I think to myself, no, you got to kind of play neutral here. But company and the company wants to make money at the end of the day. but I'll leave that question to you. yeah it's ah It's a very tough question. and and you know We so we kind of remain agnostic there as a company, but we leave it up to our customers. and Our customers are saddled with pretty difficult decisions. you know What if you have
00:40:37
Speaker
your number one most toxic user is also your whale and is your highest spender. What do you do, especially in ah time like this? And the you know we all ultimately leave those decisions to our customers. And um you know there there could be times where the higher spenders get more grace.
00:40:57
Speaker
And it i think it's a reflection of the world that we live in as well. So, you know, somebody who commits a white collar crime may get a year in prison because they're generating millions of dollars as a business owner. And then, you know, someone might be in jail for 15 years for a weed offense.
00:41:17
Speaker
um And it's just, it's such a strange correlation with how society is. It's a tough, it's a tough area. It's a tough gray area for sure. Do you think there's a, and maybe there is already, and I'm just unfamiliar, but is there ever going to be a time when Spectrum shares data with other trust and safety is like a a global, a global list of vendors, right? And this might go back to what we talked about earlier with the persistent identifier, maybe and that doesn't exist, right? Or or who knows, right? But ah do you see a place where in the future, this type of data is similar to the no fly list where it's shared everywhere?
00:41:54
Speaker
So there are companies that do that. um And there are um even, gaming companies that are looking at building collectives to facilitate this. um For us, we don't necessarily transact in known data.
00:42:09
Speaker
So we've we've made the decision to kind of opt out of the PII space and not act as a data processor. So we basically tokenize and anonymize any of the personally identifiable information we get.
00:42:21
Speaker
So we wouldn't necessarily be able to participate in something like that, but there are companies um you know, like Thorn out there that would be, and it's for really egregious behaviors like child trafficking and things of that nature.
00:42:36
Speaker
um So these companies will effectively have this data and and create, like you said, that no fly list. And then there are big gaming companies that have projects where they're looking to create a collective um of toxic users.
00:42:51
Speaker
What happens in that space, and it gets pretty hairy when you think about GDPR and CCPA. um So there's a lot of considerations that need to be taken and for that.
00:43:03
Speaker
So it it gets, it does get difficult for sure. going change the tone of the podcast here a little bit. Of course. Yeah. um We'd like to talk about emerging technologies and
Generative AI and the Future of Gaming
00:43:15
Speaker
what's exciting out there. And you're a data-driven person.
00:43:17
Speaker
sure you've messed with all this stuff. But but there are there any trends that in the industry that you're seeing that excite you, that you like to play with? Yeah. um I'm really excited excited.
00:43:28
Speaker
you probably will hear this from everybody, but the prospect of generative AI and in gaming and what that could do for from multiple angles. So we talked a little bit earlier about um that two-way communication between a user and the company. And if you're a small indie gaming company, you may not have the budget to hire somebody to talk to everyone that's out there.
00:43:52
Speaker
um You know, with the advances in gender-nerative AI, with the ability to feed data into those models to personalize and and give it the voice of your company and give it the maybe context and relevance of your company, chatbots could be created to, you know, instill the policy but also potentially provide us that social component for a user and that two way conversation between the game, the brand and the user, which I think creates a ah deeper level of maybe love and affinity for a given brand.
00:44:26
Speaker
So that's that's one thing that excites me. um And i'm I'm really excited ah as well for indie companies. to be able to leverage you know some of the generative AI that's coming out of the NVIDIAs of the world and the Unity's of the world.
00:44:40
Speaker
um The ability, not so excited for my graphic designer, 3d animator friends but the hope is that there's just the need for so much content that it's okay um but like these indie studios can now create assets they can create worlds they can create you know maybe some they can create npcs you know within hours with you know maybe one tenth of the cost of what it would because they can use potentially generative ai to help create some of these assets and experiences within the game. So I'm super excited about that. I'm excited about the prospect of gaming expanding, you know, into the cloud space.
00:45:22
Speaker
And the reason being is because where gaming is today, it gets difficult um because the games are so big um and space is limited.
00:45:33
Speaker
And then, you know, especially with AAA games, modern games,
00:45:39
Speaker
Publishers are trying to ensure that their users have the most, the richest experience possible. But what happens is that means you have to update the thing. So whenever I would turn on my PlayStation, I'd have to wait to update it. And I'm on the phone with a friend and they're right, let's go. but And, you know, this is probably user error, but I was always behind. I'm like, okay, I should leave it in rest mode.
00:46:00
Speaker
But so with with the prospect of cloud gaming and cloud computing, it becomes kind of like, what Valve and Steam did for updates. It allows for asynchronous updates to games.
00:46:14
Speaker
It potentially allows people to have access to games that they wouldn't have. yeah There's a lot of things to be figured out there as far as like compensation for the developers and the publishers, but it it just opens the opportunity for access in a big way, which I'm super excited about.
00:46:31
Speaker
And let me think, is there anything else in gaming? I think that's really the bulk of it. I think, you know, not to blame anyone, but one of your previous employers may be the reason that cloud gaming should take off because when it takes up the entire hard drive and of an Xbox, you got to start thinking, hmm.
00:46:48
Speaker
Oh, actually, that brings me back. So, yes, and you're right. and And, you know, when we were trying to get people to download Warzone and, you know, we were on a race to 100 million downloads, one of the the only...
00:46:59
Speaker
detractor because it's free was the size and, you know, and the size comes as a result of the developers and the publisher trying to just create the best experience possible.
00:47:11
Speaker
And for call duty, it's gotta be realistic. Um, and that comes at the cost of size. So another thing that I think is super interesting is that AI will effectively be able to enhance what I like to call parlor tricks that happen in gaming.
00:47:27
Speaker
Like if you see a tree in the distance and you get up close to it and the tree looks better, that tree didn't always look the way it did. It generates as you get closer to the tree. And so what AI is going to do, and NVIDIA is already doing this, not that I'm trying to plug them, but they're just doing a lot of cool stuff, is they're making the ability for resolution and to kind of trick the mind into seeing the most high quality components of a game while not compromising the size or the latency of that given game.
00:47:59
Speaker
So I think ultimately the player experience will be richer as long as those tools are implemented for that, because there is the opportunity to for some companies to use Genitr of AI to just create whatever to make money. And that's not going to be a great player experience.
00:48:17
Speaker
But those those things kind of get like sand, sifting out diamonds and you know at the beach. It gets worked out over time. I think... One of the things about the the Vision Pro announcement that they had the other day is that with the dynamic eye tracking, it's going be able to blur parts that you're not looking at, which I know other headsets do now, right? but But the ability to to actually see it, and sure Apple's probably going to do it better than anyone anyone out there, like and with their eye tracking, that...
00:48:46
Speaker
it's going to boggle my mind how you're not even going to know how blurry it is. Cause by the time you look at it, it's going to be updated it's just, it's a parlor trick, right? It's mind blowing. Yeah. And that's, there's so much areas, I guess now you're reminding me like, um, VR and AR I'm super bullish, super excited about.
00:49:04
Speaker
I think that, you know, I'm a big Apple fan boy. Um, and I am, you know, and do have an Oculus just to be clear and I love it and it's fun. And you know I'm, I'm fortunate enough not to get motion sick, but, um,
00:49:18
Speaker
I do think that, and I hope that Apple is does what they did with the phone for AR and and you know and they're doing with AR with QR codes. I hope they do what what they did with the phone with headsets.
00:49:31
Speaker
um And I hope over time the battery life increases, that they get less less bulky. But ultimately, there's so much, and what in my opinion, what it comes down to is AR.
00:49:43
Speaker
um VR is great. But human beings, you know, we've been we were on the senate Serengeti 10,000 years ago. And if you put a blindfold on and a lion got you, that's not good. And I think that inherent fear is still within us. So a lot of people are not easily comfortable being immersed in this complete experience because they're worried that lion's going to get them and they don't need to because they're in their living room.
00:50:07
Speaker
But um I think ar and the ability to pass through is going to lend itself to so many uses. And I'd say and ah hold me to this in the next 15 years, we're not going to have phones like I'll be on my phone and my kids going to be like, dude, what are you doing with that old piece of tech?
00:50:25
Speaker
I think that there will be a level of wearables and. That's how you're going to interact with the world. And the cool things I could see with it is like you're cooking dinner and, you know, you need to know how much maybe paprika you need to put into your taco seasoning.
00:50:44
Speaker
You could look at it. You could query it. you know, through your voice and it, it will give you a bit of a readout for the the menu. There's, and there's just so many possibilities. It's going to be nuts.
00:50:55
Speaker
So I'm going to, I'm going to challenge you there. And I hope you're right. Don't get me wrong. I was having this conversation with someone yesterday is I think if VR AR was ever going to go mainstream,
00:51:07
Speaker
it would have been during the pandemic. And I know there's challenges for for just still $300. And don't get me wrong, $300 is a lot of money for people. yeahp um But it was fairly cheap and you were locked up in your house to begin with.
00:51:21
Speaker
And yeah if you wanted to get out, you could have been. it And I think we're now entering a state where people want to get out of their house. and yeah Luckily, being in on the East Coast, we're now getting Canadian wildfire smoke coming in again, so it's like we can't go out again. And I do hope you're right, but I just i see it being troublesome to go mainstream with the exception, and I remember this years ago, maybe you do, Microsoft had the HoloLens.
00:51:44
Speaker
yeah It used to show like this plumber or mechanic that didn't know quite what was happening. yeah Those use cases, I think, make so much sense. right They'll definitely happen, right? It's just the mainstream...
00:51:55
Speaker
I have trouble to, and I hope you're right. Don't get me wrong. um But I don't know. It's going to be an interesting one to see where it goes. i think I think you're right in that if there there are certain things that if they didn't take off in the pandemic, like when are they ever going to take off?
00:52:11
Speaker
And like that that's the maybe problem with the metaverse and the ready player one aspect of things, unless we unfortunately end up in like a totalitarian situation. regime where we can't go outside. i Never never.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah, I hope not. um But I do think it comes, it's the AR component that will potentially allow it to expand beyond the home. And it's, you know, the, it's that component of being, know,
00:52:37
Speaker
transported out of the real world that I think scares people from mass adoption. I think as it becomes something that you could just wear you know outside of your house, I think it will be more adopted. I think Apple has the ability to drive the masses like they did With the phone, I think like the Google Glass and and those things, the the the the price, the barrier to entry was too much. It was a little too experimental.
00:53:03
Speaker
You know, I would have loved to get my hands on it. i I just didn't think at the time I could afford it or figure out even where to get it. So it comes down to like... Wearability outside and the distribution, like those goggles, I'm sorry, Tim Cook, who shares my name, like it's not going to be easy for people to wear outside.
00:53:19
Speaker
I think as but I have faith that technology will evolve and it will be something that's a little bit more fashionable and less maybe abrasive to a social situation.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah, and right we'll see what time says. Obviously, with time, it will get slimmer, more more affordable, more compact. um Let's flip the question, all right? And this will be my final question. well One of my final questions is, what what technologies are you seeing that keep you up at night that may worry you?
Ethical Concerns with AI Advancements
00:53:48
Speaker
know I mean, the same ones that excite me worry me. So, you know, being a human in a capitalist economy, you know, I'm all about it.
00:53:58
Speaker
But I think that with AI, there's potentially the incentive to start to push labor out of situations, which happens in any technological revolution. So we can't just sit here and be like, we're gonna keep these jobs because we need them.
00:54:14
Speaker
I think it's, do we have the ability as an economy and a society to replace those jobs with something meaningful or equitable that doesn't completely tank the economy?
00:54:26
Speaker
So like if all graphic designers all writers, you know, whatever are replaced by AI, which I don't think could happen immediately because AI doesn't have the ability to imagine what, what happens, right? what kind of crisis do we lend ourselves to if the, and if there's an arms race as well to the best in AI, and then there's a race to, you know, AI that prompts itself,
00:54:49
Speaker
what does that, you know, how quickly do does our mind go to the Terminator? And like, how how quickly do we end up in Skynet? And, you know, what if the machine and it's in its hope to optimize for us as humans discovers the best way to optimize is to eliminate all humans?
00:55:06
Speaker
Now, clearly that's a, you know, I say that as a joke and it's ah a very extreme scenario, but you can't really discount anything. And I think, you know, we've learned,
00:55:18
Speaker
With any technological advance, there's so many positives that come out of it, but there's always going to be unintended consequences. The one thing I would would plea to just anyone in the space is...
00:55:30
Speaker
Let's be really thoughtful about the decisions that we make. And if we're where racing, if Google, Microsoft, Apple are out here and chat GPT, OpenAI are racing to create the ultimate product, let's just be thoughtful about every decision that we make and make sure that we have revisions in place to prevent problems.
00:55:52
Speaker
any harm that could be caused because it opens the door for scams and anything you could think of. To your point, there's always going to be bad players, right? Of course. It goes back to trust and safety at the end of the day, right? You could add the best tools in place.
00:56:04
Speaker
So I think that's what it comes down to. And it's really all I have for you, Tim. I have one last question, but I'm going to kind of lead you out here so you can finish with it. um I appreciated our conversation. I think it was great. I think we learned some great stuff about audiences, about data, about trust and safety, about how to build this stuff out. think it's great.
00:56:19
Speaker
ah The last question I'm going to have for you is usually what I ask in the beginning, but all right but we got right into the conversation. then You can also say anything you want the audience know about you. But what games are you currently playing? You said you are a gamer. So what excites you?
00:56:32
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm a bit of an old school gamer. So I i end up playing like Super Metroid from 1994 a lot, at least once a year. um But I am, you know like I said earlier, a casual gamer.
00:56:44
Speaker
um And usually casual gamers are more Nintendo folks. So I'm currently playing Tears of the Kingdom. I just beat my third temple, the water temple. So I've got the sky, fire and water down. So now I got to go to the desert and beat that one.
00:57:02
Speaker
Been having a blast with it. I got check how many hours I put into it. But since I've been doing so much traveling recently, it's given me the opportunity to play. which I didn't think I would be able to make the time for, but you you somehow find the time.
00:57:15
Speaker
So that's one of them. um Another game that I'm a big fan of is an older one, and it's a great case study in how to write size things. And that's No Man's Sky by Hello Games.
00:57:27
Speaker
um You know, they came out in 2016 and really just disappointed the community. um And over the last, geez, seven years, were able to deliver just an amazing experience for that community.
00:57:43
Speaker
um And what got me back into it and what actually got me to spend $60 again for the PC version of the game was to be able to play in VR on my Oculus. um And what an experience that is. You know, ah it will be a Saturday night. My wife will be focusing on her writing or watching a TV show.
00:58:02
Speaker
And it will be two in the morning and I'll be mining ah planet somewhere And then realize that, oh my God, I'm in i'm just in my closet. what um but What's happening right now? I agree with you. and And I hope secretly, not secretly, i really want Redfall to succeed. And it's it's it's not doing great right now, but I'm hoping it take one from No Man's Sky because that is probably the best best case study for for how to yourself.
00:58:28
Speaker
Honestly, yeah. so it's It's super, I mean, it's very respectable what they did. it's It's nuts. And I think other game companies can take a page out of their book. Cool. Is there anything else you want to just say? i say, or let people know where to find you. It's up to you.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah. um No, I appreciate the time. um If you want to find me, I am on LinkedIn. I like to post ah some tongue, tongue in cheek material on there, but also some serious stuff from time to time.
00:58:55
Speaker
um And, you know, ultimately I'll leave off with, you know, I'm, I'm optimistic about what we can do with the technology advances that we have and, and, you know where trust and safety is going and hopefully the ability for us to make a better world in general.
00:59:12
Speaker
I agree. Making a better world should be the this statement for for almost every company out there. And Tim, I appreciate you coming on. It was a great conversation for people listening. I appreciate you listening, but you can check out Spectrum Labs. You can check out Tim. We'll have information on our website about that. And Tim, thanks again for coming by today.
00:59:29
Speaker
Of course. Thanks for having me. You have a great day. You too.