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How AI Is Rewriting Trust and Safety in Games
44 Plays10 days ago
Recorded live at Pocket Gamer London, Greg sits down with Hill from Checkstep for a wide ranging conversation on trust and safety, AI powered content detection, parenting in a gaming household, and why moderation is no longer just about removing harm.
Hill shares her journey from data analyst to GTM leader in trust and safety, how Checkstep is building on top of the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem rather than competing with it, and why “build vs buy” decisions are becoming existential for modern studios.
They explore:
• What trust and safety really means for multiplayer games and UGC platforms
• Why content detection is replacing traditional moderation language
• How large language models are changing speed to value for studios
• Where humans still matter in AI driven workflows
• Detecting grooming and harmful behavior without exposing moderators to trauma
• Why keystroke detection and behavioral patterns are becoming new signals
• The real ROI conversation studios want proof on
• Promoting positive player behavior instead of only policing bad actors
• Parenting in a gaming household and how Greg thinks about kid safe play
• Why balance beats bans when raising young players
• Continuous learning, newsletters, and staying sharp in fast moving industries
• What success looks like for startups scaling with investors
• Hill’s 2026 goals and growing meaningful industry partnerships
The conversation blends operator level insight with personal stories, from renovating bathrooms at night to Wordle streaks and Goat Simulator family sessions.
If you care about LiveOps, community health, AI in CX, or building safer game ecosystems at scale, this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Introduction and Setting
00:00:00
Speaker
Hill start from Chextap. I am super excited. You don't get to do many of these live podcasts. I'm super excited you got to join me today. You want to say hi Yes. Thanks for having me, Greg. We were supposed to be walking around in London, showing off the London sites. But in true London fashion, it is raining outside. So we are inside. It is raining. I'm glad. you know, we've had three nice days in London. like, this doesn't feel right. And then we woke up today and like it was pouring. out Yeah. really but Before you leave, let's remind you where
Hill's Career and CheckStep's Mission
00:00:26
Speaker
you're at.
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So tell us a little bit about your background. We've been talking for a while, Hill, and I'm really excited about i think CheckStep does some really cool stuff in this space that you're trying to build out. So High Level, tell us what you're doing and how you got here.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, CheckStep offers content detection. We like to use the phrase, your access point to the AI marketplace. The idea is there's an arm's race to the top in model creation, and we want you to be able to take advantage of it.
00:00:53
Speaker
You may hear that we're in trust and safety, which is very true. Trust and safety is just one part of the nucleus of content detection. but That's where I got my start to then be in this space. I was with a few other companies, Spectrum Labs, who was acquired by ActiveFence, and then joined CheckStep about a year ago to help lead them in their partnership and customer success efforts.
00:01:15
Speaker
I commend that because we've done a lot of podcasts with different trust and safety people and it is not an easy job to do. I've heard that you have to deal with some terrible things and you were mentioning earlier this week that you just love being here and helping it and I commend you on that. how do you How do you get into that mindset where you can kind of do your day to day and kind of relax at the end of the
Challenges in Trust and Safety
00:01:36
Speaker
day? Yeah, so I like to say that people who work in trust and safety are often the social workers of the internet where you do have to have a personal interest and passion, but there are many different activities to hold and within trust and safety. I first started as a data analyst, so I was like in the data. I was doing these huge tests, I was reading through conversations, I sat much more closely to the behavior of what's happening with on someone's platform.
00:02:05
Speaker
gaming, marketplaces, social. different norms of what is and is not permissible and what someone would then want to surface in that. After being in data analytics, I then moved more so into kind of a pre-sales engagement where there's still data. i do think data is the currency that we operate in, and but was helping the sales team and then the customer success team bridge what do we see on someone's platform that we think could be a really good fit for the tooling that we've built. And then
00:02:36
Speaker
based on that experience of having run proof of concept efforts in pre-sales, making sure that those findings didn't drop when it comes time for someone to actually use the tool in the customer success world.
AI and Content Moderation
00:02:49
Speaker
So having been more go-to-market client facing in the last few years, it has added a bit of relief of not having to actually like read or look at the images. But I do think at large, like this is such important work.
00:03:04
Speaker
of what people who are on the ground floor, the content moderators, community managers, what they are actually involved with in and day out. Can you kind of give us from a high level for people that may not know, what is the role in trust and safety in these studios?
00:03:19
Speaker
Do you let your users exchange content with each other? that You need trust and safety if the answer is yes. If you, we'll take gaming for example. If you're a single player gaming environment and you just get to make your character interact in the system, you may have not have heard of the term of trust and safety just yet.
00:03:39
Speaker
But if you let users chat with each other, if they're creating skins, if they're uploading images, anything where you can interact person to person, build a community. And think the community part has been acknowledged, like that's how a game stays in business is you need a strong community. You need awareness of what's happening. Every platform has a code of conduct. Maybe it's that they were proactive in that code of conduct. Maybe it's that regulation says because you operate in this area, you are held to these standards of what can and cannot happen through your platform. So first awareness, but then also say what type of community are you wanting to harbor? How safe of an environment or clean and of an um environment are you trying to create?
00:04:23
Speaker
in In gaming, and we're here in town for a gaming conference, there is an element of fun to... maybe have a bit more colorful language, but that platform has decided in advance how far you get to go. When is it trash talk versus going into bullying? And they want to make sure that they're aware of it, but also they let you, the player, know, hey, you've crossed the line, that's not permissible. Let's re-educate you on this.
00:04:47
Speaker
If you are in the small camp, but those people do exist where that's your intention on platform is to be disruptive, then how do we want to handle that? It's an interesting battle to kind of think about how you do that. I'm curious, you know, we've seen some news recently where there's other trust and safety companies like Sift that are closing up their doors. and But you now you see CheckStep and you're kind of thriving right now and you're feeling it. it And we spoke earlier and you told me for a while you're thinking about getting out of the space now. And now you said you found CheckStep and it kind of reignited that love for it. And the question is why? Yeah. I mentioned the two other brands who I'd worked for within this space. And a lot's changed in technology and AI in the last five years. Those other two brands were building all of their own and ML, machine learning. So we were building models. We were taking data sets and saying, based on these examples, we then want to confirm or deny that certain behaviors exist on platform, which was great work. It was the only option until the end of 2022 when OpenAI, ChatGPT, really started to come on the scene and it shook things up.
00:05:58
Speaker
ah So CheckStep, because the other two brands have exited the space at this point, they didn't quite pivot in time.
00:06:11
Speaker
In this advent of AI detection, and I think it's for the better at large, it has raised the bar on what people can do behind the scenes and that time to value. It has changed this perception of, hey your model is falsely flagging on this phrase. It's creating disruption within my community. I'm falsely penalizing players. Like in my environment, you can swear, but you're flagging on everyone who does that.
00:06:43
Speaker
our old response used to be, thank you for your feedback. we We'll absolutely take it into consideration, but that model you're giving feedback on isn't slotted for work for another three months because we work on three months sprint cycles. So the profanity model will be updated and we'll absolutely look at yours. Oh, but by the way, you're unfortunately not our top customer, which no one ever wants to say that in customer success. And you usually don't say it that bluntly, but there are politics behind the scenes of what that data set would represent. And if you have one huge gaming client that is very permissible on their platform or not, um it will probably influence what everyone else's experiences. So that's how we used to operate.
00:07:29
Speaker
Check step, and I only came to check step because i shouldn't say only, um many reasons. and I do think it was a really good move on my part, but I was only confident to come to check step if I said, I wanna know that I can start telling customers yes to these very particular questions that I've had to say no to over the last few years.
00:07:48
Speaker
And met with our head of product three times in the interview process. I think he was like, Hill, okay, enough. Like we've spent enough time here. But I said, I need to believe that you guys have actually built with a different perspective and are taking advantage of this arms race to the top of models that are getting better every single day. and that we can finally meet the expectations of every platform gets to have detection that operates according to their individual code of conduct, that I i get to say yes to people on a more frequent basis now.
00:08:26
Speaker
So what I love is that you're not competing with the new technologies, the open a eyes the Gemini's of the world. You're complementary to them. you You're saying, hey, let's use what's there. Let's build on it and let you customize what you want to the model that's best. Yes. So tech step, maybe maybe it's different to hear this, we don't have a data science team. And my background was in data science. So some people might say, well, where are you? It checks out.
00:08:53
Speaker
We don't have a data science team because we're able to leverage OpenAI's data science team, Cohere, Menstrual, Recognition, like these names that you hear.
00:09:04
Speaker
There are so many thousands of people who are employed in those efforts, and they're the best of the best. And we've said, Okay, good. So on day one of working with those models that are gonna be in like top notch condition, how can we push that envelope even further with this specific list of needs unique to trust and safety, unique to content detection?
00:09:26
Speaker
to then get someone to the point where the signal that's being returned has such a high level of consistency, accuracy, that you can put automation behind it. Not all content, I should say this, not all content is a good fit for a full automation strategy. i think humans work is absolutely still needed, but saying where is the human the best fit in what we're looking at? Maybe that's a false perception that Checkstep is trying to remove humans along the way.
00:09:53
Speaker
I don't think so at all. We have very strong human-driven partnerships. and But I've yet to meet someone in the sales process on the client side who says, i have all the resources I need. I have all the money I need. i can put a thousand people within my moderation queue. Instead, the conversation usually looks like here's a problem that I know exists on my platform or maybe even even like pre-product. So I'm anticipating this to exist.
00:10:19
Speaker
And here's how much I can allocate towards humans. Where can they do the job that AI cannot, but how can AI help help them be more efficient and effective in their jobs too. So it's fun finding the balance. Like what are your policies on your platform? What do you allow and disallow?
00:10:39
Speaker
Then what kind of experience do you want to have behind the scenes? What are your goals as a company and how can we best support that in terms of finding the human versus AI balance? I love that. We we did a podcast with Adam Boyes. He's from a company called Pimorado, and he mentioned how he loves to use AI. He looks at it as an Iron Man suit for your agent, right? he You do know my last name is Stark, right?
00:11:04
Speaker
Wait a minute. Oh, sorry. I was like, what? didn't say that. That's a great point. That was such a bad joke. There you go. No, I love it. But that such a great point because, you know, there's so many, and I think the perception is starting change, although you hear the outside people saying, oh, AI is going to take everything over. But it's enabling people to do so much more. And in the trust and safety world, the things I've learned that people are exposed to are just disgusting things. And, like, people always think, oh, it's pornography. And, yeah, that's part of it. But there's also, like, grooming and other stuff like that that's so terrible and if you can protect people from even having to see that or give the tools available to be able to do what they need to do i think that's doing such a great service to the industry to help protect the players at the end of the day to make it a better experience for them
00:11:47
Speaker
Yep. So it's interesting to bring up grooming. I, in my data analytics role, um spent a lot of time pouring through these huge data sets. I was probably asking clients for way too much data than what was needed. But I would look at billions of lines within a data set trying to find patterns to that' specific to our child safety efforts. Because grooming grooming is one of the hardest ones to find because you've got an adult who is trying to trick a minor. So you have someone who's like actively trying to not only work around a system to not be caught, but who's trying to manipulate um so often's some conversation. So you're using guarded language, coded language. So there was a lot of work done to try to find patterns that then we could build into a model to say, this is how we know that type of conversation often progresses, starting with friendship and rapport before it ever goes dark.
00:12:41
Speaker
But you don't want to flag on all the friendship conversations on your platform because you actually need those. So like when when have we seen enough signal that we want to flag on it? I sees so much potential on that front to be able to catch conversations more quickly through the use of LLMs because they are looking, they're large language models, like they're looking at how language progresses. But then helping your teams who actually are exposed to that information behind the scenes. How is it?
00:13:11
Speaker
How could we we improve on what my experience was of having to read through a whole conversation back in the day to instead say, I'm in my moderation UI and there's this potential grooming conversation, but what are the lines within that conversation indicative of this being grooming rather than me needing to like be exposed to the whole thing myself. So not only is it protective from a mental health aspect, but it's it's making you more efficient at your job too. Something that I also heard this week which was fascinating from another company was that they're actually using Keystroke detection to understand how quickly someone's typing so if you're in a group of like 12 year olds playing a Minecraft server and you're seeing them type by like Just by half and then all of a sudden you see coming in someone coming in with like 140 who went through like Mavis Beacon typing classes I was just like wow like that is fascinating and never like because I always thought grooming must be really hard and they're like the problem is that
00:14:06
Speaker
grooming occurs, they send the link to, hey, come jump outside this game with me and chat, and then all of a sudden, you lose that person. But if you can capture that person before they even send that link based on their their characteristics or whatever they're doing, I was like, that is just...
00:14:20
Speaker
There's a lot of smart people
Personal Interests and Professional Insights
00:14:21
Speaker
out there. It makes me realize that I don't know anything. Well, and like specific to grooming, which we don't have to stay on for long, um that type of adult is casting a net and they're trying to see who they can get with this big fell swoop effort. So if you see that keystroke, but you're also seeing at the user level, this pattern of behavior with like the same type of content being shared from that account. And it's usually pretty quick um that they're trying to get someone off platform.
00:14:51
Speaker
ah Indicative of that happening, but we don't have to wait as long. We don't have to wait until it really has gotten to that point of no return before taking action. You can alert that we think this behavior might exist to then have someone go and look at it yeah just much more quickly. So this is a a tough role to be in, just just the the vertical itself. And something I read about you is one of your things you said was that you're data by day and design by night. Now I'm curious, do you still get to do design at night? Is that your escape or have you found another way to escape at the end of the night where you could kind of just say, this is my way of like...
00:15:32
Speaker
releasing all that pressure that's built up. No, the design by night is still very much active. I have a bad habit of wanting to only live in very old houses. So there's always a repair of some sort. But i yeah, maybe you'll find my blog I did for Checkstep where I showcased my bathroom. that i I tiled, like I redid that bathroom. I didn't do all the plumbing behind the scenes. But it was also, it was an example the reason it's on the Checkstep blog. It's an example of build versus buy. Because CheckStep right now, maybe our competitors are going to listen to this.
00:16:09
Speaker
We don't have a competitor that we are constantly up against i'm in the pre-sales process. Our competitor is is the company just going to take this on themselves versus partnering with someone outside to help relieve the burden of those integrations with all these model providers. So the the blog idea was saying I had decisions to make of where am I willing to build this myself? um Cutting 2,000 pieces of tile on my own. I was willing to take that on. I needed to pay for the plumbing to know that this is going to go well.
00:16:42
Speaker
So learned long way. And also took into account like how much time do I have that I can devote to this project? How quickly do I need my bathroom to be functional that again? Yeah, the build versus buy thing, it even when I was at HelpShift, was always the most frustrating conversation because you had these studios building amazing games. And they're like we're just going to build our own customer support platform. like You can, but you're building this amazing game and there's a lot of other tools that have built these best practices already. Like, why are you going to go through that to save a few bucks maybe, but then you're going to have to hire a whole team to keep this up and keep it running. And it's just like, come on, there's best tools out there. Yes, there's the initial investment of like finding your tooling provider. And sometimes that ticket price can feel pretty big. It has significantly decreased in the last few years. Someone buying SaaS tooling for content detection is probably looking at a contract of at least 50% less than they were two years ago because of how quickly we can process data. Process data behind the scenes, but also the models. And like I said, we don't have to employ this huge data science team.
00:17:48
Speaker
So we don't carry that headcount burden. So we can offer more competitive pricing. at So you have the, it sounds like a sales pitch. im I'm not trying to sell you on this. Take my money. Yeah, to take my money. and There's the initial cost that you're going to see on the contract, but more so I would think, what is my long-term maintenance? And especially now with how quickly AI is advancing, what is my cost to know that I'm using the best of the best? on a daily basis. So the idea of CheckStep is you integrate once with CheckStep and then we help you figure out based on what is available within the AI world. What is the best fit for your platform, given what type of content is on your platform, and images, text, video, as well as what what can you allocate um towards this? is latency an issue?
00:18:37
Speaker
In gaming, latency is often brought up. You want real-time chat, um You don't want a harmful message to ever even appear in the chat. So you're talking about sub-100, 50 millisecond speeds. Only certain model providers right now are well-equipped for that experience. and You could go run all your tests, all your searches along the way. Run five different providers across your data set. That sounds like a lot of time. To then figure out, oh, coherent beddings is the best fit for me. I wish it didn't take me a month to come to that decision. Or you can say, someone else out there has probably made this mistake. Let me learn from it. So this idea that partnering with someone outside of your organization gives you insight to best practices, I truly believe that. like That's why you hire us, is to relieve the burden of the constant research of what is out there, because it will evolve.
00:19:33
Speaker
What is your day-to-day like? I'm a morning person, so I do start quite early. and My day-to-day, we're a London-based company. I'm in the US i quite bit of the time. So my meetings usually happen first thing in the morning, so I've got overlap. Our head of product is out of London. work quite closely with him. which someone a few nights ago actually at a event we hosted made kind of a funny comment about, they're like, why why do you and the head of product need to meet so much? There's no way your product is evolving that much for like partnerships and customer success to need daily meetings.
00:20:08
Speaker
And he and I were like, the It was the first time we'd heard someone say that. But that we are evolving that quickly. i I can actually expect new features to come out on a weekly basis because we use AI behind the scenes to build yeah what what we're building. so Go back to your original question. Meeting heavy in the morning. um Lots of virtual face time.
00:20:34
Speaker
Afternoons would be more so let me actually get my work done. and That is something I've learned since stepping into more of a director role. I'd been in ICP until now is you you are in meetings quite a bit, but but they're fun. They should be fun. Strategy sessions. But you still are, especially in the startup space, and tasked with getting work done, not just being in meetings. so afternoons, more work-driven. Yeah.
00:21:02
Speaker
A big part of my effort in joining Checkstep is to say, how can we scale our onboarding operations and make this more of a repeatable process? I think it's something that every organization goes through. Originally, onboarding is somewhat manual, and but we're we're living in the age where we think we can definitely make this more efficient. and So that's what my my personal time is devoted to right now.
00:21:26
Speaker
So you're working all day. You just love it, huh? I'm just little workaholic. I guess get it. yeah It's funny. so Hill travels a lot from Spain to to Colorado, and I feel like she's up 24-7. You can reach her at any point. and she's one of these people that... Well, maybe we shouldn't set that expectation. all that shes All day. If you want to reach her at midnight, just give her a ring. yeah But she's at a great connector of things. And it's just funny to see at these events that people are just like...
00:21:51
Speaker
love meeting you and I feel like you've built such a presence in this space and I respect it so congratulations for that and it's super exciting. Do you feel that energy when you're at these places? That's a really generous compliment. Thank you. um I think that's what I enjoy most about being in this space. I've now been in this industry about five years and it's it's evolved a lot but by being in it a few years and you're attending the same conferences. and we were starting to see familiar faces who have gone beyond a familiar face. Like they're a true friend at this point and they have maybe gone to a different company. And so it's really fun to hear, what are you working on now? What problems are you trying to solve? um I look forward to the conference circuit, which which is maybe funny because I consider myself more of an introvert. like i I love my alone time, but I so look forward to getting this in-person FaceTime with colleagues.
00:22:48
Speaker
If you weren't in the role you're in, what would you be doing?
00:22:53
Speaker
Like not being in trust and safety at all. Yeah, would you be doing TikToks on how to redesign your bathroom? just You know, maybe, maybe. ah No, i think I think the design process has been really fun. Someone asked me in the last few weeks, how did you kind of get into this?
00:23:12
Speaker
How did you get into home DIY renovations? And i said it's because I had no money at the time. Um, no, I decided to go back to school 10 years ago.
00:23:24
Speaker
And, cause as I said, like data is currency. I was working in digital marketing, kind of a different element of trust and safety. Um, but what kind of experience do you want your users to have, um, when you're on someone's website?
00:23:37
Speaker
And i was accepted into a PhD program to study data and information science. I personally studied like what makes people safe when they're safe online to share information when they're doing a dieting effort. because I don't know if you've ever noticed on Instagram, people ah will share very revealing photos of themselves when they're trying to change their body in some manner, have a more healthy eating behavior, build muscle.
00:24:04
Speaker
So I was curious what makes someone feel safe to, because you would probably never send those photos like in your family group chat, but i posted it to the internet yeah, but why not post it to the internet where anyone can find you? Um, so I was very curious of what makes someone feel safe in that space and like, what is the evolution of how their content progresses when they have more perceived safety?
00:24:27
Speaker
But I went back to school and I then had bought my first house in that same period of time and I needed to make some improvements. So I had to learn how to do it at the end of the day. um i did not probably follow all of the like safety protocol, learning how to use drills and saws and and all that. But no, I think if I if i wasn't, if I was truly out of trust and safety, It would probably be something having to do with home renovation
Gaming and Parenting Discussions
00:24:58
Speaker
work. Beautiful. You know, those are those hobbies I love. You can, like, just get out. If you're angry, just start hammering stuff. and like you like It's actually, it's a nice way and to just kind of have a alone time yeah at the end of the day. I garden. That's my thing. I love going outside and gardening. What are doing? Nothing, because it's snowing like crazy right now, but I grow...
00:25:17
Speaker
All different types of berries, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs. Oh, so the summer items. Okay, should get into cabbage. I think that's a cabbage, kale. I do kale. I do kale. I don't love cabbage. I'm getting more for it. Okay. don't know. We'll see. I have lot of animals in my backyard. I got to learn how to fight the animals off.
00:25:37
Speaker
Rabbits. Rabbit, squirrels, every once a while a deer. You you you live in ah a park? I guess. It's funny. I i have a fenced-in yard. how did they see I saw a deer jump over it once. I said, oh my god, deer to jump like that? It just blew my mind. Farmer Greg's. Exactly. yeah exactly that's my and you know With my kids, they help now. It makes life a lot easier. I tell them to go weed if they're being mean to me. and It's just a good escape. How old are your kids? Five and seven.
00:26:03
Speaker
If you had like a catchphrase for this point of parenthood, what would you say? Like, I am thoroughly entrenched in... You'll see the unique perspective coming from gaming. I'm sure your kids were exposed to games. I mean, the first thing i'd say is invest in alcohol.
00:26:18
Speaker
um No, you know, it's a learning process. There's no set way to do it. it's It's a tough gig. And everyone's like, oh, have kids. It will be the most amazing blessing in the world.
00:26:31
Speaker
No. I mean, I love my kids. I would not change anything I ever did. But like my wife and I used always look at you like we could be buying convertibles, traveling the world, doing this stuff like it's a very different style of life. And again, I would never change what we did. I love my kids more than anything, but it's like.
00:26:48
Speaker
You change your life. like you You can't go back at that point. And if you do, you're a terrible person. or i'm like It's tough. I love it, but it has its bad days. It is permanent lifestyle change. Yeah, I'd say there's probably more bad days than good days, but we all love each other at the end the day. More quantity-wise, but it sounds like the good days are probably pretty good. They're great. Yeah, definitely. My son's seven. He loves Xbox now, and we have to take it away. It's a fight. I don't want to take it away for multiple days because I love playing it with him, but when you're a dick for that many days, like, you're going to lose it. Okay, so you guys play together?
00:27:23
Speaker
ah We were starting to. He's not fun to play games with. He's mean. Oh, would he would he get flagged by some of my tooling? He's mean to you or he's mean the He's mean to me. He's mean He doesn't let me do what want to do. He's very bossy about how to play the game. We played Goat Simulator 3. It's his favorite game in the world. It's...
00:27:43
Speaker
An amazing game. It's amazing. But the Lego games are great. you know, there's such great teaching tools as well. Like even his school now gives him a Chromebook that has a game on it. And he's like, I want to get this game on my tablet. and It's a math game. I'm like, great. Like, do it, man. Like, I'm all for this because it's teaching you math. And like, Now I want give him a game that can teach him how to type better, right? He's learning how type and like, there used to be a game when we were younger called Typing of the Dead. It was a a spoof of a House of the Dead. It was an ah old school shooting game in the arcade. And it just used to start typing and zombies are coming after you and it puts words and you got to start typing. I like, these types of things are going such great tools for him to start learning this stuff.
00:28:20
Speaker
I don't have children, but I'm curious. We've talked about this before on the parenting aspect. What would be your ah source right now where you say, I want to know of a game that's a pretty child-friendly environment. So not that I'm gonna be totally hands-off while my kid's playing this, but i I feel better knowing that they're gonna go, here, how how would you find that game, like what would be your search to then say, okay, here's here's this list of games and maybe I'll even play with you in this environment, but that you know that they've got some safeguards behind the scenes. Because I think there's so many options out there and parents, for the most part, aren't saying, I don't want my kids to participate in this, but I want to have done my due diligence in advance. It's a great question. that I don't have an answer for it. I don't know. What I'll normally do is I'll notice the IP.
00:29:15
Speaker
Is it ah Paw Patrol? Is it Lego? is it and like I'll kind of know but ah whether it is or not appropriate for him, but I don't think there's a true source. like I like IGN. I'll go check out reviews on IGN and see how they do, and and I'll read a little bit about it. but Especially on his tablet. He has one of these Amazon Fire tablets, and he can pretty much install whatever he wants, and it's limited to like kids' games, but...
00:29:39
Speaker
There's a lot of crap kids games out there, right? And so I don't really think there's a true source for like... And if you want to find a loophole, like give something to a child because they'll find... They'll break it, right? They'll they'll push everything to the edges and that's the beauty of it. But it's also like, I get messages like, your son wants to download this game and just looking and I'm like, what is this garbage, right? Like all of sudden I'm going start seeing charges come to my credit card because he's going to do something. So I don't really think this's a true source, at least to my knowledge, yet that I follow out there. It's just more based on what I know.
00:30:09
Speaker
And that's okay. I don't know that there is um a source of truth. yeah maybe Maybe that's what someone should take on, like the the parenting guide to the these are vetted environments.
00:30:20
Speaker
And also every parent's different, right? The comfort level is different. Some of my kids' friends aren't all allowed to play video games at all. Some of them can play as much as they want. So it's that fair balance. I think there's a healthy balance. Like we make sure that he's playing sports in every season. He doesn't have to play sports all the time, but like,
00:30:36
Speaker
we get out and we play baseball. We get out and we do, he's doing ice skating right now. He wants to play hockey. So as long as he has this balance between recreational activities and video games, I'm perfectly good with that, right? If he wants to play three hours on a Saturday, it's Saturday, man. I used to wake up at six o'clock in the morning and watch cartoons all morning, right? Like if this is what he wants to do, go for it, man. But but you also have to behave you have to be nice. You can't keep beating up your sister and expect to play this stuff. So he's got to learn this balance. and I think he has trouble with learning that like, My actions have consequences. so So if he starts screaming at the game, like, dude, if you can't chill out, we got to take it away. and he gets even angrier. It's just this snowball effect that we don't know how to deal with. This is like those learning experiences. like This is why it's a bad day because we were having so much fun all day. And then all of a sudden you just lost it for no reason. And now we lost Xbox for a few days and later he'll be sorry. But like then you have to decide, all right, well, what do I do now? It's juggle. Emotional regulation.
00:31:31
Speaker
So I've entered gaming, it's a gaming podcast, so it makes sense that we're talking about this. and I've entered the world of gaming very late in life because I grew up in a household that, um based on the culture my parents were in and their sources of information, said gaming's bad.
00:31:51
Speaker
Nothing good comes from this. It creates aggression. um your Your children going to violent. if they are in that environment. to add The only game we had, i don't even know what the console was, was a Wheel of Fortune. So if you want to quiz me on that, um that and I think maybe we had like the free version of Jeopardy. as So that was my gaming exposure. So when I started working in Trust and Safety, I still had some bias to thinking everyone in this space is going to be horrible. And that's all I'm going to be looking at when I look at this data. And i was really like put in my place. And I really like coming to these conferences now and learning what people are building and um how they're tapping into different behaviors. I love organization and I've heard there's a game called a Little Bit to the Left where you just kind of like reorganize things within a gaming environment.
00:32:47
Speaker
Maybe I should just do that at my house. But the idea of gaming is what you want to make of it. And I did not have that perception. gettinging into it I have found so many good examples of helpfulness and teaching and friendship within the content that we surface.
00:33:07
Speaker
And originally in content detection, we were often just being hired to content. harm that you don't want to exist. But the flip side is that's that's like five, maybe 10% at most of the content on someone's platform. So then what's in the other 90% that you' would actually want to take advantage of and promote within your system? And we we we have the tooling to help someone do that. But I think like that's that's when it's fun. We don't want to talk about doom and gloom. all day long, but saying like, what else lives in your data that you could take advantage of that you really want to encourage your community um to be more proactive in creating.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, a while ago, I think when we were talking to SIFT before they went down, under, whatever we want to call it, when when they closed shop, yeah um we were talking about how do we promote positive playing games, right? Everyone's always focusing on the negative side of things, but how do you promote the positive, right? And let that outshine the negative. And I think that would be more powerful, but I don't think studios are going to necessarily reward positive play in the way people would want. Like, hey, here's a free credit. We saw you do something really nice, right? I think studios are also just hesitant to do stuff. Or maybe they don't know the right signals. and and It's complicated, but i think promoting positivity is a lot more better than talking about the negativity. Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker
Often it's really difficult to be able to associate like dollar increases at the end of the day to what has happened in game. um i do know that Modulate, their great top provider in voice detection, they've done a lot of work with Activision of being able to show when you put this tooling in place and you safeguard to make sure that people are having a more positive experience. and So that positive experience could be that you're reducing the harm that someone's being exposed to, but you're then also promoting um the behavior you want to see.
00:34:56
Speaker
they They have a really powerful case study about the actual money that comes about at the end of the day. so so i do think there's some evidence there needs to be more because that's what someone wants. And in the other day, when I'm in a sales conversation and they say, tell like show me that this works,
00:35:13
Speaker
show me not only that I'm gonna hopefully not lose revenue by putting this in place, but I'll get much greater buy-in if I can prove I'm going to have increased revenue. yeah I want more of those proof points.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes sense. So I know we're getting to time here. um couple questions I have are something that's important to me is continuous learning. You said you went to school again 10 years ago, which is yeah awesome. I can't ever imagine myself wanting to do that again. So I give you so much credit in the world for for doing that. But as we get older and time is becoming more precious to ours, how do you find yourself continuing to absorb new knowledge and and kind of build upon that?
00:35:50
Speaker
I've become much more reliant on my industry's resources, of items being sent to me. we were talking about like what is a good cadence for newsletters. I really like the Everything in Moderation um newsletter. It is tailored to the trust and safety community, but at large, it really keeps on the pulse of what has happened when it comes to regulation. What should you be abreast of? I think it comes out weekly, which is nice so that you're not...
00:36:19
Speaker
being bombarded on a daily basis per se. um
Industry Insights and Future Goals
00:36:22
Speaker
I really like that. i Again, I love going to the conferences, but I could do a better job as well. of I think we all could. There's no shortage of information, but figuring out how do I make my information search as quick and efficient as possible to then build a process where I'm being given what I need quickly. i i don't think it's probably acceptable anymore to say, well, i spent a month looking for this article.
00:36:51
Speaker
No, probably not. What about in the game world? What is the last game you played? Wheel of Fortune, Sega Genesis. no um I play Wordle every day. Nice. I love Wordle.
00:37:04
Speaker
And although some people may not consider it a multiplayer game, my family has turned it into a multiplayer game, we have a specific group chat called the Wordlers. And it's also a good way to make make sure everyone's alive and healthy. and If someone has not contributed their Wordle score in a few days, we'll we'll be like, are you are you okay? What happened there? and it's It's fun and a little bit competitive to see who can get it in three attempts or less. and There's also the skepticism of potential cheating. Everyone else in my family who plays as part of ah like a couple unit in the household, my mom and dad, my sister and her husband, now a few others, I'm the only single
00:37:46
Speaker
person, household participant there, so no one can accuse me of cheating of being in the same room of someone else who's just finished. Because if two people submit their scores within like a few minutes of each other and they're very close, that there's reason to question the validity that they played it on their My wife and I play together. Is that cheating?
00:38:06
Speaker
Wait, how? how It's our nighttime routine. You sit next to each other and you say... We use my phone and we're the driver. I think that's cheating, but I'm not going to admit to it. I mean, if you were playing in my family group chat, yeah, that'd be cheating. But if it's if it's a way for you to bond, i think the Wordle creators would be really happy to know that that is what has extended from their effort. It's not gamers that are playing Wordle. It's everyone. Yes. And so I would probably be in the prime spot for them to Introduce me to something new because I'm worried because I think we're at a thousand words or less left to go through the five letter wordle pattern so right now and We've at least gone through half I think and just makes that we gotta look into that
00:38:50
Speaker
Yes, so so they scientists right right so they would know, okay, this community loves this. We need to introduce them to something new so they're not panicked about what they're going to play at 6 a.m. a year or two from now. Yeah, I found it as such a... All the games, I hate some of them. Some of them are just... The games get under my skin at the New York Times, but... but Oh yeah, you said if you lose at Wordle, you kind crossed it off for a case. Well, yeah, and we had like a 90-day streak going on and we lost one or maybe we missed it. Maybe was like New Year's and we got home and it was like, oh crap. And it was just like, do I really want to start this again? And then there's like... So back to CheckStep, back the less Wordle-y type of conversations with CheckStep, you know, what I love and you talked about was you and your product...
00:39:30
Speaker
lead are close. And I think that's super cool because again, you're not building the model, meaning you can focus on the platform. You can listen to your customers, hear what their feedback is. What are your plans coming into the year with, you know, some of your competitors shutting down? How do you take a look at that path forward and what are your plans?
00:39:45
Speaker
Yep. so it gaming, we see a lot of opportunity there, but we have had a lot of success in marketplaces, in reviews. CheckStep has not built itself for one industry, more so saying, here's ah a problem that we want to help fix or a challenge we want to help solve. So this idea rather than saying content moderation, we've kind of started to use different terminology in the last six months of saying content detection, which helps take a step back of saying what do I want to find um within this huge mess of unstructured data.
00:40:20
Speaker
So we have quite a few opportunities which we're seeing a lot promise in to say operationally what exists in someone's huge organization and that they need for compliance and efficiency before they ever even take something to market. and If you're a large video streaming platform and you've signed contracts to expand in a new country, that country has a code of conduct to say,
00:40:49
Speaker
Okay, Netflix, you can't promote a movie with this type of scene in it within this country. Societally, it's not accepted. Well, how does Netflix know that that exists?
00:41:00
Speaker
that Like in India, I don't think you can promote tobacco products. So is Netflix... Do they have a catalog right now of knowing like every movie of theirs contains or does not contain tobacco?
00:41:13
Speaker
and So we're just... We're seeing... that the The world of trust and safety, which is where we got our start, is maybe a certain department that is more human facing, but just business operations. where We're seeing a lot of potential to say, where is your data and how can we help you on that front?
00:41:33
Speaker
Is there ah company goals or OKRs you're allowed to share? like What does success look like 2026? Our tagline that we've just come up with and confirmed last week is execution that scales. So we need to be better. And that's kind of the lens we need to make all of our decisions through in the next year of saying this process I'm putting in place, this decision I'm making, is it scalable? Because we we are a startup. We have lofty, aggressive goals for client acquisitions and revenue to make investors happy. We're at that point now where we do investors. So making sure that we yeah thank you that we can hit those numbers, but it's not purely dependent on just doubling our team size. we We have to be a bit better than that.
00:42:21
Speaker
That's for CheckStep. What does success look like for Hill in 2026? Yeah. ah I would like to come back, let's say a year from now, and when I come to Pocket Gamer again, I would like to have 10 times as many, well we'll say friends in the room, because it does feel like people are actually friends at this point that I would have really liked to expand our partnership efforts um over the next year.
00:42:48
Speaker
The CheckStep name can grow and you were very kind in the compliment you gave before. It feels like I have friends in this space. So, yeah, continuing on that effort. It's been a lot of fun. Awesome.
Conclusion
00:43:02
Speaker
Hill, I hope you're here at the same time next year doing the same podcast at the UK office maybe you'll have a CheckStep office. We'll be walking around. We'll to water. We'll be walking around wet London next year. But really appreciate you having here this conversation and just everything we've been talking about over the past couple days. You're amazing person. I wish you the best of luck with you and CheckStep this year. We'll have links to everything that is Hill and CheckStep and her blog where you can see all her design work. Before we go today, Hill, is there anything you want to say?
00:43:35
Speaker
ah i think I think we've covered it. it's Awesome. Thank you so much and good best of luck with everything. Yeah, thanks. You too. Thanks.