League of Legends Player Surveys Add Psych Test Questions, But What For?

League of Legends is particularly infamous for a toxic player community, but subsequently developee Riot Games has shown commitment to mitigating that toxicity. This recent step is making some fans uncomfortable with how far Riot is willing to take it, but they should probably have other concerns.

One of their policies involves inappropriate in-game names. Players can always report their fellow players for names that violate League of Legends rules; AKA if they include identifiable information, infringe on proprietary rights, or are objectionable, including being sexually explicit or racist.

Players who are vetted by Riot now have to follow a three step process to rename themselves and get back in. This involves taking a survey, playing 50 matches, and taking another survey, and this is where things get interesting.

Some of the survey questions were lifted from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and Aggression Scale assessments. These questions were developed by psychologists to help determine narcissistic personality disorder, as well as aggression in adolescents, respectively.

This redditor believes there are possible ethical issues with using these questions, but in my opinion he is a little off the mark with the real issue here.  This is a grossly unscientific use of these questions, that don’t take into account situations like double binds. Depending on the scope of its use, Riot may make inaccurate conclusions on the behavior of their users.

But then again, we don’t know exactly what Riot plans to use with the data anyway. Is Riot labeling certain users as narcissistic and not others? Or are they not looking at users individually, and just intend to use the aggregate data? Hopefully Riot will clear up the air regarding the situation soon.