Spry Fox Making Happiness

We know, from playing many online games, that communication with strangers can feel a bit scary. In particular, toxicity thrives in the wild world of open game chat. In many games, anyone can say anything to everyone. And goodness, they certainly do. If you have even mild social anxiety, all it takes is one rude comment and you may never want to speak up again. 

We tackled this issue in Spirit Crossing by starting new players out with a set of safe communication tools like expressions and emotes. And then, only once you’ve slowly built up trust with another player, you can opt in to more open communication channels like chat. 

There’s a psychological model behind this:

• Limited communication with low trust strangers: You can communicate basic needs, but there’s no opportunity for griefing. 
• Open communication with High trust friends: We’ve discovered that the risk of drive-by abuse is dramatically reduced if you are chatting with a close friend. 
• No open communication with strangers: The vast majority of online toxicity shows up here.  Especially in large groups. 

	Limited Chat	Open Chat
Low trust: Strangers	Good	Toxicity Generation!
High trust: Friends	Good	Great

With this model in mind, we’ve added a lot of tools in the game to help players along this long journey towards trust. 

Expressions, emotes, chirps and pings

There are a variety of tools that are safe to use between strangers

• Expressions: Canned phrases that are the main way you can say something to a stranger. In the most recent build, we’ve done an editing pass to make them even more useful. You can ask for something, offer help and show your appreciation. 
• Emotes: Emotion-focused animations let you express yourself with canned animation. Do a dance! Strike a pose. 
• Pings: Sometimes you need to market something on a map on the map if you need help. Or you can chirp! A simple and safe form of yelling without the noise. One of the most amazing moments in Spirit Crossing is when you are all alone and you ask for help. And people come running. 

Player friendship leveling

Every player can upgrade their friendship level with any other player. Doing so unlock new social tools. Grow trust by offering gifts to players you want to get to know better. This takes time. Often days or weeks of playing together. It is okay to say “not now” or that you are out of friend gems. We want your high level friends to be authentic, trusted friends. 

As you grow your friendship, you’ll unlock emotes that showcase your relationship. And you’ll eventually be able to teleport to one another. And at the highest levels, decorate each other’s homes. Expect to see more work coming in this area. 

Seats (chairs, benches)

Sometimes you need to chat with a stranger. Two players can choose to sit on the same bench together. At any point either player can choose to leave. This is intentionally a temporary, small group conversation. This tends to be a safer form of open chat just because it involves two-way consent to participate. And you never get crowd dynamics because the seating spaces are intentionally limited to 2-6 players. 

Fluffalos

If you join a fluffalo train (once you are a level 1 friend) you can chat with other folks on the fluffalo train. This helps you coordinate when doing small to medium group activities. Again, this is opt in. 

Bulletin boards and signs

(Oh, did I just reveal a secret upcoming feature?!) Players, especially those organizing a waystation, need an asynchronous means of discussing a topic when not everyone is online at the same time. Or on Discord. We’ll have more info on this feature in future posts! 

Blocking and muting

You can always block or mute another player. We want to give you control over your social space. 

What isn’t on this list?

There are a bunch of common online game features we’ve intentionally left out. 

• No open guild chat. 
• No open server-wide chat. 
• No private messages between strangers

All these fall under the category open chat with one or more low trust strangers. We are going to continue to err on the side of safety. 

Why even include chat?

You may ask why we include chat at all when it clearly results in uncomfortable situations. Okay. Another secret. To form deep friendships, humans need to communicate freely. We need to tell jokes and laugh with one another. We need to tell a friend that we are having a hard day and know there is a human on the other end who is really listening. A free flowing conversation allows us to be vulnerable to other people. And in the best of friendships, that vulnerability is met with support and understanding. That’s now we bond. How we make connections for life. 

When we cut away those difficult parts that make us human, we often end up in a lonely place. Running away from rich, real human contact is not the answer. 

At Spry Fox we make games not just to entertain, but to make human lives better. We want to build a space that forges deep human friendships. The sort that elevates our lives. So we embrace the messy and scary nature of people playing online. And we can all try to make it just a little better. 

Thank you for joining us on this friendship journey. You are brave and wonderful.  

Daniel (Designer Fox)