EA chief operating officer Laura Miele says it’s on the games industry to build a better online community and how it’s not as hard a challenge as one would expect.
At the annual DICE Summit, Miele delivered a keynote address that covered a range of topics from the metaverse to the state of the industry. One element Miele touched on was how the games industry is uniquely positioned to improve all the various burgeoning metaverses and social networks currently in the works.
Miele cites EA’s work with games like Apex Legends and how the community improved itself without bans or other punitive measures. “85% of players who receive feedback about their behavior under the Positive Play charter changed their behavior. We didn’t have to ban them.”
According to Miele EA was able to improve its Apex Legends community by sending a straightforward, personal email versus an outright ban and it has resulted in positive change.
The Apex Legends statistic is an example Miele provided that shows how the games industry can bring order to the metaverse. “We need some world order,” Mile says, “and no industry can do it better than ours.”
Another positive community tool Miele cites is the ping system in Apex Legends which can let players non-verbally communicate online with strangers. This ping system was one of the patents EA has opened up to let other developers use royalty-free. “We can dare to do better. The ingenuity of game developers can have a significant impact on creating safer communities,” Miele says.
Miele’s full keynote hit on a broad range of topics and kicked off the first in-person DICE Summit since 2020. In the past two years, we’ve seen the rise of concepts like the metaverse while the industry was rocked by a sexual discrimination scandal at companies like Activision Blizzard.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.