DICE offers internship for grad student to study toxicity in Battlefield

DICE has listed an internship on its job board ahead of the release of Battlefield V soliciting graduate students to analyze toxic and disruptive behavior that takes place in its games.

The goal of the program, according to the listing, is to give engineers and producers on the Battlefield team a better understanding of player behavior.

It's an interesting approach to solving what has become a persistent toxicity problem for many online games and communities, and one that has the added benefit of giving a student pursuing their master’s degree in an area that deals with human behavior an opportunity to dig into some of DICE’s data on the subject.

DICE lists four specific investigations it aims for the master thesis program to explore including a breakdown of the disruptive behavior occurring in Battlefield, what triggers players to be disruptive, methods for preventing disruptive behavior, and experiments the company could run to measure the effectiveness of behavior-based reward/punishment systems.

More details on how to apply can be found on DICE's website, but it is worth noting that the internship itself is an unpaid affair and requires applicants to currently be studying for a master's degree at a Swedish university.