Personality traits and race

[CBeisbol]

On Twitter, a user looked into the distribution of personality traits by race

https://twitter.com/Jacob_M_Mack/sta...142542342?s=19

The results they posted were...disturbing. Obvious correlations between white players and positive attributes and with non-white players and negative attributes.


I hope there's a reasonable explanation.

[metsguy234]

I'd also like an explanation on these.

[bwiese3908]

Get a Life!!

And stay off twitter, not good for the weak minded!

[jpeters1734]

I'm not going to pretend that systemic racism doesn't exist in America.

But there is absolutely no way that I will believe that OOTP has programed racism into the game. I can only assume that the players looked at were from a standard MLB game which have their player personality ratings inputted by hand. Fictional leagues with 100% game-created players will have random traits.

I imagine that there is some kind of matrix used to decide traits for real players and I'm sure that race is not one of the criteria. I suppose I could be wrong and you'd have to ask the roster team.

I do know that there are real life things that affect traits in OOTP. Scott Boras clients typically have "selfish" traits in the game. What are the demographics of Boras clients? Players busted for PEDs usually will get unmotivated or selfish traits. Again, what are the demographics of players testing positive for PEDs?

That's just a small sample of actual concrete reasons players get certain traits assigned to them. I cannot speak for the more subjective traits as someone from the actual roster team would have to answer.

[andyhdz]

Related
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...ghlight=Alonso

[Kvetch_22]

Originally Posted by metsguy234

I'd also like an explanation on these.

Would also like an explanation. Goes without saying that programming racial bias into the game would be a bad move, but I also doubt that is the case.

I don't think it's a secret that baseball players are often stereotyped differently based on their race and national origin. That has been and continues to be an issue in sports. I'm guessing that bias seeped in to the roster making process for the game without malicious intent.

[Cynical]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

Fictional leagues with 100% game-created players will have random traits.

Are you sure this is the case? My experience is that there seems to be some positional bias in traits among "generated" players -- catchers seem a lot more likely to get "leader"/"captain" traits, and starting pitchers seem a lot more likely to have negative traits.

[KJDelaney]

Oh dear god in heaven,

Its a friggin game!

[Lawn Loaf]

CBeisbul-

You are the first to go into my ignore list

I have read many of your posts, you do nothing but agitate and create a sense of mockery on these boards

The country is going up in flames due to racial tension that is puposely being spread by the media, and agitators like you can't even leave a baseball games board alone

Maybe you feel very miserable, but that is no excuse to stoke the flames on this board over a trivial twitter post insinuating racism being programmed in OOTP

Very classless move

[Bagpipes5]

What a touchy-feely divisive society we've become. Megalomaniacs who want everyone to be constantly walking on egg shells. Such a shame.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Lawn Loaf

CBeisbul-

You are the first to go into my ignore list

I have read many of your posts, you do nothing but agitate and create a sense of mockery on these boards

The country is going up in flames due to racial tension that is puposely being spread by the media, and agitators like you can't even leave a baseball games board alone

Maybe you feel very miserable, but that is no excuse to stoke the flames on this board over a trivial twitter post insinuating racism being programmed in OOTP

Very classless move

Oh no. Someone who thinks racial inequality should be ignored and with what looks like a stinking pile of **** on a helmet for an avatar has me on ignore. Where has my life gone wrong?

Also, it's "beisbol". Learn to spell

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Kvetch_22

Would also like an explanation. Goes without saying that programming racial bias into the game would be a bad move, but I also doubt that is the case.

I don't think it's a secret that baseball players are often stereotyped differently based on their race and national origin. That has been and continues to be an issue in sports. I'm guessing that bias seeped in to the roster making process for the game without malicious intent.

as there are countless things that we wish were programmed into the game that are not makes me 100% sure that racial bias is not programmed, lol.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Cynical

Are you sure this is the case? My experience is that there seems to be some positional bias in traits among "generated" players -- catchers seem a lot more likely to get "leader"/"captain" traits, and starting pitchers seem a lot more likely to have negative traits.

Since I'm not a programmer for this game, I cannot say for certain. I have not noticed the trait bias that you think you see, and if it was there, it's for positions and not race.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Kvetch_22

I don't think it's a secret that baseball players are often stereotyped differently based on their race and national origin. That has been and continues to be an issue in sports. I'm guessing that bias seeped in to the roster making process for the game without malicious intent.

Right

Similar to what I said in the thread about there not being women, and apparently, the idea of women being in the game never crossed the developers minds, this probably isn't something intentional. But, instead, part of the overall bias endemic to the sport (or American sports, or American culture, or whatever it is).

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Bagpipes5

What a touchy-feely divisive society we've become.

I know
Pointing out that there' appears to be an unfortunate correlation between some personality traits and race in a video games offends some...snowflakes.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

I hope there's a reasonable explanation.

There is, the data of that user is either made up or too small to be meaningful.

There are only three things that influence a player's generated personality:
Randomness, age, overall level of ability.

Of course, race is not part of the equation. To suggest otherwise is blatantly false.

Closed.

Edit: Seems like the user (at least he claims that to be the case) looked at MLB players in the quickstart. Again, these were also generated randomly with the same code that is used for fictional players, many years ago.
Edit2: Player position plays a role too (eg. catchers are more likely to be captains), but the position is 100% random for generated players, of course.
Edit3: And to make it clear, I typically try to make sure the company stays out of political discussions, but let me say this: We all despise racism and believe that all humans are created equal, should be treated equally and should have the same chances in life.

[Markus Heinsohn]

A quick update on this... to make sure we are indeed doing nothing wrong, I ran the numbers on both a default MLB league and a fictional league. In order to get a more meaningful sample size, I removed age & service time requirements for certain classes. Everything looks good considering the very small sample size overall. See attached images.

And while this is still all within normal fluctuations, we'll review the individual ratings of the default roster set and will make some modifications to average out the random bumps for some categories. I think that's a good approach moving forward

[Markus Heinsohn]

Alright, to summarize, we wanted to thank everyone that was concerned enough to bring this to our attention!

Having reviewed the data, we're confident that the previous personality distribution can be explained by random variance due to the extremely small sample size of the players who fall into specific personality classifications and the fact that the vast majority of the personality ratings had never been edited or reviewed since originally being randomly generated many years ago.

Since we detest the thought of any prejudice or racism, we are horrified at that any possibility that anyone could feel the rosters had any sort of racist overtones. It doesn't matter whether this occurred through random variance or even as a result any sort of unconscious bias that might have crept into things with dozens of different volunteers working on the set over many years. No matter what the cause, our fans having any reason for even a hint of doubt as to our intentions in this area is unacceptable to us.

As a result, we've spent today working on adjusting the traits and personalities for quite a few of the players in the roster set to ensure that the distribution of personalities falls more evenly and accurately and in a way that reflects the beauty of the diversity of baseball as a whole. These adjustments will be part of the default rosters in the next maintenance patch.

We sincerely apologise for any offence the distribution of the traits caused any of our users. This was in no way, shape or form intentional on our parts. We will be sure to continue to monitor things going forward in the future to make sure that the distribution of the personality traits by ethnicity stays at a realistic and appropriate level.

Stay safe everybody!
Markus & the entire OOTP Team