The Listening-at-Scale Challenge: a Panoramic View of the Video Game Community

Industry

Entertainment

Challenge

The gaming industry has long struggled to understand the full scope of toxicity within online communities. Existing tools—like traditional social listening—were limited in scale, access, and representation, especially among marginalized groups. Ayzenberg Group needed a way to go deeper: to understand the lived experiences of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and female gamers at scale, and uncover how toxicity shapes gameplay behavior and community dynamics.

Results

By partnering with Panoplai, Ayzenberg was able to uncover powerful insights that previously went unnoticed. Ayzenberg now plans to integrate Panoplai data with gameplay data, expand global monitoring, and build scalable, empathy-driven community strategies.

www.ayzenberg.com/

About Ayzenberg

Ayzenberg Group is a leading creative agency in the video game industry, known for building community-first strategies for top global publishers. With a deep focus on player voice, inclusivity, and behavioral data, Ayzenberg partnered with Panoplai to evolve how brands understand—and respond to—the lived experiences of gamers.

The Challenge

Over 70% of female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ gamers reported encountering toxic behavior while gaming.

Toxicity in gaming shows up as slurs, hate speech, and harassment—often targeting marginalized players and souring their experiences. But how widespread is it, and what can we do to stop it?

Customer and audience understanding are undoubtedly the core of any successful strategy.

But how do we ensure that we’re listening to the right people, that the data is
representative, that it’s high quality, and that it allows for the creation of insights that
are both differentiated and actionable?

#1 Need: Understand and address toxicity in gaming communities.

Reasons why social listening alone isn't enough

Representation: Represents the views of a relatively small number of people who discussed brands or organizations on social media.

Listening: May under-represent individuals from marginalized groups and conversations on sensitive topics—except among the most deeply engaged or committed partisans.

Access: People engage across multiple social platforms, though only some are easily accessible for social listening.

Engagement: Engaging social media users in meaningful, large-scale conversations or follow-up questions remains a significant challenge.

Read our blog on how social media algorithms are harming young men to see what social listening misses.

The Solution

Panoplai harnessed the power of Generative AI to truly listen to the language of gamers, their emotions, and their experiences on an unprecedented scale.

This methodology revealed meaningful patterns and surfaced insights that had previously gone unnoticed. By committing to a deeper understanding of gaming culture, we arrived at the true objective: uncovering the lived experiences of gamers themselves.

The Results

Panoplai helped reveal distinct differences across segments, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and female audiences. The results reveal that toxicity not only influences who gamers choose to play with—it can also drive them to avoid certain games altogether when it becomes too severe.

Ayzenberg plans to:

Expand listening & monitoring by engaging key target audiences
Integrate Panoplai data and insights with gameplay data
Track positive and negative issues
Extend to global markets and more community platforms.

About Panoplai

Panoplai is an AI-powered market research platform built for teams that need speed without sacrificing depth. We help content strategists, marketers, and product leaders uncover AI consumer insights, run advanced survey-based audience targeting, and build dynamic digital twin personas. From lead generation to content ops to product-market fit, Panoplai turns static data into fast, scalable intelligence. Want to see for yourself? Let's talk.