Gaming is a major form of entertainment, with the games industry growing and games easily attracting hundreds of players daily. The problem is that within the online game community there seems to be a spread of antisocial and toxic behavior. Toxicity has a negative effect on the retention of new players and it is therefore of interest to understand why such behavior arises.

This thesis aims to answer the question “What game design patterns, or combinations of such, bring out toxic behaviors in its players in multiplayer online survival games such as DayZ and Rust?”. That is done with conducting a formal analysis, as described by Lankoski and Björk (2015), of the two games Rust and DayZ. The results suggest that there are game design patterns linked to antisocial or toxic behavior. However, the findings of this research are a bit too incomplete to safely derive a strong conclusion.