Efficient Toxicity Detection in Gaming Chats: A Comparative Study of Embeddings, Fine-Tuned Transformers and LLMs

Abstract: This paper presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of NLP methods for automated toxicity detection in online gaming chats. Traditional machine learning models with embeddings, LLMs with zero-shot and few-shot prompting, fine-tuned transformer models, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approaches are evaluated. The evaluation framework assesses three critical dimensions: classification accuracy, processing speed, and computational costs. A hybrid moderation system architecture is proposed that optimizes human moderator workload through automated detection and incorporates continuous learning mechanisms. The experimental results demonstrate significant performance variations across methods, with fine-tuned DistilBERT achieving optimal accuracy-cost trade-offs. The findings provide empirical evidence for deploying cost-effective, efficient content moderation systems in dynamic online gaming environments.