Assessing the impact of the awareness level on a co-operative game

Context: When playing a co-operative game, being aware of your collaborators (where they are playing, what they are doing, the abilities they have, etc.) is essential for achieving the game's goals. This led to the definition of Gamespace Awareness in order to guide in the identification of the awareness needs in the form of a compilation of the awareness elements that a co-operative game should feature. Objective: Gamespace Awareness does not establish how much awareness information players must be provided with. This constitutes the main motivation for this work: to assess the impact of different levels of Gamespace Awareness elements on a co-operative game. Method: A multiplayer action game was developed that supports three different awareness configurations, each one featuring different awareness levels (high, medium and low). The impact of these awareness levels was measured as regards game score, time, players’ happiness while playing, enjoyment and perceived usefulness. Several techniques such as subjective surveys and facial expression analysis were used to measure these factors. Results: The analysis of the results shows that the higher the awareness, the better the game score. However, the highest level of player happiness was not achieved with the most awareness-enabled configuration; we found that the players’ enjoyment depends not only on their awareness level but also on their expertise level. Finally, the awareness elements related to the present and the future were the most useful, as could be expected in a multiplayer action game. Conclusions: The results showed that the medium level awareness obtained the best results. We therefore concluded that a certain level of awareness is necessary, but that excessive awareness could negatively affect the game experience

Making Maps Available for Play: Analyzing the Design of Game Cartography Interfaces.

Maps in video games have grown into complex interactive systems alongside video games themselves. What map systems have done and currently do have not been cataloged or evaluated. We trace the history of game map interfaces from their paper-based inspiration to their current smart phone-like appearance. Read- only map interfaces enable players to consume maps, which is sufficient for wayfinding. Game cartography interfaces enable players to persistently modify maps, expanding the range of activity to support planning and coordination. We employ thematic analysis on game cartography interfaces, contributing a near-exhaustive catalog of games featuring such interfaces, a set of properties to describe and design such interfaces, a collection of play activities that relate to cartography, and a framework to identify what properties promote the activities. We expect that designers will find the contributions enable them to promote desired play experiences through game map interface design

Transdiegetic Sound and auditory immersion in an asymmetrical cooperative game

This research is looking to determine how sound interaction, in particular transdiegetic sound, as a core mechanic affects player immersion in an asymmetrical cooperative game. Sound design is crucial for increasing player immersion within single player game experiences, but the issues arises in a multiplayer context where communicating with other players can break this in-game immersion There is rich potential of exploring the game design possibilities of separating the sensory modalities between two players and exploring how the restricted information is conveyed and consequently how this affects player immersion. This research expands upon this by examining the interplay between four game design patterns; transdiegetic sound, player communication, asymmetrical gameplay and immersive experiences. This project developed a game which requires one player to wear a pair of headphones and be prevented from viewing the game screen. The other player is able to see the game screen and have the controls to move around the game environment but is not able to hear audio cues from within the virtual space; this only being audible to the player wearing the headphones. The research suggests that the novel design approach highlights how current methods of measuring player immersion such as questionnaires may not always be appropriate due to the assumptions they contain within the questions they ask. The results also suggests that whilst the relationship between transdiegetic sound and asymmetrical gameplay may not appear to be significant, there is an interplay between these mechanics that influences the immersive experience for the player. This project proposes that future work considers this interplay and avoids attempting to analyse how a design pattern determines player immersion in isolation but that it considers how it behaves it relation to the other design choices within the game

COLAB: Social Context and User Experience in Collaborative Multiplayer Games

Recent studies have shown that the social context in which people play digital multiplayer games has an effect on their experience. Whether co-players are in the same location (―co-located‖) or in different locations (―mediated‖) changes how they interact with the game and with one another. We set out to explore how these complex psychological dynamics played out in a collaborative multiplayer game, since most of the research to date has been focused on competitive gameplay scenarios. To this end, we designed a two-player puzzle-based gaming apparatus called COLAB, implementing specific features that have been proven to foster collaboration and preclude competition between players. The independent variable was player location; the dependent variable was game experience, as measured by the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire, two comprehensive self-report instruments. We found a significant difference in the game experiences of players collaborating in the same location versus players collaborating in different locations. Specifically, co-located players of the collaborative game experienced significantly higher scores for negative experience than mediated players did, while mediated players experienced significantly higher levels of three key game-experience measures: positive affect, immersion, and flow

Investigating Communication Patterns as Proxy Indicators of Team Cohesion in Ad Hoc Teams

Team cohesion is a well-known facilitator of effective team functioning. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence identifying predictors of cohesion due to limitations in measurement methods. To address this issue, I propose that teams in digital games can be used as an alternative naturalistic environment to investigate team cohesion. In this thesis, I present three studies that use a variety of experimental and analysis techniques to identify behavioural indicators of cohesion and show the value of digital games as alternative paradigms for investigating team dynamics. Chapter 3 describes a qualitative study on identifying potential predictors of cohesion. The study is conducted from the perspective of an intention to be on the same team in the future. The findings from Chapter 3 suggest that team communication may be a key factor that influences intention for repeated play between strangers in ad hoc teams. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 explores team communication as a proxy indicator of cohesion to identify precisely what and how communication influences or indicates cohesion. In these studies, we first establish the relationship between cohesion and performance (Chapter 4 and 5), and between cohesion and satisfaction (Chapter 5). This ensures that the findings on cohesion in digital game teams are comparable to the wider cohesion literature. Once these relationships are established, we investigate how different communication metrics are related to cohesion and team outcomes (e.g., performance and satisfaction). Performance and satisfaction were chosen as outcome measures as these represent well-known outcomes that are generated by cohesive teams as they develop. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 provide insight into the relationships between cohesion and team outcomes, and the relationship between communication and cohesion, in different team contexts. Chapter 6 closes with a discussion of the observations, findings, and new knowledge gained from this research expedition on identifying a potential unobtrusive behavioural indicator of team cohesion

IMAGINING, GUIDING, PLAYING INTIMACY: - A Theory of Character Intimacy Games -

Within the landscape of Japanese media production, and video game production in particular, there is a niche comprising video games centered around establishing, developing, and fulfilling imagined intimate relationships with anime-manga characters. Such niche, although very significant in production volume and lifespan, is left unexplored or underexplored. When it is not, it is subsumed within the scope of wider anime-manga media. This obscures the nature of such video games, alternatively identified with descriptors including but not limited to ‘visual novel’, ‘dating simulator’ and ‘adult computer game’. As games centered around developing intimacy with characters, they present specific ensembles of narrative content, aesthetics and software mechanics. These ensembles are aimed at eliciting in users what are, by all intents and purposes, parasocial phenomena towards the game’s characters. In other words, these software products encourage players to develop affective and bodily responses towards characters. They are set in a way that is coherent with shared, circulating scripts for sexual and intimate interaction to guide player imaginative action. This study defines games such as the above as ‘character intimacy games’, video game software where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters. To do so, however, player must recognize themselves as playing that type of game, and to be looking to develop that kind of response towards the game’s characters. Character Intimacy Games are contingent upon player developing affective and bodily responses, and thus presume that players are, at the very least, non-hostile towards their development. This study approaches Japanese character intimacy games as its corpus, and operates at the intersection of studies of communication, AMO studies and games studies. The study articulates a research approach based on the double need of approaching single works of significance amidst a general scarcity of scholarly background on the subject. It juxtaposes data-driven approaches derived from fan-curated databases – The Visual Novel Database and Erogescape -Erogē Hyōron Kūkan – with a purpose-created ludo-hermeneutic process. By deploying an observation of character intimacy games through fan-curated data and building ludo-hermeneutics on the resulting ontology, this study argues that character intimacy games are video games where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters and recognizing themselves as doing so. To produce such conditions, the assemblage of software mechanics and narrative content in such games facilitates intimacy between player and characters. This is, ultimately, conductive to the emergence of parasocial phenomena. Parasocial phenomena, in turn, are deployed as an integral assumption regarding player activity within the game’s wider assemblage of narrative content and software mechanics

Supporting Participation Through Live Media

Throughout the past century, live media has grown to play a significant role in how we experience the world. Live media connects people in real-time with events happening around the world and helps people establish shared social realities. Recent live forms enabled by the internet are shifting the paradigm away from just passively watching to actively participating. This has significant implications for how we engage in critical aspects of society, including education, politics, work, play, and everyday life. In this work, we focus on understanding emerging live media phenomena and designing new forms to support participation. We do this through two core approaches: qualitative investigations and live media probes. To build an understanding of practice and communities, we conduct qualitative investigations of two situated live media contexts: the video game live streaming site Twitch and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Using Marshall McLuhan’s concept of hot and cool media, we explore how live streaming as a medium affords building these online communities through participation in shared experiences. Building on these findings, we design, deploy, and evaluate live media probes. These probes implement new forms of live media, with the goal of eliciting new forms of live experience and participation. We first design Rivulet, a live media probe supporting new participatory modalities and multiple simultaneous live streams. Through our investigation of Rivulet, we discover how, by incorporating new modalities, we can support higher-impact forms of participation in live experiences. Next, we design Collaborative Live Media Curation (CLMC), a new live media form enabling the collaborative real-time assemblage of web media including text, images, sketch, and live video and audio. We deploy LiveMâché, a CLMC probe, in four situated online learning contexts to support participatory learning activities. We find that CLMC supports new forms of real-time conversational grounding and participation. In conclusion, we summarize and discuss our findings and discuss future directions for live media research

Socially Anxious Play: Design, Development, and Evaluation of Game-Based Digital Behavioural Markers for the Assessment of Social Anxiety

Social relationships are essential for humans; neglecting our social needs can cause discomfort or even lead to the development of more severe issues such as loneliness, depression, or substance dependency. Although essential, some individuals face major challenges in forming and maintaining social relationships due to the experience of social anxiety, which is the intense fear of being evaluated by others. The burden of social anxiety can be reduced through accessible assessment that leads to treatment. However, socially anxious individuals who wish to seek help face many barriers stemming from geography, the characteristics of the fear itself, or disparities in access to systems of care. Recent research has suggested digital behavioural markers as a way to deliver cheap and easily accessible digital assessment for social anxiety that may help reduce barriers to care. However, prior work focused mostly on the relationship between social anxiety and the development of problematic gaming behaviours to cope with the potentially severe consequences of social anxiety. In this dissertation, we look at the relationship between social anxiety and digital games from the lens of assessment and analyze whether we can use digital behavioural markers embedded in a gaming task to assess the severity of social anxiety. In manuscript 1, we show that social anxiety may manifest in game and biases the preferences for in-game activities and the reasons why players play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). Further, Manuscript 2 shows that central game mechanics, such as the customization of the self-representation in-game, may affect the experience of social stress in-game. Manuscripts 3 and 4 explore the in-game movement of a player around a non-player character (NPC) and show that certain aspects of the movement path may be used to predict the degree of social anxiety. Further, we show that the camera perspective as well as the self-representation may affect the strength of these behavioural markers of social anxiety. Finally, Manuscript 5 explores how the found behavioral markers, as well as the developed gaming task, may be used to predict self-reported psychopathy---which is negatively related to social anxiety---and further shows that personal character traits manifest in-game and may explain certain phenomena such as the presence of anti-social behaviour in digital games. Overall, the results of this dissertation provide new insights about the relationship between social anxiety and its manifestation in-game, the influence of game mechanics on the experience of social stress, and how social anxiety as well as psychopathic traits may affect in-game behaviours, opening the way towards digital behavioural markers for the assessment of social anxiety