Addressing social dilemmas and fostering cooperation through computer games

Gamers who play MMORPGs often form clans or guilds so they can benefit from pooled resources and skills. It is generally understood that all the members of a given guild will work together, whether the task is fighting a common foe (either other players or game controlled "mobs"), helping each other gather resources and craft items, or performing other in-game tasks more efficiently. Yet, some guilds recruit so aggressively and acquire so many new people that members no longer know each other, which in turn leads to a very diluted sense of community. This sense of isolation has such an impact that there may come a time when some guild members feel no obligation to the guild at all. These members often become free-loaders, reaping the benefits of the guild while neither contributing nor being an active participant in guild activities. This, of course, happens in real life on a grand scale and in mathematical game theory is called a "social dilemma." (A classic example is Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons.) People do not feel compelled to vote, carpool, or recycle even though they may know the benefits of doing so. Reasons for not participating include the fact that contributing has little impact on whether one benefits from the group. Another reason is that people don’t have a strong sense of identity within a cooperative community. In my on-going research, I am examining the role computer games can play in both fostering cooperation and collaboration skills for the benefit of the group and in instilling a sense of responsibility in people when they are confronted with a social dilemma. In a previous project, I, along with two colleagues, examined identity formation of gamers while playing in a simulated social dilemma. For this, we created a custom single-player module for Neverwinter Nights. We found that although players tried alternate strategies when playing the game, their game playing did not appear to affect their real-life choices. Game playing, however, did appear to promote deeper thinking about real-world situations when prompted. We concluded that it is possible we didn’t find any strong pattern between in-game and real-world identities and behavior because the game we created was not deep enough to realistically simulate the complexity of real-world social situations. We also believed that the results of the game would have been very different if the players had to interact with other real-world people. Keeping these in mind, this study examines a group of online gamers in which I participate that is attempting to create a sustainable cooperative guild with a strong sense of group identity in World of Warcraft. It is our hope that the guild will continue to thrive even if founding members leave the game and that members of the guild will benefit greatly from membership and come to understand their role in maximizing the efficiency and camaraderie of a cooperative community. Having done this, it becomes a question of whether this knowledge transfers to real life

Studying Commercial Games: Justifying Choices

Before researchers can perform studies using commercial games, they must choose which game or games to study. The manner in which that choice is made and justified is the focus of this paper. Ideally, research informs pedagogy and when looking at game education it is important to be able to justify and defend conclusions drawn from game studies so they can inform best practices in design and development. As the number and sophistication of titles released in a given year continues to rise, it becomes even more important to look more seriously at how we are choosing the games we study, the criteria we use for those studies, how we support our claims about the suitability of the game for our purposes, and how generalizations to other games should be limited or qualified. This paper is a report on a qualitative meta-analysis of the methods used in choosing games for study and the implications that holds for both researchers studying games and educators teaching about games and game development

Social networking and digital gaming media convergence : classification and its consequences for appropriation

Within the field of Information Systems, a good proportion of research is concerned with the work organisation and this has, to some extent, restricted the kind of application areas given consideration. Yet, it is clear that information and communication technology deployments beyond the work organisation are acquiring increased importance in our lives. With this in mind, we offer a field study of the appropriation of an online play space known as Habbo Hotel. Habbo Hotel, as a site of media convergence, incorporates social networking and digital gaming functionality. Our research highlights the ethical problems such a dual classification of technology may bring. We focus upon a particular set of activities undertaken within and facilitated by the space – scamming. Scammers dupe members with respect to their ‘Furni’, virtual objects that have online and offline economic value. Through our analysis we show that sometimes, online activities are bracketed off from those defined as offline and that this can be related to how the technology is classified by members – as a social networking site and/or a digital game. In turn, this may affect members’ beliefs about rights and wrongs. We conclude that given increasing media convergence, the way forward is to continue the project of educating people regarding the difficulties of determining rights and wrongs, and how rights and wrongs may be acted out with respect to new technologies of play online and offline

INTERPRETING DIGITAL GAMING PRACTICES: SINGSTAR AS A TECHNOLOGY OF WORK

Embedded within discourses of the enactment of information and communications technologies (ICTs) at work is often a tightly constrained range of legitimate application areas of study, a rather thin concept of user-developer relations and a context of use that precludes simultaneity, multiplicity and informality. This situation persists despite the increasing relocation of work to informal settings beyond the traditional boundaries of the work organization. In this paper we argue for the consideration of digital games as premier and hallmark examples of socially rich ICTs and demanding the attention of researchers concerned with work orgainzations. Through two intersecting ethnographies of the use of the Sony PlayStation console game, SingStar, we provide an account of ICT mediated experiences associated with playing the game. We consider SingStar in particular as socially rich as it invites us to think about: the wider capabilities of ICTs beyond work-orientated organisations; the expansion of conditions of ICT appropriation, extended collaboration practices and the co-production of sociotechnical arrangements in situ. We argue that SingStar can be thought of as glue technology that assists in crafting and strengthening social linkages amongst players. Our examination of the play and experience of this game provides a fuller account of the interrelationships of people to socialising technologies that reaches beyond traditional discourses regarding technology, organizations and work

The Invention of Good Games: Understanding Learning Design in Commercial Videogames

This work sought to help inform the design of educational digital games by the studying the design of successful commercial videogames. The main thesis question was: How does a commercially and critically successful modern video game support the learning that players must accomplish in order to succeed in the game (i.e. get to the end or win)? This work takes a two-pronged approach to supporting the main argument, which is that the reason we can learn about designing educational games by studying commercial games is that people already learn from games and the best ones are already quite effective at teaching players what they need to learn in order to succeed in the game. The first part of the research establishes a foundation for the argument, namely that accepted pedagogy can be found in existing commercial games. The second part of the work proposes new methods for analysing games that can uncover mechanisms used to support learning in games which can be employed even if those games were not originally designed as educational objects. In order to support the claim that ‘good’ commercial videogames already embody elements of sound pedagogy an explicit connection is made between game design and formally accepted theory and models in teaching and learning. During this phase of the work a significant concern was raised regarding the classification of games as ‘good’, so a new methodology using Borda Counts was devised and tested that combines various disjoint subjective reviews and rankings from disparate sources in non-trivial manner that accounts for relative standings. Complementary to that was a meta-analysis of the criteria used to select games chosen as subjects of study as reported by researchers. Then, several games were chosen using this new ranking method and analysed using another new methodology that was designed for this work, called Instructional Ethology. This is a new methodology for game design deconstruction and analysis that would allows the extraction of information about mechanisms used to support learning. This methodology combines behavioural and structural analysis to examine how commercial games support learning by examining the game itself from the perspective of what the game does. Further, this methodology can be applied to the analysis of any software system and offers a new approach to studying any interactive software. The results of the present study offered new insights into how several highly successful commercial games support players while they learn what they must learn in order to succeed in those games. A new design model was proposed, known as the 'Magic Bullet' that allows designers to visualize the relative proportions of potential learning in a game to assess the potential of a design

Le rapport à l'avatar, une expérience de consommation dans les univers virtuels : cas de Second Life

Les univers virtuels connaissent un essor important. L'engouement pour ces univers s'explique par l'originalité de l'expérience que les résidents y vivent et à laquelle ils participent. La présente recherche vise la compréhension de ce phénomène en le positionnant comme une expérience de consommation ludique durant laquelle les consommateurs découvrent des aspects de leur soi en interagissant avec les autres usagers. Dans de tels univers, le consommateur se choisit un personnage (un avatar) lui servant d'identité virtuelle. Les travaux en la matière considèrent que l'anonymat et la liberté de choix de cette identité virtuelle constituent des aspects très motivants pour les résidents. S'insérant dans le cadre d'une démarche exploratoire, l'objectif premier de cette recherche est l'étude des principaux facteurs qui influencent le rapport à l'avatar dans l'expérience de consommation des univers virtuels. En choisissant comme terrain le monde virtuel Second Life, une recherche qualitative a été menée ainsi qu'une analyse de contenu de données provenant de sources variées (individuelles et collectives, dans et en dehors de Second Life) à savoir quatre-vingts entrevues individuelles, trois entrevues de groupe ainsi qu'une observation non participante d'un blogue et de quatorze forums de discussion portant sur Second Life. L'analyse et l'interprétation du sens que donnent les sujets aux aspects d'eux-mêmes qu'ils décident de mettre ou ne pas mettre dans leurs avatars a permis deux contributions originales dans le domaine particulier de la consommation dans les univers virtuels. L'ébauche d'un modèle conceptuel regroupant les différentes composantes du rapport à l'avatar, les facteurs ayant une influence sur ces composantes et, enfin, leurs implications en termes de consommation. Par ailleurs, l'analyse de la distance consommateur/avatar a également conduit à la genèse d'une typologie identifiant trois profils de consommateurs (confusion, flottement et rupture) sur base du choix de l'avatar, des facteurs influençant ce choix et des implications en termes de consommation

Identifikation in digitalen Lernspielen: der Einfluss der Identifikation mit Spielercharakteren auf das Lernen und die Motivation

The present research project deals with the medium of digital learning games. First, digital learning games will be described. Then the “player character,” a major element of digital learning games, will be described in depth. A preliminary definition for both concepts will be advanced. The goal of this research project is to prove (theoretically and empirically) and to describe in detail the (initiating) relationship between the player of digital learning games and the “player characters.” First we will consider if and how a relationship between player and player character develops, and if this relationship is an identification or another (more or less close related) process (i. e., parasocial interaction, similarity, or wishful identification). Furthermore, the processes of learning and motivation will be integrated into the research on digital learning games--i. e., is the process of identification influenced by the learning process or by motivation? The empirical part of this research project starts with a pilot study, in which subjects were observed and afterwards interviewed. The aim of this pilot study was to find out whether player characters are relevant components for the players of digital learning games, which elements of player characters are important for players, and to what extent a relationship, or even an identification, between player and player character can be observed. For the following master study a digital learning game (probably a fantasy game) will be developed. Using this learning game, we will investigate to what extent players identify with their player characters and how the identification influences learning and the motivation to continue playing the game. The empirical results from both studies, combined with theoretical insights, will give indications and suggestions for the future development, creation and design of player characters in digital learning games