An Analysis of Operant Conditioning and its Relationship with Video Game Addiction

A report published by the Entertainment Software Association revealed that in 2015, 155 million Americans play video games with an average of two gamers in each game-playing household (Entertainment Software Association, “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry”). With this massive popularity that has sprung alongside video games, the question must be asked: how are video games affecting today\u27s people? With the current way some video games are structured, the video game rewards players for achieving certain accomplishments. For example, competitive video games reward players who achieve victories by giving them a higher ranking or other games display the player\u27s score so that other players can see their score. With this in mind, some video game players may place more emphasis on their gaming achievements rather than their happiness or success in their own real lives. Once this emphasis has been placed, video game players have a chance to become addicted to their respective game; however, a distinction must be set between video game addiction and operant conditioning. Opereant conditioning is a video game design that many of today\u27s video games utilize. The use of operant conditioning towards a gamer can be one of the factors contributing towards video game addiction; operant conditioning is the strategy while video game addiction can be the byproduct of operant conditioning

Game Transfer Phenomena in video game playing: a qualitative interview study

Video game playing is a popular activity and its enjoyment among frequent players has been associated with absorption and immersion experiences. This paper examines how immersion in the video game environment can influence the player during the game and afterwards (including fantasies, thoughts, and actions). This is what we describe as Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP). GTP occurs when video game elements are associated with real life elements triggering subsequent thoughts, sensations and/or player actions. To investigate this further, a total of 42 frequent video game players aged between 15 and 21 years old were interviewed. Thematic analysis showed that many players experienced GTP, where players appeared to integrate elements of video game playing into their real lives. These GTP were then classified as either intentional or automatic experiences. Results also showed that players used video games for interacting with others as a form of amusement, modeling or mimicking video game content, and daydreaming about video games. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate how video games sometimes triggered intrusive thoughts, sensations, impulses, reflexes, optical illusions, and dissociations

Just how expert are “expert” video-game players? Assessing the experience and expertise of video-game players across “action” video-game genres

Video-game play (particularly “action” video-games) holds exciting promise as an activity that may provide generalized enhancement to a wide range of perceptual and cognitive abilities (for review see Latham et al., 2013a). However, in this article we make the case that to assess accurately the effects of video-game play researchers must better characterize video-game experience and expertise. This requires a more precise and objective assessment of an individual's video-game history and skill level, and making finer distinctions between video-games that fall under the umbrella of “action” games. Failure to consider these factors may partly be responsible for mixed findings (see Boot et al., 2011)

Vertical Integration, Exclusivity and Game Sales Performance in the U.S. Video Game Industry

This paper empirically investigates the relation between vertical integration and video game performance in the U.S. video game industry. For this purpose, we use a widely used data set from NPD on video game montly sales from October 2000 to October 2007. We complement these data with handly collected information on video game developers for all games in the sample and the timing of all mergers and acquisitions during that period. By doing this, we are able to separate vertically integrated games from those that are just exclusive to a platform First, we show that vertically integrated games produce higher revenues, sell more units and sell at higher prices than independent games. Second, we explore the causal effect of vertical integration and find that, for the average integrated game, most of the difference in performance comes from better release period and marketing strategies that soften competition. By default, vertical integration does not seem to have an effect on the quality of video game production. We also find that exclusivity is associated with lower demand.No; keywords

Musica ex machina:a history of video game music

The history of video game music is a subject area that has received little attention by musicologists, and yet the form presents fascinating case studies both of musical minimalism, and the role of technology in influencing and shaping both musical form and aesthetics. This presentation shows how video game music evolved from simple tones, co-opted from sync circuits in early hardware to a sophisticated form of adaptive expression

Learning through collaboration: video game wikis

The wiki, wherein community-spirited players meticulously document their gaming experiences for the benefit of others, from simple guides to complex theories and strategies, has become the de facto online reference medium for video game players. This study sought to examine how players learn from one another about the systems that underpin their favourite games and how they engaged with social media – wikis, in particular – to facilitate this collaborative learning. It is argued that in collating, synthesizing and disseminating the often complex behaviours observed in a modern video game, the wiki author is displaying academic proficiency in a non-academic field. Drawing on a series of interviews with gaming wiki contributors and users, the practices of those engaged in using gaming wikis are discussed, together with an account of the research methods used. In undertaking such research, a number of challenges and concerns were encountered: these, too, are described

Deep learning for video game playing

In this article, we review recent Deep Learning advances in the context of how they have been applied to play different types of video games such as first-person shooters, arcade games, and real-time strategy games. We analyze the unique requirements that different game genres pose to a deep learning system and highlight important open challenges in the context of applying these machine learning methods to video games, such as general game playing, dealing with extremely large decision spaces and sparse rewards