The appeal of MOBA games: What makes people start, stay, and stop

Online multiplayer games are often rich sources of complex social interactions. In this paper, we focus on the unique player experiences (PX) created by Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games. We examine key phases of players' engagement with the genre and investigate why players start, stay, and stop playing MOBAs. Our study identifies how team interactions during play with friends or strangers affect PX during these phases. Results indicate the ability to play with friends is salient when beginning play and during periods of engagement. Teams that include friends support a wider range of play possibilities - socially and competitively -- than teams of strangers. However, social factors appear less relevant to those choosing to stop playing, who do so for a variety of reasons. This study contributes to the field by identifying a strategy to improve the wellbeing of players

Self-Determination Theory in HCI : Shaping a Research Agenda

Self-determination theory (SDT) has become one of the most frequently used and well-validated theories used in HCI research, modelling the relation of basic psychological needs, intrinsic motivation, positive experience and wellbeing. This makes it a prime candidate for a ‘motor theme’ driving more integrated, systematic, theory-guided research. However, its use in HCI has remained superficial and disjointed across various application domains like games, health and wellbeing, or learning. This workshop therefore convenes researchers across HCI to co-create a research agenda on how SDT-informed HCI research can maximise its progress in the coming years

Need frustration and short-term wellbeing: Restorative experiences in videogame play

This thesis is a study of how videogames can improve player wellbeing after a negative experience. Two experimental studies showed that videogame play can reverse the short-term wellbeing deficits caused by need frustration. Experiencing high need satisfaction and low need frustration in the game was shown to improve player wellbeing afterwards. Interview findings suggest that people intentionally use videogames to support wellbeing in varied ways. The thesis shows that studying need satisfaction and frustration together can improve evaluation of wellbeing outcomes, and has implications for the design of videogames and other interactive systems

Adapting epic theatre principles for the design of games for learning

Educational games are primarily developed for use in formal education, which limits both their typical audience and the subject matter they may address. This paper presents recommendations for designing games for learning to be played outside the context of formal education, which explore the ways complex systems influence real human lives. Existing work from within the field and epic theatre principles form the basis for these guidelines. In this framework, the context of educational game play is considered alongside game content as essential to encouraging reflective play behaviour. Educational aims are made explicit throughout game involvement, and each aspect of the game directly contributes to stimulating reflection on the topics at hand. Complex subject matter — for example, the ways systems such as economics affect players in real life — may be fruitfully explored using this approach

Off-Peak: An Examination of Ordinary Player Experience

Videogames' increasing cultural relevance and suffusion into everyday use contexts suggests they can no longer be considered novelties. Broadly speaking, games research at CHI has concerned two forms of peak experience—historically, research aimed to support flow, or maximise enjoyment and positive emotions; more recently, scholarship engages with more varied experiences of intense emotion, such as emotional challenge. In different ways, both approaches emphasise extra-ordinary player experience (PX). Conversely, videogame play and PX have become more routine—indeed, more ordinary—as the medium's cultural presence grows. In this paper, we argue that HCI games research is conceptually ill-equipped to investigate these increasingly common and often desirable experiences. We conceptualise "ordinary player experience'' – as familiar, emotionally moderate, co-attentive, and abstractly memorable – articulating a phenomenon whose apparent mundanity has seen it elude description to date. We discuss opportunities to productively employ ordinary PX in HCI games research, alongside conceptual implications for PX and player wellbeing.Peer reviewe

Exploring relatedness in single-player video game play

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is often used to measure aspects of the player experience (PX) in videogame research. In aggregate, work in this vein is concerned with measuring basic need satisfaction during play. These needs are competence, autonomy and relatedness. While measures of competence and autonomy are relatively straightforward, there are still questions about how we measure the connectedness that players achieve in and through videogame play. Relatedness is most often studied in dyadic relationships, despite broader definitional origins. The present work therefore approaches the conceptual application of relatedness need satisfaction to videogame play, with a view towards facilitating its empirical study. As a result, this research proposes avenues from which even single-player videogames can support relatedness needs — arising from parasocial relationships, culture, and the videogame itself

Reflective experiences in videogame play

Videogames’ motivational qualities, and the experiences of learning inherent in their play, have seen their use as both interventions in formal education and a means of representing complex systems. Often the aim is to make the social, cultural, and political models embedded within games objects of critical discussion. However, using games alone is no guarantee of success; players must be encouraged to make explicit links between game content and real-life context for understanding to occur. Methods for encouraging reflective play within games themselves are thus considered, drawn from the inversion of popular game design theory and adapted from Brechtian epic theatre

Statistical Significance Testing at CHI PLAY: Challenges and Opportunities for More Transparency

Statistical Significance Testing -- or Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) -- is common to quantitative CHI PLAY research. Drawing from recent work in HCI and psychology promoting transparent statistics and the reduction of questionable research practices, we systematically review the reporting quality of 119 CHI PLAY papers using NHST (data and analysis plan at https://osf.io/4mcbn/. We find that over half of these papers employ NHST without specific statistical hypotheses or research questions, which may risk the proliferation of false positive findings. Moreover, we observe inconsistencies in the reporting of sample sizes and statistical tests. These issues reflect fundamental incompatibilities between NHST and the frequently exploratory work common to CHI PLAY. We discuss the complementary roles of exploratory and confirmatory research, and provide a template for more transparent research and reporting practices

Restorative play: Videogames improve player wellbeing after a need-frustrating event

People often use videogames to restore wellbeing after negative experiences in day-to-day life. Although some research suggests that play can restore wellbeing, few studies have investigated the means by which restoration occurs. We employed self-determination theory (SDT) to understand how and to what degree play improves wellbeing after a needfrustrating event, and how players understand experiences of competence in play.Sixty-five participants worked at a competence manipulation task prior to playing a competence-satisfying videogame. Competence, affect, and vitality improved during play, and in-game experiences of need frustration were observed to effectively predict post-play negative affect. Post-experiment interviews indicate that videogames are seen to support competence relative to perceived skill, extending our knowledge of how design can support competence and restoration. We demonstrate that play can restore wellbeing, present need frustration as a means to explain negative experiences with interactive systems, and discuss effects of design on competence