‘In the game’? Embodied subjectivity in gaming environments

Human-computer interactions are increasingly using more (or all) of the body as a control device. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural or mimetic form of movement into gaming devices. We go on to reflect on the nature of player ‘embodiment’ in digital gaming environments by applying insights from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Three conditions for digital embodiment are proposed, with implications for Calleja’s (2011) Player Involvement Model (PIM) of gaming discussed

Case studies: understanding players and the contexts in which they play. Workshop on Crossing Domains: Diverse Perspectives on Players

Over recent years, the study of games and players has become an established domain with HCI research. However, while a range of methods has been employed within this area, questions remain as to how to develop in-depth understandings of players and the contexts they play within. Drawing upon the social sciences, this paper proposes case studies as an additional methodology for player research. We discuss the approach by referring to an example of how case studies were used to investigate the relationship between gaming involvement and learning

Designing persuasive games through competition

This case study describes a game design competition that was influenced by participatory design. We consider how successful our approach was and discuss the tensions that arose during the design and evaluation process

Exploring the Link Between Player Involvement and Learning Within Seventh Generation Video Games

Digital games are becoming increasingly popular with the latest generation of consoles introducing games to an even wider audience. Academic interest in the educational potential of video games is also growing and seems to stem from the fact that they are considered motivating. However, while there is some research on what makes games engaging, there is still a need to further our understanding of the link between player involvement and learning. This project aims to explore the informal learning that occurs within games, to identify the experience of player involvement, and to investigate the relationship between the two. The Digital Game Experience Model (DGEM), with its metaphor of incorporation (Calleja, 2007), is introduced as a framework that can help address these issues and to provide researchers in the area with a common terminology. A case study methodology was adopted, while the method itself consisted of an observation of game-play and a post-play cued interview in which a recording of the game-play was reviewed. A summarised version of each case-study, with an example of a critical instance or theme, is presented in order to illustrate how the DGEM was used to address the research questions. The findings indicate a very close relationship between the learning that occurs within the game and the involvement experienced by the player, suggesting that a certain amount of learning is required before the player can experience deeper levels of involvement. However, further research is needed before any conclusive claims can be made and to establish whether the metaphor of incorporation applies to all types of games

In the MOOD for Citizen Psych-Science

People make funny, frustrating and fatal errors on a daily basis. People can also create and apply strategies to avoid and mitigate error – this is called cognitive resilience. Researchers at UCLIC started the Errordiary project in 2009 as a way of raising awareness of human error research. Errordiary (www.errordiary.org) is an online public repository of the errors people make and the cognitive resilience strategies that they use. People contribute to it by using the #errordiary #rsdiary hashtags through Twitter. Over 130 people have contributed so far. The project has allowed researchers to gain a better insight into the resilience strategies that people use (Furniss et al., 2012). It has also been used as a real-life data set for teaching students about the psychology of human error (Wiseman, 2012). During August 2013 we interviewed 8 Errordiary contributors (5 female, 3 male) to find out more about their motivations for taking part. Most of our participants described their contributions as “occasional”, where Errordiary contributions varied from once a week, once a month, to once every 6 months. As one participant describes, “I go through a period of not contributing for weeks and then remembering it exists.” One reason for this is that contributions are event-driven. People cannot contribute whenever they wish - it has to be once they’ve committed an error or used a resilience strategy. Some participants described forgetting to contribute. Those that were regular twitter users were more likely to remember. As one participant describes, “I was already sharing errors on Twitter, now it’s just adding a hashtag.” The content of the error also had an impact on contributions. Sometimes participants did not tweet an error because they thought others might view their contribution as “mundane” or “not funny.” Contributions are visible to a person’s Twitter network, which means they are visible to a volunteer’s followers that may not know about the project. This makes contributing to Errordiary quite different to most other citizen science projects, where people contribute within the “safety” of being among like-minded others who share their interests. A couple of participants even described how they had set up a separate Twitter account just for the purpose of contributing to Errordiary. This highlights an important issue in using Twitter for data collection, as volunteers make a trade-off between convenience and protecting their privacy. These findings also highlight some of the ways in which a citizen psych-science project differs from a typical citizen science project. In citizen science usually volunteers collect or analyse data related to their environment (Haklay, 2013). However in Errordiary, researchers are asking volunteers to contribute their experiences of error. This means that volunteers are helping to collaborate in research, but at the same time they are the participants of the research. We suggest that this makes contributing to Errordiary more personal, and perhaps more sensitive, compared to other projects. The risks associated with sharing errors (e.g. negative perceptions from others, being viewed as incompetent) may counteract a person’s general good will to help researchers. Overall our study reveals several interesting insights concerning the spectrum of citizen science, and pros and cons in using Twitter for data collection. The Errordiary project is currently changing from being an online archive of error to a hub to engage and learn about error. This includes a ‘Discovery Zone’, allowing volunteers to explore research, media and games related to errors. It is now also possible for volunteers to login and contribute via the website – so the project is no longer restricted to Twitter users only. We plan to explore how these changes impact volunteers’ experiences in future research. References: Furniss, D., Back, J. and Blandford, A. (2012). Cognitive resilience: Can we use Twitter to make strategies more tangible? Proceedings of ECCE 2012, 96-99. Haklay, M. (2013). Citizen science and volunteered geographic information: Overview and typology of participation. In D. Sui et al. (Eds.) Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge: VGI in Theory and Practice, pp.105-122. Springer Netherlands. Wiseman, S. (2012). Errordiary: Support for teaching human error. ‘A contextualized curriculum for HCI’ workshop at CHI 2012

Understanding Engagement within the Context of a Safety Critical Game

One of the most frequent arguments for deploying serious games is that they provide an engaging format for student learning. However, engagement is often equated with enjoyment, which may not be the most relevant conceptualization in safety-critical settings, such as law enforcement and healthcare. In these contexts, the term ‘serious’ does not only relate to the non-entertainment purpose of the game but also the environment simulated by the game. In addition, a lack of engagement in a safety critical training setting can have serious ethical implications, leading to significant real-world impacts. However, evaluations of safety-critical games (SCGs) rarely provide an in-depth consideration of player experience. Thus, in relation to simulation game-based training, we are left without a clear understanding of what sort of experience players are having, what factors influence their engagement and how their engagement relates to learning. In order to address these issues, this paper reports on the mixed-method evaluation of a SCG that was developed to support police training. The findings indicate that engagement is supported by the experience situational relevance, due to the player’s experience of real-world authenticity, targeted feedback mechanisms and learning challenges

Digital games: motivation, engagement and informal learning

This thesis investigates the relationships between motivation, engagement and informal learning, with respect to digital games and adult players. Following the reconceptualisation of motivation and engagement (as forms of micro and macro level involvement respectively) three linked studies were conducted. In the first study, 30 players were interviewed via email about their gaming experiences. The resulting set of learning categories and themes drew attention to learning on a game, skill and personal level, which arose from micro-level gameplay and macro-level interaction with wider communities and resources. The second investigation consisted of eight case studies that examined how involvement and learning come together in practice. Participants were observed in the lab during two gameplay sessions and kept gaming diaries over a three week period. A method for categorising game-play breakdowns and breakthroughs (relating to action, understanding and involvement) was developed in order to analyse several hours of gameplay footage. The previous categories and themes were also applied to the data. The findings suggested a relationship between macro-involvement and player identity, which was further investigated by a third survey study (with 232 respondents). The survey helped to establish a link between identity, involvement, and learning; the more strongly someone identifies as a gamer, the more likely they are to learn from their involvement in gaming practice. Four main contributions are presented: (1) an empirical account of how informal learning occurs as a result of micro and macro-involvement within a gaming context, (2) an in-depth understanding of how breakdowns and breakthroughs relate to each other during play, (3) a set of categories that represent the range of learning experienced by players, and (4) a consideration of the role player identity serves with respect to learning and involvement

Game-Based Learning in Engineering Education

The new generation of undergraduates entering UK higher education have grown up with computer games of ever increasing sophistication. In this educational project a race game, Racing Academy, was developed to investigate how game technology and gaming communities could enhance undergraduate engineering education. The computer game embodied the principles of engineering dynamics to simulate and display in real time a car drag race in which students ‘designed’ their car by selecting an engine, tyres and gearbox from a set menu. The aim was to complete a set course in the minimum time and graphically display the dynamic performance in order to better understand the engineering system. The students and staff involved in this project provided extensive feedback on the exercise and identified the visual nature of game-based learning software as a positive feature that helped illustrate engineering dynamics. Game-based learning communities, organised around tutor groups, were seen as an excellent way of encouraging an element of competition in a small non-threatening environment while discussion forums based around Moodle provided efficient support for the large group of 160 students. Finally, learning through ‘doing’ in a game environment was proven to be a successful method of illustrating physical phenomena

Exploring unlikely errors using video games: An example in number entry research

A common and important feature of many safety critical interactive devices is number entry. In hospitals, number entry takes the form of setting drug parameters such as doses, volumes, etc. There are several ways a number entry interface can be designed - with different consequences for error and speed. Nurses and healthcare practitioners usually have to interact with different interfaces often under pressure and stress of taking care of patients with different health conditions. Error rates in practice are low, undetected error rates are even lower and obtaining the context in which the errors occur is often incredibly difficult due to poor logging systems in many medical devices and high cost of planning and conducting empirical studies. Laboratory based studies also suffer similar limitations in that, without interventions, error rates are also too low to study. This paper explores the benefits of using a gaming context to study safety critical systems. We argue that a game paradigm provides a way that overcomes many of the problems of studying low error rates in safety critical systems and specifically for number entry in medical contexts