Assessing the relationship between subjective trust, confidence measurements, and mouse trajectory characteristics in an online task

Trust is essential for our interactions with others but also with artificial intelligence (AI) based systems. To understand whether a user trusts an AI, researchers need reliable measurement tools. However, currently discussed markers mostly rely on expensive and invasive sensors, like electroencephalograms, which may cause discomfort. The analysis of mouse trajectory has been suggested as a convenient tool for trust assessment. However, the relationship between trust, confidence and mouse trajectory is not yet fully understood. To provide more insights into this relationship, we asked participants (n = 146) to rate whether several tweets were offensive while an AI suggested its assessment. Our results reveal which aspects of the mouse trajectory are affected by the users subjective trust and confidence ratings; yet they indicate that these measures might not explain sufficiently the variance to be used on their own. This work examines a potential low-cost trust assessment in AI systems.Comment: Submitted to CHI 2023 and rejecte

Suspecting Sarcasm: How League of Legends Players Dismiss Positive Communication in Toxic Environments

Toxicity in multiplayer gaming is an ongoing problem that threatens the well-being of players, gaming communities, and game developers. Meanwhile, interventions that promote positive interactions and proactively create positive gaming spaces are still in their infancy; little is known about how players respond to positivity. In our study, 959 League of Legends players were presented with either 10 positive chat logs or 10 negative chat logs, and asked to reflect on the content and how representative such communication is of their own gaming experiences. We thematically coded participants' free-form answers (identifying the themes normalize, acknowledge, downplay, cope, blame, and make personal), and compared the positive and negative conditions in terms of theme prevalence. Our findings show that participants were more likely to normalize and acknowledge toxic negativity than positivity. Furthermore, the dominant response to positivity consisted of downplaying messages as not representative and rare, and even expressing suspicion that messages must have been fabricated or intended as sarcasm. Participants overwhelmingly cope by muting chat, protecting them from toxic interactions, but leaving them unexposed to positive communication and other beneficial social interactions within play

Cheat Codes as External Support for Players Navigating Fear of Failure and Self-Regulation Challenges In Digital Games

Failure is an integral element of most games, and while some players may benefit from external support, such as cheat codes, to prompt self-soothing, most games lack supportive elements. We asked participants (N=88) to play Anno 1404 in single-player mode, and presented a money-generating cheat code in a challenging situation, also measuring the personality trait of action-state orientation, which explains differences in self-regulation ability (i.e., self-soothing) in response to threats of failure. Individuals higher in state orientation were more likely to take the offer, and used the cheat code more frequently. The cheat code also acted as an external support, as differences in experienced pressure between action- and state-oriented participants vanished when it was used. We found no negative consequences of using external support in intrinsic motivation, needs satisfaction, flow, or performance. We argue that external support mechanisms can help state-oriented players to self-regulate in gaming, when faced with failure

Recognizing Affiliation: Using Behavioural Traces to Predict the Quality of Social Interactions in Online Games

Online social interactions in multiplayer games can be supportive and positive or toxic and harmful; however, few methods can easily assess interpersonal interaction quality in games. We use behavioural traces to predict affiliation between dyadic strangers, facilitated through their social interactions in an online gaming setting. We collected audio, video, in-game, and self-report data from 23 dyads, extracted 75 features, trained Random Forest and Support Vector Machine models, and evaluated their performance predicting binary (high/low) as well as continuous affiliation toward a partner. The models can predict both binary and continuous affiliation with up to 79.1% accuracy (F1) and 20.1% explained variance (R2) on unseen data, with features based on verbal communication demonstrating the highest potential. Our findings can inform the design of multiplayer games and game communities, and guide the development of systems for matchmaking and mitigating toxic behaviour in online games.Comment: CHI '2

Playing a Flawless Character? Exploring Differences Between Experts and Novices in Tabletop Role-Playing Games and Potential Benefits for Well-Being

Tabletop role-playing games are experiencing a peak in popularity and prior work shows that role-playing can be beneficial for mental health. While little research effort has been invested into this area, most studies point towards positive outcomes of playing tabletop role-playing games. This work explores the potential for the acceptance of flaws through role-playing by comparing how novice and expert players approach character creation. The results of this exploratory study show that experienced role-players are more likely to report that they want to play a character with weaknesses and less likely to be interested in playing a flawless character. Additional findings and implications are discussed in the paper

Let me be Implicit::using motive disposition theory to predict and explain behaviour in digital games

We introduce explicit and implicit motives (i.e., achievement, affiliation, power, autonomy) into player experience research and situate them in existing theories of player motivation, personality, playstyle, and experience. Additionally, we conducted an experiment with 109 players in a social play situation and show that: 1. As expected, there are several correlations of playstyle, personality, and motivation with explicit motives, but few with implicit motives; 2. The implicit affiliation motive predicts in-game social behaviour; and 3. The implicit affiliation motive adds significant variance to explain regression models of in-game social behaviours even when we control for social aspects of personality, the explicit affiliation motive, self-esteem, and social player traits. Our results support that implicit motives explain additional variance because they access needs that are experienced affectively and pre-consciously, and not through cognitive interpretation necessary for explicit expression and communication, as is the case in any approaches that use self-report

Playing a Flawless Character? Exploring Differences Between Experts and Novices in Tabletop Role-Playing Games and Potential Benefits for Well-Being

Tabletop role-playing games are experiencing a peak in popularity and prior work shows that role-playing can be beneficial for mental health. While little research effort has been invested into this area, most studies point towards positive outcomes of playing tabletop role-playing games. This work explores the potential for the acceptance of flaws through role-playing by comparing how novice and expert players approach character creation. The results of this exploratory study show that experienced role-players are more likely to report that they want to play a character with weaknesses and less likely to be interested in playing a flawless character. Additional findings and implications are discussed in the paper

Not Tekken Seriously? How Observers Respond to Masculine and Feminine Voices in Videogame Streamers

As many games are centered around challenges, the gaming community is often considered to be a meritocracy where everyone is judged based on performance; however, research has challenged this assumption for players with marginalized identities, such as women. We discuss literature on gender stereotypes in gaming and present a study examining whether the same game footage (Tekken 6) is judged equally by participants when the player has a feminine or a masculine voice. 240 participants watched one of four videos (feminine/winning; masculine/winning; feminine/losing; or masculine/losing) and rated the player along several dimensions. Our results show that player ratings depended on voice and match outcome. The feminine voice was rated as less sympathetic when winning as compared to losing and rated as equally skilled in both outcome conditions. In contrast, the masculine voice was rated as equally sympathetic in both outcome conditions, but more skilled in the winning than losing condition

The effects of social exclusion on play experience and hostile cognitions in digital games

The social nature of multiplayer games provides compelling play experiences that are dynamic, unpredictable, and satisfying; however, playing digital games with others can result in feeling socially excluded. There are several known harmful effects of ostracism, including on cognition and the interpretation of social information. To investigate the effects of social exclusion in the context of a multiplayer game, we developed and validated a social exclusion paradigm that we embedded in an online game. Called Operator Challenge, our paradigm influenced feelings of social exclusion and access to hostile cognitions (measured through a word-completion task). In addition, the degree of experienced belonging predicted player enjoyment, effort, and the number of hostile words completed; however, the experience measures did not mediate the relationship between belonging and access to hostile cognitions. Our work facilitates understanding the causes and effects of exclusion, which is important for the study of player experience in multiplayer games

Self-Determination Theory in HCI Games Research: Current Uses and Open Questions

Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a major psychological theory of human motivation, has become increasingly popular in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research on games and play. However, it remains unclear how SDT has advanced HCI games research, or how HCI games scholars engage with the theory. We reviewed 110 CHI and CHI PLAY papers that cited SDT to gain a better understanding of the ways the theory has contributed to HCI games research. We find that SDT, and in particular, the concepts of need satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, have been widely applied to analyse the player experience and inform game design. Despite the popularity of SDT-based measures, however, prominent core concepts and mini-theories are rarely considered explicitly, and few papers engage with SDT beyond descriptive accounts. We highlight conceptual gaps at the intersection of SDT and HCI games research, and identify opportunities for SDT propositions, concepts, and measures to more productively inform future work.Peer reviewe