Skip to content

How Do Typical Gamers Play Games? (VG Series Part 10/10)

2010 November 19
1 Comment
tags: ,
by Richard N. Landers

Neo-Academic coverage of the Journal of General Psychology special issue on the psychology of video games:

ResearchBlogging.orgThere are few topics so hotly debated on the Internet as the value of video games. Are they the next generation’s artistic advance, as film was for the last, or are they a blight that makes children overly aggressive and dangerous? In this 10-part series, I’m reviewing a recent special issue of the Journal of General Psychology on video games. For more background information, see the first post in the series.

The final two articles in this special issue deal with video gaming in the context of normal development.  First, Barnett and Coulson1 discuss motivations behind the playing of massively multiplayer online games [MMOG].  MMOGs, loosely defined, are any game in which a large number of players can interact with each other in real time.  The most popular MMOG currently is World of Warcraft.

Barnett and Coulson devote a great deal of space to correcting common misconceptions about online gamers: gender differences are smaller than many believe (perhaps an 80/20 split men-to-women, with adult women more common than adolescent women), people of all ages play (a range of 12 to 83 is reported), gamers are of typical health for the populations they are drawn from, and gamers often play MMOGs to be more social.

They even go so far as to suggest that the gamer stereotype (white, male, mid-20s, a loner in poor health) is outdated.  While people of this description are perhaps likely to be gamers, not all gamers are likely to fit the stereotype.

They continue by discussing how online avatars are created, which I found fascinating.  Because MMO environments are for the most part anonymous, players have a great deal of freedom to design how they appear in-game.  They can control race, sex, body shape, weight, clothing, hair style, etc. – virtually every aspect of appearance other than bipedal functioning (and some MMOGs even give control over this as well!).  Choice of character class (e.g. fighter, ranger, medic, etc.) is also customizable.  So why do people choose the avatars they do?

There are many interesting tidbits here, but one that I found most interesting was this:

Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, and Moore (2006) found that male players who chose healing roles, or other classes that wore light armor, were more likely to “gender-bend” (p. 296) and play female characters than to choose a male combat character who wore heavier, bulkier armour.

It’s almost as if men wanting to take on traditional “female” roles prefer to be represented as women.  The underlying reason for this is not explained.  Even more interestingly, female players make the same distinction, but cited that they did so because they “were viewed as positive character types that signify the rejection of violence.”

They even found some evidence that MMOGs teach their players a bit – one high school student had this to say:

A school science test included what two substances make bronze: copper and tin. Learning blacksmithing in WoW taught me this. My friend and I play the game and were the only two in the class to get the answer right.

Overall, I found this article a refreshingly clear treatment of MMOGs and the various areas of study that have tapped onto this domain.  Unlike some of the articles in this issue, I don’t think these authors did much overreaching – they described the research as it existed and pointed out what else was needed clearly and precisely.

The final issue by Olson2 discusses the play of video games in general in the context of normal development.  Olson says right in the abstract something that I wish were true but is probability a bit optimistic:

The debate has moved from whether children should play video games to how to maximize potential benefits and to identify and minimize potential harms.

Well… maybe.

Olson begins by discussing core motivations for video gaming by children as determined from a sample of 1137 7th and 8th graders previously published in a prior article.  Here are the top 10 reasons, from most motivating to least:

  1. Fun
  2. Exciting
  3. Alleviates Boredom
  4. Challenging
  5. Competition
  6. Relaxing
  7. No Other Option (presumably for entertainment)
  8. Enjoyment of Guns/Weapons
  9. World Creating
  10. Learning

There’s some overlap there, but it does at least paint an interesting picture of child motivations – and is certainly more complex than “fun” alone, which I believe is a common stereotype  by adults about video game play by children.

Again, I find this article to be an interesting examination of video gaming in the context of typical gamers, and I recommend it if you’d like an overview in this domain.

This concludes my 10-part series on video game research. It took 2 months (!!!), but I certainly learned a great deal about current psychological research in video games. My backlog of articles to review most specifically in technology-enhanced training and selection is pretty big, so expect a return to that next week.

  1. Barnett, J., & Coulson, M. (2010). Virtually real: A psychological perspective on massively multiplayer online games. Review of General Psychology, 14 (2), 167-179 DOI: 10.1037/a0019442 [↩]
  2. Olson, C. (2010). Children’s motivations for video game play in the context of normal development. Review of General Psychology, 14 (2), 180-187 DOI: 10.1037/a0018984 [↩]

from → games, Scholarly Pursuits

How Do Video Games Motivate People? (VG Series Part 9/10)

2010 November 9
3 Comments
by Richard N. Landers

Neo-Academic coverage of the Journal of General Psychology special issue on the psychology of video games:

ResearchBlogging.orgThere are few topics so hotly debated on the Internet as the value of video games. Are they the next generation’s artistic advance, as film was for the last, or are they a blight that makes children overly aggressive and dangerous? In this 10-part series, I’m reviewing a recent special issue of the Journal of General Psychology on video games. For more background information, see the first post in the series.

In the ninth article in the series, Przybylski, Rigby and Ryan (2010)1 detail a model by which researchers can frame the motivational forces in video games. They do this because of a perceived shift in the research:

Until very recently, the preponderance of research in video games has been concern-focused, with studies aimed at identifying the potential negative effects of gaming… more recently, a number of researchers have become intervention-focused, hoping to harness the magnetic motivational appeal of video games to help relieve pain and stress or customizing games for educational or health-related interventions… Increasingly, intervention-focused researchers are demonstrating that games can positively influence both psychological and physical well-being.

Well, sort of.  As we’ve been discussing here on Neo-Academic, there’s certainly a great deal of potential for video games, though the empirical evidence is sparse.  We know that video games can have a positive effect.  The question remaining is, “How do they have a positive effect?”  And this is just the question that this article wants to help answer.

Przybylski et al. frame the argument in terms of self-determination theory, which posits that motivation is principally a function of how well our basic needs are met.  They hope to use this framework to mature the discussion of video games from “People want to play this game because it is fun” to “This game motivates people to play because of these specific characteristics.”  This is a sign of the first step of maturation of a research literature.  It is no longer sufficient to say “X happens.”  Instead, we must find out why X happens.

The research, to some extent, seems to support the idea that players are attempting to meet what the authors call player experience of need satisfaction.  In one study, they even found that the experience of need satisfaction was related to sense of well-being, enjoyment of the game itself, and desire to play again.  That sounds quite promising as a theoretical structure from the perspective of game designers for both entertainment and “serious game” purposes.

Perhaps most interesting to me in this article was the authors’ discussion of the appeal of violence in video games.  In a series of studies, the authors tested the interplay between need fulfillment and violence.  Here’s an interesting report on one of those studies:

To this end, we extensively modified the content but not play mechanics of Half-Life 2, a popular computer game. The high-violence version provided graphic violence featuring firearms, gore, and a conflict-based kill-or-be-killed narrative, whereas the low-violence version had a friendly competition story describing the play as a game of tag wherein players teleported adversaries away. Following training in the game controls, we randomly assigned participants to high violence or low-violence versions of the game. Results showed that the violent and nonviolent versions did not differ in the need satisfaction, enjoyment, or immersion they inspired.

While I won’t quibble with the confounding of the use of firearms, gore, and narrative structure with the concept of “violence,” what I am a little confused about is where this was published previously.  No citation is given for this study – only this cursory description.  This places some of their following sweeping generalizations (“we found that violent content does not by itself contribute to the appeal of games, a result that runs counter to the commonly held view that popular violent games such as Grand Theft Auto IV are popular because they are violent”) on somewhat shaky ground.

So is self-determination theory a valid approach for studying video games?  Sure.  But once again, the authors make a fairly convincing argument that their approach makes sense, but not much of an argument that it makes more sense than any other competing approach.

  1. Przybylski, A., Rigby, C., & Ryan, R. (2010). A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of General Psychology, 14 (2), 154-166 DOI: 10.1037/a0019440 [↩]

from → games, Scholarly Pursuits

Can Video Games Get People to Vote? (VG Series Part 8/10)

2010 October 26
Leave a comment
tags: , ,
by Richard N. Landers

Neo-Academic coverage of the Journal of General Psychology special issue on the psychology of video games:

ResearchBlogging.orgThere are few topics so hotly debated on the Internet as the value of video games. Are they the next generation’s artistic advance, as film was for the last, or are they a blight that makes children overly aggressive and dangerous? In this 10-part series, I’m reviewing a recent special issue of the Journal of General Psychology on video games. For more background information, see the first post in the series.

In the eighth article in this series by Bers (2010)1, we once again dip a little closer to my research area: serious games. If you haven’t heard this term before, serious games refers to games designed for purposes other than entertainment.   This is a fuzzy definition.  For example, consider the game Achievement Unlocked.  The game itself is very simple; the player is represented by a small elephant, and the elephant’s goal is to get “achievements,” similar to the reward mechanic used on the XBOX 360.  Most of these achievements are inane.  For example, the player gets one achievement for starting the game, and another for clicking on the Mute button.  Trying to decipher the sometimes ambiguous names of the achievements and then maneuver the elephant appropriately is certainly fun, and yet, this might be considered a serious game.  The opening screen states, “You are about to metagame a game about metagaming.”  The game’s creator is trying to communicate a message through the game.  So is this a serious game, or isn’t it?

Regardless of this definitional ambiguity, the focus of this article, games for the purpose of civic engagement, certainly qualifies as “serious.”   The purpose of such games is to improve outcomes ranging from “individual voluntarism to organizational involvement to electoral participation.”

A Republican primary in President Forever.

There are many such games.  Here are the ones Bers discusses:

  1. On the Campaign Trail is a game developed in 1987 by Kent State University to increase student civic knowledge.
  2. Democracy is a set of realistic political simulations.
  3. Power Politics and President Forever simulate life on campaign trail.
  4. Civilization and SimCity teach about resource management and the balancing act of city/nation management.  I, for one, will never forget that you should not establish a police department until absolutely necessary.
  5. Superpower is a multiplayer game based in an online discussion board where players take the role of nation leaders.  Click on that link to play it yourself.
  6. Balance of Power is a 1985 simulation of Cold War policy decisions, with similar themes to Crisis in the Kremlin and Conflict: Middle East Political Simulation.
  7. DOTCOM, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, encourages “Armenian, American, and Azerbaijani youth in creating socially conscious media.”
  8. Quest Atlantis “embeds civic learning opportunities in the quest for students to find solutions to the problems faced by the fictional world Atlantis.”  I’m not quite sure what that means.
  9. Zora allows students to create their own virtual cities for exploration, which has been used by Tufts University to expose new students to civic issues regarding campus (the program is called Active Citizenship Through Technology – ACT).

Civic events are also not limited to civic games, as demonstrated by protests over class issues in World of Warcraft and tax riots in Second Life.

As with the other studies I’ve covered, the only empirical results (and there aren’t many) are mixed.  In one study, the ACT program improved attitudes about civic issues.  But in a follow-up study, it does not seem to have any impact on “their development of civic and electoral indicators.”  I assume that means behavioral change in regards to elections.

So my impression from this is that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for serious games targeted at civic outcomes, though there is not much empirical research.  Little steps, right?

  1. Bers, M. (2010). Let the games begin: Civic playing on high-tech consoles. Review of General Psychology, 14 (2), 147-153 DOI: 10.1037/a0019490 [↩]

from → games, Scholarly Pursuits

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »