Category: Computer Games

A Cognitive Psychological Approach to Gameplay Emotions is a paper that Bernard Perron gave at DIGRA 2005. He adapts discussions of how viewers respond emotionally to cinema to understanding the emotions of playing computer games (specifically story-based ones.) I think he gets it right.

But inasmuch as you can make your avatar act, you have to make him take action. If not, there will be no game. Otherwise, as Iíve often stressed with regards survival horror games, it is certainly not the avatar that is meant to be scared or have emotions, but rather the gamer [19]. The avatar, incidentally, generally stays expressionless, whatever the situation. We saw that emotions depend on the gamerís appraisal of a given game situation. This individual appraisal will consequently produce subjective emotional reactions.

In many ways the mission style of certain games provides the overall motivation (you are just following orders) and it is in the achievement of the assigned task and overcoming the problems that the emotions of playing lie. Few games are sufficiently open ended that you can choose the general attitude to take to playing/living in the game-world. It would be much harder to program a game that was so open ended. By choosing the play a mission you suspend your choice of life goals in order to take pleasure in the goals set by the game. What does this say about levels of (free) will?

How gaming is all work and no play (Marcgh 14, 2006) is a summary of a study by two Brunel University academics about online playing on RuneScape. Simon Bradford and Nic Crowe explain their findings from their 3 year study in the BBC story:

The stark fact is that many young people spend as much time playing video games as they do doing their homework.

Concerned parents reading these statistics may have a sharp intake of breath. To them, this is proof that their children spend too much time being “anti-social” in front of a screen.

It is not that simple. Having researched gamers for three years, we have found that it is far from an anti-social activity.

Continue reading Study of RuneScape Game

Microsoft may change gaming with their “Live Anywhere” plan that lets games be played across Xboxes, PCs (with Vista) and mobile devices like phones. At the E3 conference today Bill Gates pitches “anywhere” gaming at expo according to a story by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Kemp Powers (May 9, 2006). This service (?) could change the site and pace of gaming by allowing people to start games on an Xbox and then keep up with their cell. Tamagotchi style caretaking games could be played “live anywhere”. More likely my son’s fanatic gamer friends will use it to keep their Orc avatars busy during the slow period in the day when they have to be in class. (Hi David)

The next generation of consoles is unfolding one press conference at a time at the E3Expo (Electronic Entertainment Expo). See the E3Expo – Reuters Newsblog or the E3 Blog from GameSpot. (I’ve noticed that time-limited blogs can provide effective summaries of conferences. Longer than an article, broken in to key announcements and impressions, they can give one a good overview.)

What’s the most popular form of online gaming? Surely one of the answers has got to be Internet Gambling which according to the American Gaming Association the Justice Department in the US considers “illegal under existing law.”

What is amazing are the facts from the AGA:

• The first online gambling site launched in August 1995. It is currently estimated that there are well over 2,000 Internet gambling Web sites offering various wagering options, including sports betting, casino games, lotteries and bingo.
• Internet gambling revenue in 2005 was estimated at $11.9 billion and is projected to double by 2010, according to Christiansen Capital Advisors (CCA).
• CCA estimates that nearly 23 million people gambled on the internet in 2005. Approximately 8 million of those gamblers were from the United States.

Keep in mind that gambling revenue for 2004 according to the AGA was $78.6 billion across everything from Card Rooms to Lotteries. (See Fact Sheets : Statistics.)

There is a 2006 State of the States (PDF) report which includes a section on Gambling and the Internet (and a spotlight on poker.) 4% of the US population gambles online, but that is a doubling from the year before. A greater percentage of online gamblers are men (68% men to 32% women) while among casino customers the numbers are close (53% to 47%.) There are differences in age (online gamblers are younger.) More online gamblers have a university education and they are affluent. They use the net heavily for things like online banking and 49% of them have posted to a blog in the last year! They like online gambling because it is convenient.

For a summary article that led me to this report see the Reuters story from May 8, 2006, Online gamblers doubled in 2005: study by Paritosh Bansal.

You wonder whether Canada is different. Its hard to find a comparable study but, the Canadian Gaming Association has some stats at Canadian Gaming Association. The rhetoric of the site is, if anything, less balanced. They talk of creating “a better understanding of the gaming entertainment industry and the issues that affect the thousands of businesses across the country that depend on it for their livelihood.” Defintely an advocacy group.

One site that does have critical information is the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre which, unlike the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario actually has information about the effects of gambling. For example, they have an abstract and links to reports like, Gambling@Home: Internet Gambling in Canada. The following is one of the Key Findings:

Online gambling has unique potential to increase the social cost of gambling and problem gambling because it combines the acknowledged double threat of high speed and convenient access with a technology that appeals to youth. Unregulated Internet gambling also has a potential for criminal involvement.

Mark my words, despite how the gaming associations try to spin it, gambling is coming back as a social issue. It will play out differently now that governments are addicted to it in order to raise revenue. Note, the final page of 2006 State of the States (PDF) shows a marked rise in the number of people who think gambling is “Not Acceptable for Anyone” (from 15% to 18% between 2005 and 6) and a corresponding drop in those who think gambling is “Perfectly Acceptable for Anyone” (57% to 54%). This is after years of stable numbers. Why the change? Is it a blip or is it indicative of a new wave of prohibition? What would trigger such a wave? According to Gambling in California (CRB-97-003), a 1997 California Research Bureau report by Roger Dunstan, in the second chapter on the “History of Gambling in the United States” (last paragraph),

The first and second waves ended in part because of a resurgence of public concern about morality and scandals in gaming. People can live with adverse odds but not cheating. What kind of events could lead to scandals today? If lotteries were plagued by fraud that would probably have an impact on people’s perceptions.

Could poorly regulated offshore online gambling trigger a reaction? If online gambling overtakes taxable or government run gambling, and if there are a couple of scandals involving cheating by online gambling sites, we could see the mood swing rapidly towards prohibition (with all the problems of prohibiting anything online.)

David Rejeski in Why We Need a Corporation for Public Gaming argues that the USA needs the gaming equivalent to PBS.

However, serious games, like serious TV, are likely to remain a sidebar in the history of mass media. Non-commercial television floundered, despite millions of dollars of investment by the Ford Foundation, until the government stepped in and created a viable and long-lasting alternative. With similar vision and foresight, and a relatively small amount of funding, this could happen with video and computer games.

Interesting idea. What would the Canadian equivalent be? The “Canadian Gaming Corporation”?

DFC Intelligence is a game industry research company that produces reports for sale. They have some articles online for free like Monthly Briefing on “Who will benefit from the growth of online game subscription revenue?” (March 7, 2006). This briefing article makes some interesting points, including, “Most notably, over 50% of online game subscription revenue in 2005 came from Asian countries outside Japan, most notably South Korea, China and Taiwan.”

A welcome caveat in the article,

The online game market has supposedly been on the cusp of booming for 20 years or so. There has been a great deal of trial and error in getting the market to where it is today. Many of the success stories have seemingly come out of nowhere. Future growth will require companies to take some significant risky investments. Most companies that have invested with a conscious goal of growing their online game business have not been successful. Right now there is even a question of whether traditional publishers need online games for growth over the next several years.

The Current Issue of the International Review of Information Ethics is dedicated to “The Ethics of E-Games”. I haven’t read the issue, but it should be of interest and Charles Ess, one of the editors does good work on information ethcis.

“The people who were video game players were better and faster performers,” said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. “Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best — particularly at the most difficult tasks.”

According to a story in The Globe and Mail on February 9th, 2006, research at York shows that playing video games has a similar effect on mental abilities as bilingualism. The story by Carolyn Abraham, Better living through video games?, is based on research by Professor Bialystok that will be published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Biology. The research looked at 100 university students in Toronto.

Prof. Bialystok suspects video gamers, like bilinguals, have a practised ability to block out information that is irrelevant to the task at hand.

This explains why my kids don’t hear me calling them for dinner.
Continue reading Mental agility and video games

What is the relationship between gesture and dialogue? Paul Boussac and Jack Sidnell of the Toronto Semiotic Society organized a two day symposium titled, Semiotics And Pragmatics of Gesture, Conversation and Dialogue. I gave a talk with the pretentious (but actually relevant) title, Dialogues of the Dead: Reanimated Interaction in Computer Games in which I tried to show that the same concerns found in dialogue theory from Plato on around the way we animate disreputable characters are feeding the public anxieties around computer games. It is Dr. Frankenstein’s problem all over, if we animate the dead we need to take responsibility for them. I was trying to find a way to engage in an ethical discussion of interaction which combines gesture and conversation.
Continue reading Dialogue of the Dead and Games

Another tragedy that is being tied to computer games. On Thursday one of two teenagers racing their parent’s Merc T-boned a taxi driver killing him … days before he would become a Canadian citizen. The Globe carried it on the front page with a photo and diagram, see A Canadian dream cut short.

One of games in the EA series, The Need for Speed was in the crashed Merc.

The video game police found in the car allows players to select custom-made cars to race in urban traffic, Det. Lobsinger said.

“You have this game that’s all about fast cars and racing through city streets. It’s actually really ironic,” he said.

Is there a causal connection, or is it just irony?