Tag: Computerspil

Player rating systems

Peer-2-peer rating systems work quite well in systems like eBay and Slashdot.

But they do so because User A has no real interest in User B’s future. In brief: A has no real reason to be dishonest.

Not so for online gamers. Here a rating can be used strategically. You may get angry with someone, but you may also see a personal advantage (in terms of relative score) in bad-mouthing that person.

Thus, we essentially need a system which can

  • distinguish between fair and unfair ratings OR
  • in which ratings cannot be used strategically

But what on Earth, I ask you, would that look like?

What about (just brainstorming):

  • Limited number of total karma points (you can’t just toss them aroud for the heck of it)
  • A player can only give a limited amount of points to any given player (to minimize the consequence of evil ratings)
  • The rating is given secretively (you can’t trust/threaten someone to be nice if you are)
  • Karma points cannot be given at all until you’re fairly high-level (or whatever) to avoid people making dummy accounts to boost their own rating
  • You only see ratings of your friends (or those you’ve rated positively) so the truthfulness of your rating actually affects your friends

Any good ideas?

The Nielsen Numbers Part 2

OK, the Nielsen report (the third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study) must be purchased. That we can’t read the details is problematic, but let’s say it does not totally invalidate the findings.

From what I’ve found the report concludes that

  • There are 117 million Active Gamers (one who owns a console and spends at least one hour per week playing it) in the U.S. in 2006
  • 56% of those play games online
  • 64% of those online gamers are women

… by surveying 2200 active gamers between July 3rd to July 9th. I take it this means asking them to fill out a questionnaire, i.e. they were self-selected.

See for instance DailyTech – Women Outnumber Men in Online Gaming; Nielsen Talks About the ‘Active Gamer’; Report: Social Aspects of Gaming Increasingly Important

I’m going to e-mail Nielsen to see if I can get more methodology details. To be continued.

The Nielsen Numbers Part 1

Uploaded by •PeSa• on 22 Aug ’06, 1.54pm CEST.

I was interviewed the other day for Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende who wanted comments on recent survey results showing that “64% of online gamers are women”. The paper ran two articles in today’s edition (In Danish: Kvinder spiller computerspil i stor stil and Computerspil vinder de voksne). They were quite well-researched, IMO.

In brief I said:

  • More women/girls are playing today than before
  • This is caused by a number of factors, but importantly:
  • Technological changes have moved (some) games online and this has made (some) games more social/communicative. And some women prefer such games to Moon Patrol style win-or-lose.
  • The game industry has aggressively rebranded games to make them cool or at least culturally acceptible (as I mentioned recently elsewhere).

Other Danish media picked up on the story and I was interviewed for radio and television during the day. Since nuances very easily become lost, let me just make clear:

  • I have not read Nielsen’s report
  • I am sceptical about the results (in essense, here‘s why)
  • While I see no reason why US gamer demographics should differ wildly from Danish ones, this is different from “The Nielsen numbers can be generalized to Danish gamers” (which was what television ended up quoting me for).

But at the end of the day, what I’m interested in is the facts. So now, let’s see if I can get my hand on that much-mentioned report… To be continued…

Game lecture: Aki Järvinen to speak at ITU tomorrow

The Center for Computer Games Research (game.itu.dk) is happy to announce its Game Lecture Series for Fall 2006.

The next lecture will be given by Aki Järvinen, from the Finnish
National Lottery, who will present his research on applied ludology.
It’ll take place on October 12, 2006 at 16:15 at the IT University of
Copenhagen (Rued Langgaards Vej 7, Copenhagen 2300 S). Entrance is free
and everybody is welcomed.

Details about the talk can be found here:

http://game.itu.dk/events/jarvinen2006.htm

For any enquiries, please contact Gonzalo Frasca at frasca@itu.dk