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

No end to the achievements of former ITU man



wallpaper_tomb_ raider_legend_04_1680x1050, originally uploaded by Datamax.

Let it be known that justly famous former colleague Troels Folmann‘s Tomb Raider: Legend soundtrack just recieved a BAFTA award for original score. Troels, we never doubted you, and of course we are considering how to claim some of the credit :-). Some examples.

Dissertation abstract beta

The Necronomicon

Here’s my current thinking on what it is I’m doing…

Working title
Plans and Purposes: How Videogame Goals Shape Player Behaviour

Abstract
Games shape player behaviour by presenting goals which players attempt to fulfil. This is the most common “folk” theory of the relationship between game design and player behaviour. It is also one central to most game design literature and to much work within the game studies field.
And yet, it is also clear that it is at best an approximation. Players will often behave in ways contrary to their objective interests as defined by the game goals. This may happen to satisfy social norms of fairness, to keep other players interested in the game, to avoid losing face by showing one’s disrespect for the stated goals and for many other reasons.

This dissertation is an examination of the “Rational Player Model”: The idea that players try to win. The model is applied and discussed in two capacities:

A) As a model for aesthetic analysis which can used to understand and categorize formal aspects of games related to goals. Here, video games are studied through the lens of (economic) game theory in order to determine, for instance, the types of conflict dynamics the games will elicit given Rational Player assumptions.

B) As a predictive model of actual player behaviour. Here, the model is used to derive concrete predictions about video game player behaviour which are then tested in an empirical study of multiplayer console gaming. The study shows that the model accurately explains behaviour inside the gamespace but does not explain (indeed, is often contradicted by) the verbal behaviour of the players.

Structurally, the dissertation consists of three main chapters. First, four different models of the relationship between game design and player behaviour are identified in the games literature and discussed. It is shown how the “Rational Player Model” is the predominant model within game design although one which often operates at so deep a level as to be unstated. Second, the model is discussed in more theoretical detail and employed in the analysis of games by drawing upon economic game theory. Besides categorizing games and suggesting methods of analysis based on existing concepts, the chapter also introduces a way to understand the extent to which games are strategic. Third, results of previous studies of player behaviour are discussed as an introduction to the empirical study of player behaviour in a multiplayer console game context.

The dissertation contributes by elucidating often implicit player models inherent in much games scholarship, by showing the exact analytical and predictive implications of applying the highly common “Rational Agent Model”, and by testing the explanatory strength of that model as regards actual player behaviour. Through the latter, the dissertation also contributes to a limited pool of knowledge on video game player behaviour more generally.

Methodological commandments

Finishing up my dissertation I am naturally curious about methodological requirements in game studies. A general meme seems to be that the field is multi-disciplinary and no clear guidelines can be given and yet, I’ve stumbled upon a few. The following, arguably, are claims about how game studies should be conducted. Make of it what you will…

“Ultimately, the player’s perspective (Jenkins 1999) and understanding of play
must be included in any meaningful discussion of FPS games and, indeed, of
all video games.”

Wright, T., Boria, E., & Breidenbach, P. (2002). Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games. Game Studies, 2(2).

–

“Gamers’ own thinking about styles of play and the identities they underwrite are a conflation of design characteristics and emergent culture of the context of the MMOG they inhabit, situated within the myriad of contexts they
themselves encounter with others, with some configurations of constructs evoked for sense-making in some social/material contexts, other configurations evoked in order to explain others. They are therefore complicated and necessarily messy. Our analyses of them ought to be a testament to this fact.”

and

“Indeed, indepth investigation into the ‘worlds of meaning’ created, maintained, and displayed by so-called ‘end users’ may very well be the only solid foundation on which to theorize a culture so definitively constructivist, heteroglossic, and hermeneutic
(Steinkuehler, Black & Clinton, 2005) as that of games.”

Steinkuehler, C. (2005). Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

–

“In general, any methodological approach which does not take participants as the primary actors produces flawed results.”

Jakobsson, M., & Taylor, T. L. (2003, 19-23 May). The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Paper presented at DAC2003, Melbourne, Australia.

–

“…the essence of a game is rooted in its interactive nature, and there is no game without a player. The act of playing game is where the rules embedded into game’s structure start operating, and its program code starts having an effect on cultural and social, as well as artistic and commercial realities. If we want to understand what a game is, we need to understand what happens in the act of playing, and we need to understand the player and the experience
of gameplay.”

Ermi, L., & Mäyrä, F. (2005, 16-20 June). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. Paper presented at DIGRA 2005: Changing Views: Worlds in Play, Vancouver, Canada.