The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games

Immersion and appeal are considered to be necessary constituents of the player experience. In this article their relationship is examined through a 2 × 2 factorial study (n = 173) in the context of two games, a first-person shooter and a massively multi-player online role-playing game, and in the context of two types of players: experienced players who have never played the game in one of the genres in question, and experienced players who have played one of the games in question. It is found that immersion and appeal are linearly correlated, and the repercussions of this finding are discussed.     

Sexism in online video games: The role of conformity to masculine norms and social dominance orientation

Sexism toward women in online video game environments has become a pervasive and divisive issue in the gaming community. In this study, we sought to determine what personality traits, demographic variables, and levels of game play predicted sexist attitudes towards women who play video games. Male and female participants (N = 301) who were players of networked video games were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Social dominance orientation and conformity to some types of masculine norms (desire for power over women and the need for heterosexual self-presentation) predicted higher scores on the Video Game Sexism Scale (i.e., greater sexist beliefs about women and gaming). Implications for the social gaming environment and female gamers are discussed.     

Predicting guild commitment in World of Warcraft with the investment model of commitment

Many MMORPG offer players the possibility to become a member of a guild, a hierarchical organization of characters with common objectives. Guild membership can be beneficial to game progress, and offer opportunities for social interaction. In the current study we focus on the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), with the main aim to examine whether guild commitment and players’ intention to remain in their guild can be predicted by players’ satisfaction, investments, and perceptions of alternatives to their guild. To this end, 165 WoW players completed an online questionnaire and answered questions related to their guild membership. They also completed the investment model scale which was reworded so all questions pertained to their guild and their fellow guild members. Results show that satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size significantly predict commitment level (p’s < .001), which in turn predicted likelihood of participants’ staying with their current guild (p < .001) and the number of guilds they had been a member of in the past (p < .001). Moreover, high levels of guild commitment were indicative of better mental health, whereas weekly hours of game play was negatively related to mental health. In the discussion, we conclude that interdependence theory and the investment model of commitment are applicable to online gaming environments, and we argue that commitment to one’s guild is one factor that could prevent the risks associated with online game play (i.e. problematic use).     

Risk factors associated with online game addiction: A hierarchical model

Online gaming addiction has been increasingly recognized as a mental disorder. However, the predictive factors that lead to online gaming addiction are not well established. The aim of this study was to identify factors that may influence the development of online gaming addiction. A total of 263 patients with problematic online gaming addiction (255 males (97%) and 8 females (3%), age: mean = 20.4 ± 5.8 years) and153 healthy comparison subjects (118 males (77%) and 35 females (23%), age: 21.2 ± 5.5 years, range) were recruited for participation in the current study. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses among each set of variables were conducted. Individual factors (sex and age), cognitive factors (IQ and perseverative errors), psychopathological conditions (ADHD, depression, anxiety, and impulsivity), and social interaction factors (family environment, social anxiety, and self-esteem) were evaluated in a stepwise fashion. All four factors were associated with online gaming addiction, with psychopathological conditions being the strongest risk factors for the addiction. Individual factors, psychological factors, and social interactions were associated with the development of pure online gaming addiction. As before, psychological factors (attention, mood, anxiety and impulsivity) were the strongest risk factors for online gaming addiction in patients with pure online gaming addiction. Psychopathologies, including ADHD and depression, were the strongest factors associated with the development of online gaming addiction in individuals.     

Machiavellianism,self-monitoring,self-promotion and relational aggression on Facebook

Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by cynicism, emotional detachment and a willingness to manipulate others. Research investigating the behavior of Machiavellian men and women has focused on its influence in offline relationships. The popularity of social networking sites suggests that it is also important to consider the interactions of Machiavellian men and women in this context as well. Men (N = 54) and women (N = 189) completed questionnaires assessing Machiavellianism, self-monitoring, self-promotion and relational aggression. Analyses revealed that women who were high in Machiavellianism engaged in more dishonest self-promotion and relational aggression towards a close friend on Facebook whilst males with high levels of Machiavellianism engaged in more self-promoting behavior. In addition, both men and women high in Machiavellianism engaged in more self-monitoring. The findings demonstrate the importance of considering the influence of personality on online behavior and associated gender differences.     

Video game playing in the general adult population of Germany: Can higher gaming time of males be explained by gender specific genre preferences?

BackgroundPrior studies observed involvement with video games to vary between different sociodemographic strata with considerable higher gaming time in males compared to females. However, empirical evidence explaining the gender gap in gaming time is still scarce. The present study aims to evaluate if the higher gaming time can be attributed to gender specific game genre preferences.MethodsA nationwide representative survey comprising 3073 participants aged 16–93 years (M = 49.1; SD = 18.2) was conducted. Video game use and genre preferences were assessed via a written questionnaire. OLS regression and subsequent mediation analyses were used to determine significant predictors of gaming time and to evaluate the contribution of genre preferences.ResultsHigher age, high education and employment predicted lower gaming time whereas male gender and the preference of certain game genres predicted higher gaming time. Mediation analyses revealed that the higher gaming time of males is fully mediated by the higher preference of role-playing and shooter games among this gender group.ConclusionThe higher gaming time of men is fully accounted for by the male specific preference for certain game genres. Future research should address the functional connection between genre preferences and gaming behavior in further detail.     

An Efficient Synchronization Mechanism for Mirrored Game Architectures

Existing online multiplayer games typically use a client-server model, which introduces added latency as well as a single bottleneck and single point of failure to the game. Distributed multiplayer games minimize latency and remove the bottleneck, but require special synchronization mechanisms to provide a consistent game for all players. Current synchronization methods have been borrowed from distributed military simulations and are not optimized for the requirements of fast-paced multiplayer games. In this paper we present a new synchronization mechanism, trailing state synchronization (TSS), which is designed around the requirements of distributed first-person shooter games.We look at TSS in the environment of a mirrored game architecture, which is a hybrid between traditional centralized architectures and the more scalable peer-to-peer architectures. Mirrored architectures allow for improved performance compared to client-server architectures while at the same time allowing for a greater degree of centralized administration than peer-to-peer architectures.We evaluate the performance of TSS and other synchronization methods through simulation and examine heuristics for selecting the synchronization delays needed for TSS.     

Virtual ideals: The effect of video game play on male body image

The perpetuation of unrealistic body ideals by popular media has been linked to negative body image and self-esteem; however, the influence of video games has remained largely unexamined despite their growing popularity as a media form, particularly among men. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether playing video games that emphasize an unrealistic male body ideal has a negative impact on body satisfaction. Participants played a highly realistic video game for 45 min and then completed questionnaires measuring muscularity concerns and body image. Men randomized to the experimental group played the game with a character of exaggerated muscularity, whereas those randomized to the control group played with a character of average build. Men in the muscular condition reported significantly lower body satisfaction than men in the control condition. Considering the wide-spread use of video games, as well as the increasing muscularity of the ideal male body in popular culture, this finding could have important implications for the psychological well-being of men who regularly play video games. Further research should assess whether this lowered body satisfaction is maintained and to determine if negative behavioral consequences emerge.     

(A)Social reputation: Exploring the relationship between online video game involvement and social competence

Affordable and accessible Internet has changed the way video games are played, allowing individuals to connect worldwide in shared gaming spaces. On the surface participation within these environments may seem socially beneficial, as these highly social, playful spaces allow players to connect, interact with, and learn from others. However, there is a growing concern that increased participation within online gaming environments comes with a wide variety of social consequences, contributing to numerous losses in ‘offline’ sociability. While considerable research has examined these claims, consistent relationships between social competence and online video game involvement have yet to be established. The current work (N = 515) aimed to examine the extent to which online video game involvement may support, or undermine, the development and maintenance of traditional social skills. The results indicate that there are unique relationships between social skills and video game involvement within online gaming populations. However, among online video game players, these links were not as negative or broad as hypothesized. The results of this assessment dispute the anecdotal attribution of a global level of social ineptitude amongst online video game players and provide insight into the potential effects of online video game play on skill development and maintenance.     

Cheating detection through game time modeling: A better way to avoid time cheats in P2P MOGs?

Cheating is a key issue in online games. Whatever the rules that govern a game, some players will always be tempted to break or elude these rules so as to gain an unfair advantage over other players. Mitigation schemes are thus needed in online gaming platforms. However, it is widely recognized that typical cheating prevention schemes introduce complications and overheads in the distributed game system, which may seriously jeopardize the online gaming experience. It turns out that, often, detecting the cheaters, instead of preventing the cheats, could represent a viable solution, especially for time cheats. We present a general framework able to model game time advancements in P2P online games. Based on this framework, time cheat detection schemes can be easily devised, which monitor the communication patterns among peers and do not affect the performances of the game system. To provide evidence of our claim, we present in this paper two different time cheats, namely fast rate cheat and look-ahead cheat, and discuss on practicable methods to detect them. Simulation results confirm the viability of the proposed approach.

Do badges increase user activity? A field experiment on the effects of gamification

During recent years, the practice of adding game design to non-game services has gained a relatively large amount of attention. Popular discussion connects gamification to increased user engagement, service profitability, goal commitment and the overall betterment of various behavioral outcomes. However, there is still an absence of a coherent and ample body of empirical evidence that would confirm such expectations. To this end, this paper reports the results of a 2 year (1 + 1 year – between-group) field experiment in gamifying a service by implementing a game mechanic called ‘badges’. During the experiment a pre-implementation group (N = 1410) was monitored for 1 year. After the implementation, the post-implementation (the gamified condition) group (N = 1579) was monitored for another full year. Results show that users in the gamified condition were significantly more likely to post trade proposals, carry out transactions, comment on proposals and generally use the service in a more active way.     

Dynamic Bayesian approach for detecting cheats in multi-player online games

Massively multi-player games hold a huge market in the digital entertainment industry. Companies invest heavily in game developments since a successful online game can attract millions of users, and this translates to a huge investment payoff. However, multi-player online games are also subjected to various forms of “hacks” and “cheats”. Hackers can alter the graphic rendering to reveal information otherwise be hidden in a normal game, or cheaters can use software robots to play the game automatically and thus gain an unfair advantage. To overcome these problems, some popular online games release software patches constantly to block “known” hacks or incorporate anti-cheating software to detect “known” cheats. This not only creates deployment difficulty but new cheats will still be able to breach the normal game logic until software patches or updates of the anti-cheating software are available. Moreover, the anti-cheating software themselves are also vulnerable to hacks. In this paper, we propose a “scalable” and “efficient” method to detect whether a player is cheating or not. The methodology is based on the dynamic Bayesian network approach. The detection framework relies solely on the game states and runs in the game server only. Therefore, it is invulnerable to hacks and it is a much more deployable solution. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have implemented a prototype multi-player game system to detect whether a player is using any “aiming robot” for cheating or not. Experiments show that the proposed method can effectively detect cheaters on a first-person shooter game with extremely low false positive rate. We believe the proposed methodology and the prototype system provide a first step toward a systematic study of cheating detection and security research in the area of online multi-player games.     

Training and learning for crisis management using a virtual simulation/gaming environment

Recent advances in computers, networking, and telecommunications offer new opportunities for using simulation and gaming as methodological tools for improving crisis management. It has become easy to develop virtual environments to support games, to have players at distributed workstations interacting with each other, to have automated controllers supply exogenous events to the players, to enable players to query online data files during the game, and to prepare presentation graphics for use during the game and for post-game debriefings. Videos can be used to present scenario updates to players in “newscast” format and to present pre-taped briefings by experts to players. Organizations responsible for crisis management are already using such technologies in constructing crisis management systems (CMSs) to coordinate response to a crisis, provide decision support during a crisis, and support activities prior to the crisis and after the crisis. If designed with gaming in mind, those same CMSs could be easily used in a simulation mode to play a crisis management game. Such a use of the system would also provide personnel with opportunities to rehearse for real crises using the same tools they would have available to them in a real crisis. In this paper, we provide some background for the use of simulation and gaming in crisis management training, describe an architecture for simulation and gaming, and present a case study to illustrate how virtual environments can be used for crisis management training.     

An instrument to build a gamer clustering framework according to gaming preferences and habits

In the era of digital gaming, there is a pressing need to better understand how people's gaming preferences and habits affect behavior and can inform educational game design. However, instruments available for such endeavor are rather informal and limited, lack proper evaluation, and often yield results that are hard to interpret. In this paper we present the design and preliminary validation (involving N = 754 Spanish secondary school students) of a simple instrument that, based on a 10-item Game Preferences Questionnaire (GPQ), classifies participants into four ‘clusters’ or types of gamers, allowing for easy interpretation of the results. These clusters are: (1) Full gamers, covering individuals that play all kinds of games with a high frequency; (2) Hardcore gamers, playing mostly first-person shooters and sport games; (3) Casual gamers, playing moderately musical, social and thinking games; and (4) Non-gamers, who do not usually play games of any kind. The instrument may have uses in psychology and behavioral sciences, as there is evidence suggesting that attitudes towards gaming affects personal attitudes and behavior. Besides, we propose applying the instrument to help designers of educational games to get better tailored their games to their target audiences.     

“It’s Not Who You Know,but Who You Add:” An investigation into the differential impact of friend adding and self-disclosure on interpersonal perceptions on Facebook

This research seeks to understand how people perceive and respond to structural factors and different types of disclosure on Facebook when evaluating the profile of someone they have never met offline. Using a 2 × 3 × 2 between-subjects experimental design, this research explored the relationship between friend adding (add; no add), levels of self-disclosure (low, medium, high), and sex of the Facebook profile owner (male; female) on feelings of interpersonal liking, future behavioral intentions to interact, and homophily. Results indicated that friend adding and higher levels of self-disclosure led to greater feelings of interpersonal liking and homophily amongst both male and female participants. In addition, males tended to view other male profiles with moderate amounts of disclosure and female profiles with the highest amount of disclosure most favorably. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Avatar creation in virtual worlds: Behaviors and motivations

Avatar creation has become common for people to participate and interact in virtual worlds. Using an online survey (N = 244), we investigated both the behavioral characteristics and major motivations for avatar creation in virtual worlds. Our results suggest that a majority of the participants had multiple avatars; these avatars’ appearance did not merely resemble the human players; and their personality did not necessarily mirror the player’s real personality. Furthermore, participants on average spent over 20 h per week and often interacting with others in the virtual worlds. Our exploratory factor analysis yielded four major motivations: virtual exploration, social navigation, contextual adaptation, and identity representation.     

Investigating the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance cultural values on multidimensional online trust

Building online trust and understanding its relationship to online customer purchase decision making is important to e-commerce companies. We decided to investigate the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance on the relationship between subjective norms and online trust (integrity, ability, and benevolence) as well as purchase intention on a model we had developed. We generated a questionnaire and first pilot tested it (n = 116), and then modified it before performing the main test of our model (n = 209). Specifically, trust (cognition and affect based) was adapted to better understand social and cultural factors in online customer behavior. Uncertainty avoidance was found to moderate the relationships between subjective norms and two dimensions of cognition-based trust, (integrity and ability). Benevolence, however, was not found to have any relationship to cultural values or purchase intention. Normative influence on ability belief about the website was significant only when the online consumer had a high sense of uncertainty avoidance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Physical and social presence in collaborative virtual environments: Exploring age and gender differences with respect to empathy

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) hold the immense potential of enhancing social inclusion and social support not only in younger but especially also in older people. However, there is still considerably little knowledge about the experiences of elderly when using CVEs. Additionally, there is reason to assume that men and women regardless of their age might also differ in their perceptions of CVEs, with this difference very likely being mediated by empathic abilities. Consequently, the main objective of the current study was to evaluate gender specific experiences of social and physical presence in a group of older (N = 62) and younger adults (N = 62) with respect to possible mediating influences of empathy. Results indicate no differences in physical and social presence between the two age groups, yet they support past findings that men experience more spatial presence, involvement and a higher sense of being there than women. Also, the empathy scale Fantasy considerably mediated gender differences in spatial presence, thus strengthening the theoretical assumption of a relationship between presence and empathy. Implications and future directions of these findings are discussed in detail.     

The Pikachu effect: Social and health gaming motivations lead to greater benefits of Pokémon GO use

Several studies provided evidence for the effectiveness of gamification of health behaviors (e.g., exercising or walking) via video games. However, little is known about whether individuals who endorse specific gaming motivations are more likely to derive health benefits from gaming. Building upon previous studies on gamification of health behaviors, we examined whether specific gaming motives (e.g., potential health benefits) influenced Pokémon GO gaming time and gaming health outcomes, a phenomenon we termed The Pikachu Effect. We introduced health motivation as a novel component among previously established gaming motives, which reflects the ongoing gameplay transformation and increased health potential of modern games. Volunteers (N = 444) completed two measurements of Pokémon GO motivations, gaming time, physical activity, and time spent outdoors within a 6 week interval. The results supported the Pikachu effect hypothesis as health motivation and social motivation were related to health outcomes. Furthermore, we replicated previous findings indicating that individuals who spent more time playing Pokémon GO were more physical active. We also evidenced a new Pokémon GO playing behavioral benefit, i.e., increased time spent outdoors among more active players. We explored meaningful individual differences; for example, men played more and derived more benefits from Pokémon GO. These findings suggest that health motivation operates in parallel with previously identified main motives for gaming. Accounting for motivation is essential for a more accurate prediction of gaming time and gaming-related health behaviors.     

Pathological video game playing in Spanish and British adolescents: Towards the exploration of Internet Gaming Disorder symptomatology

Research into problematic video gaming has increased greatly over the last decade and many screening instruments have been developed to identify such behaviour. This study re-examined the Problematic Videogame Playing [PVP] Scale. The objectives of the study were to (i) examine its psychometric properties in two European countries, (ii) estimate the prevalence of potential pathological gaming among adolescents in both countries, and (iii) assess the classification accuracy of the PVP Scale based on its symptomatology as a way of exploring its relationship with both the behavioural component model of addiction and the proposed Internet Gaming Disorder. The data were collected via a survey administered to 2356 adolescents aged between 11 and 18 years from Spain (n = 1132) and Great Britain (n = 1224). Results indicated that the reliability of both versions was adequate, and the factorial and construct validity were good. Findings also showed that the prevalence of pathological gamers estimated with a rigorous cut-off point was 7.7% for Spanish and 14.6% for British adolescents. The scale showed adequate sensitivity, specificity and classification accuracy in both countries, and was able to differentiate between social and potential pathological gamers, and from their addictive symptomatology. The implications of these findings are discussed.