Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

COLAB: social context and user experience in collaborative multiplayer games

Recent studies have shown that the social context in which people play digital multiplayer games has an effect on their experience. Whether co-players are in the same location ("co-located") or in different locations ("mediated") changes how they interact with the game and with one another. We set o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Terblanche, Marcel
Other Authors: Blake, Edwin H
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Computer Science 2018
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent studies have shown that the social context in which people play digital multiplayer games has an effect on their experience. Whether co-players are in the same location ("co-located") or in different locations ("mediated") changes how they interact with the game and with one another. We set out to explore how these complex psychological dynamics played out in a collaborative multiplayer game, since most of the research to date has been focused on competitive gameplay scenarios. To this end, we designed a two-player puzzle-based gaming apparatus called COLAB, implementing specific features that have been proven to foster collaboration and preclude competition between players. The independent variable was player location; the dependent variable was game experience, as measured by the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire, two comprehensive self-report instruments. We found a significant difference in the game experiences of players collaborating in the same location versus players collaborating in different locations. Specifically, co-located players of the collaborative game experienced significantly higher scores for negative experience than mediated players did, while mediated players experienced significantly higher levels of three key game-experience measures: positive affect, immersion, and flow.