In-game Behavior Research Articles

The name in the game: Patterns in character names and gamer tags

In online games, often the only truly unique thing about a player is the name associated with an online account or game character. In massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, customization options are limited and in multiplayer games like Battlefield, there are no ways of customizing the appearance of the players’ avatar. This lack of ability to visually distinguish oneself means that names become important in online games, and assists with building understanding of the people that play these games, which is notably important for games operating via Free-to-Play revenue models. Here, a large-scale, cross-game analysis of names and behaviors in games is presented, based on datasets spanning over eight million character names and 80,000 gamer tags with associated behavioral data, from four major commercial game titles: the role-playing game World of Warcraft and the tactical shooters Battlefield 2 Bad Company 2, Crysis and Medal of Honor. The results highlight the inventiveness of the names players adopt for their characters or accounts, and describe two different patterns – or communities – of name usage: in World of Warcraft, player character names are distributed according to power laws, have semantic meaning (no numbers permitted in names), and name selection is related to the aesthetics and game function of characters, with some names even being predictors of particular classes and races. In the tactical shooters, where all gamer tags are unique, names comparatively more rarely have a clear semantic meaning (numbers and special characters are permitted and often used), and name components are not distributed according to power laws. However, there is to a degree of a non-random relationship between gamer tag and in-game behavior. These results indicate that the name chosen by players for their characters or tags can potentially be useful for player profiling purposes in online games.

Crowdsourcing the Aesthetics of Platform Games

What are the aesthetics of platform games and what makes a platform level engaging, challenging, and/or frustrating? We attempt to answer such questions through mining a large set of crowdsourced gameplay data of a clone of the classic platform game Super Mario Bros (SMB). The data consist of 40 short game levels that differ along six key level design parameters. Collectively, these levels are played 1560 times over the Internet, and the perceived experience is annotated by experiment participants via self-reported ranking (pairwise preferences). Given the wealth of this crowdsourced data, as all details about players' in-game behavior are logged, the problem becomes one of extracting meaningful numerical features at the appropriate level of abstraction for the construction of generic computational models of player experience and, thereby, game aesthetics. We explore dissimilar types of features, including direct measurements of event and item frequencies, and features constructed through frequent sequence mining, and go through an in-depth analysis of the interrelationship between level content, players' behavioral patterns, and reported experience. Furthermore, the fusion of the extracted features allows us to predict reported player experience with a high accuracy, even from short game segments. In addition to advancing our insight on the factors that contribute to platform game aesthetics, the results are useful for the personalization of game experience via automatic game adaptation.

What Is Good Can Also Be Bad: The Prosocial and Antisocial In-Game Behaviors of Young Video Game Players

A majority of the video game literature focuses on the negative effects of violent gaming. In addition, research tends not to analyze in-game practices of varying game genres; instead, researchers treat games as largely uniform interactive media. This study addresses gaming from multiple perspectives, including in-game prosocial actions, learning about civics, and witnessing or practicing antisocial behaviors while gaming. Using the uses and gratifications perspective and social-cognitive theories of gaming as the theoretical backbones, this study analyzed a nationally representative and convenience sample dataset using multiple regression analyses. Several genres revealed positive associations with in-game prosocial actions, learning about civics, and witnessing and/or practicing antisocial behaviors while gaming. Specifically, the role-playing genre was related to prosocial behaviors, learning about civics, and the antisocial behaviors. Similarly, the first-person shooter genre correlated significantly with each of the five dependent variables. Thus, several genres necessitate that gamers behave prosocially, antisocially, and educationally. This lends credence to the argument that games do not simply have negative effects on individuals but can simultaneously have positive effects. These results are discussed in terms of reimagining the social-cognitive theories of gaming, given that the stimulus inherent in each genre is more complicated than traditional games studies assume.

Personality Profiles Associated with Different Motivations for Playing World of Warcraft

Gamers play massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for a variety of reasons. For example, some gamers play primarily as a form of socialization, whereas others play to gain a sense of achievement. Past studies have shown that these motives are associated with individual differences such as gender and number of years spent playing online games. What other individual differences might affect why people play MMORPGs? Personality is known to be associated with in-game behaviors, raising the possibility of link between personality and gaming motives. The present study examines the relationship between gamers' Big Five personality traits and their motivations for playing World of Warcraft. Results reveal several links between a player's personality and gaming motivations. For instance, individuals playing to socialize tend to be high on extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness, whereas individuals playing to gain a sense of achievement tend to be high on extraversion and neuroticism, but low on agreeableness and conscientiousness. Findings are discussed with respect to previous research on links between personality and motives in other MMORPGs and in terms of how and why the connections between personality and motives may differ across online and offline contexts.

Dependecies between the methods used in identifying player talent in the game of handball

PurposeOne of the basic operational goals of early physical education is the early recognition of athletic potential in children. When examining the presence of talent, it is necessary to consider the specific nature of a given sport, especially if it is a team sport, and the fact that skill in playing a sport is determined not only by featuring a high level of applicable motor abilities. Within this context, the aim of this study was to determine what dependencies existed between the methods frequently used to assess talented children in the game of handball, specifically targeted sports and motor tests. The popularity of these diagnostic methods is based on the theory that achievement in sports is accompanied by a high level of physical ability. Therefore, the practical aim of the study was to improve the accuracy of recognizing and examining sports talent.MethodsA group of 21 twelve-year-old boys were recruited, all of whom were involved in a sports program that specialized in handball. Talent was identified by the observation, analysis, and interpretation of the participants’ (1) general physical ability – assessed by the Eurofit test battery, (2) targeted physical ability – measured by specific hardball skills such as moving with the ball, catching and passing the ball, and throwing the ball from a distance, and (3) innate in-game behavior – based on a ranking of thirteen behavioral categories exhibited during the course of a game.Results and conclusionThe correlation coefficients adopted in this study indicated a high dependency between the three methods used to identify potential talent in handball. This indicates that young athletes who score relatively well in one test are likely to attain positive results in the other two methods.

Understanding the Player: The Need for Adaption in Exergames for Adolescents.

Recently, exergames have become a viable aspect of physical activity interventions, with their ability to facilitate exercise within an enjoyable and motivating context. However, in order to develop optimally effective exergames suitable for a wide and diverse audience, adaptive exergames capable of adapting to suit the personality of the user are required. In this article, we discuss how an understanding of the background of players can be used to explain their in-game behavior and how this could be used to progress the exergame genre.

Why do you play World of Warcraft? An in-depth exploration of self-reported motivations to play online and in-game behaviours in the virtual world of Azeroth

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are video games in which players create an avatar that evolves and interacts with other avatars in a persistent virtual world. Motivations to play MMORPGs are heterogeneous (e.g. achievement, socialisation, immersion in virtual worlds). This study investigates in detail the relationships between self-reported motives and actual in-game behaviours. We recruited a sample of 690 World of Warcraft players (the most popular MMORPG) who agreed to have their avatar monitored for 8months. Participants completed an initial online survey about their motives to play. Their actual in-game behaviours were measured through the game’s official database (the Armory website). Results showed specific associations between motives and in-game behaviours. Moreover, longitudinal analyses revealed that teamwork- and competition-oriented motives are the most accurate predictors of fast progression in the game. In addition, although specific associations exist between problematic use and certain motives (e.g. advancement, escapism), longitudinal analyses showed that high involvement in the game is not necessarily associated with a negative impact upon daily living.

Temporal Synchronisation of Data Logging in Racing Gameplay

Contemporary game play is a complex environment where user interacts with many elements. Data logging in a game play is a common practice to study a player's in-game behaviour. Identified behavioural knowledge is then applied to enhance the game elements. Analyzing the user behaviour is a multivariate process and therefore requires more information than mere logging of game context. Multi modal data channels such as biofeedback signals are increasingly used to study the game play so that more detailed understanding of the user behaviour can be established. Precise synchronisation in capturing of multiple streams is essential to produce accurate and meaningful information. This paper presents a generic technique to accurately synchronize multiple data streams captured during a gaming session. It is demonstrated by applying it to a driving game Simulation. Observable correlation between the in-game data and psycho-physiological signals are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and granularity of the synchronisation.

Virtual social environments as a tool for psychological assessment: Dynamics of interaction with a virtual spouse.

Computer games are advocated as a promising tool bridging the gap between the controllability of a lab experiment and the mundane realism of a field experiment. At the same time, many authors stress the importance of observing real behavior instead of asking participants about possible or intended behaviors. In this article, the authors introduce an online virtual social environment, which is inhabited by autonomous agents including the virtual spouse of the participant. Participants can freely explore the virtual world and interact with any other inhabitant, allowing the expression of spontaneous and unprompted behavior. The authors investigated the usefulness of this game for the assessment of interactions with a virtual spouse and their relations to intimacy and autonomy motivation as well as relationship satisfaction with the real-life partner. Both the intimacy motive and the satisfaction with the real-world relationship showed significant correlations with aggregated in-game behavior, which shows that some sort of transference between the real world and the virtual world took place. In addition, a process analysis of interaction quality revealed that relationship satisfaction and intimacy motive had different effects on the initial status and the time course of the interaction quality. Implications for psychological assessment using virtual social environments are discussed.

Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being among MMO players

The current study examined problematic Internet use (PIU) among people who play MMO games and sought to determine whether aspects of the MMO experience are useful predictors of PIU. The study sought to determine whether game-related variables could predict PIU scores after accounting for their relationships with psychosocial well-being. Novel methods allowed us, for the first time, to connect in-game behaviors with survey results of over 4000 MMO players. The results revealed that MMO gaming variables contributed a substantively small, but statistically significant amount of explained variance to PIU scores.

Real Money Trading in MMORPG Items From a Legal and Policy Perspective

This article questions the legal status of Real Money Trading (RMT) in MMORPGs. Noting that in-game items are virtually treated as personal property, but are only legally recognised as information goods, the right of ownership of these goods belongs to the developers, and players have a right to use, as conferred by the terms of service. I argue that the object of RMT is neither the item itself nor the right to use the item, but rather something entirely distinct one - 'play values', and the monetary compensation is a 'gwonri-geum' (goodwill) payment. This analysis makes an analogy between the transfer of goodwill and RMT, where the transfer is not a purchase of an item or the right to use, but rather a payment for the effort the other party has invested in obtaining the item. On this analysis, RMT does not concern the operator any more than sales of goodwill concern the lesser of a business property. It follows that if RMT is a transfer of goodwill, then it must fall within the domain of private autonomy of players, and developers and publishers have no legal standing to ban RMT. Such bans are unfair insofar as they heavily infringe upon players' autonomy and their rights to the intangible value they have created. However, because the value in RMT transactions is the goodwill associated with the item and not the item itself, RMT does not impose liability on the publishers for protection of the item's market value. Publishers ought to disclaim any involvement and liability with regard to RMT between players, but reserve the right to regulate the in-game behaviour of players. I concludes that, pointing out many publishers do not care to correct structural issues in their games which lead to RMT, as RMT indirectly increases their revenue, doing away with nominal bans on RMT and restructuring in-game social platform fairly can alleviate the problems recognised in South Korea.

The Influence of Competitive and Cooperative Group Game Play on State Hostility

Most research on violent video game play suggests a positive relationship with aggression-related outcomes. Expanding this research, the current study examines the impact group size, game motivation, in-game behavior, and verbal aggression have on postgame play hostility. Consistent with previous research, group size and verbal aggression both displayed a significant positive relationship with hostility. From these results, avenues for future research on anti- and prosocial outcomes from group gaming are offered.

Motivations for Play in Online Games

An empirical model of player motivations in online games provides the foundation to understand and assess how players differ from one another and how motivations of play relate to age, gender, usage patterns, and in-game behaviors. In the current study, a factor analytic approach was used to create an empirical model of player motivations. The analysis revealed 10 motivation subcomponents that grouped into three overarching components (achievement, social, and immersion). Relationships between motivations and demographic variables (age, gender, and usage patterns) are also presented.

An investigation of the in-game behaviours of professional, top-level youth soccer coaches

Although research into coaching has increased considerably during the last two decades, an area of neglect has been that of the professional youth coach. The aim of this study was to investigate the working behaviours of six top-level professional soccer coaches. Data were collected using a modified version of the Arizona State University Observation Instrument and semi-structured interviews. The triangulation of the data ensured that both the “what” and the “why” of the coaches' behaviour were considered. Results revealed a conscious and well thought out pattern of behaviour: silently monitoring, interspersed with clips of instruction coupled with praise and encouragement. The interviews revealed three themes underpinning this behaviour: developing game understanding, support and encouragement, and coaches' role and influences. The use of silence was the largest single behaviour, the efficacy of which was considered in light of theories of experiential and discovery learning.