Undergraduate Players Research Articles

Serious Games, Knowledge Acquisition, and Conflict Resolution: The Case of PeaceMaker as a Peace Education Tool

Israeli-Jews and Palestinians cannot easily be exposed to contradicting information about “the other” in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotionally charged situation and prevailing ethnocentrism. Serious games like PeaceMaker are used as innovative interventions for peace education. Winning PeaceMaker indicates better conflict resolution skills and developing an informative viewpoint regarding the situation, which is required for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The evaluation of the effectiveness of prosocial games in educating about conflict and peace in the literature is severely lacking. We examine the effects of this computerized simulation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on enhancing knowledge about the conflict and “the other” among undergraduate players who are direct parties (i.e., Israeli-Jews and Palestinians) and third parties (i.e., Americans and Cypriots). In addition, we investigate the knowledge gap between direct parties and third parties who won and did not win the game. Using questionnaires, we conducted a quasi-experimental study with 168 undergraduates using a pre- and post-intervention research design. We found that direct parties to the conflict acquired significantly more knowledge about the other side, and third parties acquired significantly more knowledge about the conflict after playing PeaceMaker. In addition, PeaceMaker minimized the knowledge gap after playing the game among direct parties who won the game and those who did not win and increased the knowledge gap between third parties who won the game and those who did not win. Our results suggest that serious games might be effective interventions for peace education, because they appear to enhance knowledge about the conflict, and about “the other” particularly for young people who are direct parties to this divide.

Ethnographic decision tree for male decision criteria related to online games

Online games have emerged as an important and interesting research area in a variety of academic and official settings. This study adopts ethnographic decision tree modelling (EDTM) which here integrates qualitative and quantitative paradigms to model the decision-making process of whether or not to play online games by male undergraduate students. The model is built based on qualitative data gathered through in-depth interviews of 29 respondents, where 18 criteria for playing online games are elicited. The model is tested using qualitative and quantitative data from interviews, and a structured questionnaire involving 241 respondents. The predictability of the model is 90.04%. Armed with the results, this study provides online game industries an understanding of the decision-making process of male undergraduate players in Taiwan, and reveals methodology and theory standpoints for the researchers with similar interests.