InTouch: Multi-player games

Computer gaming is reaching critical mass in the academic community with the recent appearance of online journals, dedicated conferences, and major conference streams. Social-science based researchers are beginning to look at this activity as a new genre in computer-mediated communications with important implications for sociability.

At the same time the games industry recognises the potential for recent developments in multiplayer gaming – being able to talk, using voiceover IP, and to interact with large groups of people – to transform gaming into a new pro-social online activity.

The InTouch games strand is exploring whether, how far and in what ways such a vision holds up. We have recently completed a major extended study of multiplayer gaming with voiceover IP involving a fixed group of 10 adult participants distributed across the UK.

The main finding from this study is that getting to know people through talk-mediated multiplayer gaming is not straightforward. Talk brings the person behind the avatar closer by reducing the extent to which gamers can manipulate their identity. But gamers frequently have difficulty identifying others as individuals, not only because voiceover IP makes same-sex voices sound similar, but also because of the issue of needing to reintegrate the ‘disaggregated person’, who exists as an avatar, a gamertag, and a voice. This can be a challenge. At the same time, different genres put different constraints on what can be talked about. Race games feature many metalinguistic utterances (‘ooh’, ‘aargh’, etc.) which tend to have little to do with enabling gameplay, while war games feature much strategic talk which is crucial to game performance as well as very game specific. People can get to know each other in terms of in-game roles but seeing further presents issues. However, one important finding is that despite the difficulty of seeing the person beyond the game, highly energised, rewarding social interactions take place anyway.

Quicktime video clip:

multiplayer.mov (42.8 Mb)

Principle investigators:

Dr. Geraldine Fitzpatrick (Interact Lab, Sussex University)
Prof. Yvonne Rogers (Indiana University)


Researchers:

Dr. John Halloran (Interact Lab, Sussex University)


Publications:

Halloran, J., Fitzpatrick, G., Rogers, Y. and Marshall, P. (2004) "Does it matter if you don't know who's talking? Multiplayer gaming with voiceover IP". To appear in Proceedings of CHI 2004.

Halloran, J., Rogers, Y. and Fitzpatrick, G. (2003) "From text to talk: multiplayer games and voiceover IP". In Level Up: 1st International Digital Games Research Conference,
130-142.

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