Finding of the week #10

Game spectatorship: The Pupil and the Interested

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This is the second part of the video game / e-sport spectator series. This time, I’ll focus on the „pupil“ and „inspired“ spectator personas [1].

The Pupil has already deep knowledge about the game and is, in most cases, also a passionated player. The Pupil tries to improve its own gameplay by spectating the gameplay of others. For that purpose, the Pupil prefers spectating from the point-of-view (pov) of the performing player. Furthermore, the Pupil likes to analyze critical situations by watching them in detail.

As mentioned last week, there’re four different ways of spectating a game: Spectator mode, watching over the player’s shoulder, live broadcasts and watching recorded videos.

The spectator mode can be useful for the Pupil, if an option for displaying the actions of the performing player is available. Using the spectator mode allows the Pupil to follow the gameplay of a player in real-time. While spectating the game, the Pupil has the opportunity of observing the timing of actions and how the player is reacting to unknown situations. Additionally, the Pupil is in control of the camera and can watch the action from the perspective which suits them best.
On the other hand, the real-time aspect doesn’t allow the spectator to watch the gameplay again. In order to gain new knowledge about the game, the Pupil likes to pause the gameplay or to watch critical situations again in order to analyze them.

Watching over the player’s shoulder might be one of the best options to learn. During this process, the Pupil can take advantage of directly asking questions about the player’s gameplay, actions and choices. Additionally, the Pupil has the same pov as the player does.
The Pupil can’t pause the action but the opportunity of asking questions can easily compensate the missing replay function.

Live broadcasts are quite similar to the spectator mode. The spectator can watch the gameplay in real-time. In contrast to the spectator mode, the spectator has no option to control the camera. Instead the spectator has to accept the influence of the commentator. The real-time broadcast of the gameplay has the same disadvantage for the Pupil as the spectator mode: The Pupil has no direct option to pause or replay critical situations. However, the commentator might also give useful insights into the player’s strategy.

Watching recorded videos has, apart from watching over the player’s shoulder, the best opportunities for the Pupil to improve the own gameplay. Due to the fact that the gameplay is recorded, the spectator is able to pause and replay every situation as often as desired. Thus the Pupil can analyze every situation in detail. However it’s still important that the gameplay is recorded from the pov of the player and the player’s interface is shown.

The inspired can be separated into two different forms: The first form, the inspired spectator, is playing the game as well. While spectating other’s gameplay, inspired spectators develop the desire to play the game themselves.
The other form of the inspired spectator is not yet playing the game, but is interested in playing it in the near future. In this case, the inspired spectator is watching other’s gameplay to decide if the game is worth buying. I define this type of spectator as the interested spectator.
In this article, I’ll mainly focus on the interested spectator.

Due to the fact that the spectator mode is implemented in the game itself, the spectator mode isn’t available for the Interested.

Watching over the player’s shoulder is, as already mentioned, a great way to get new information about the game. The spectator has the same pov as the player and can directly ask questions. In this case, the Interested can get all the information to decide whether to buy the game or not.
Additionally, the player can inform the Interested about issues with the game and thus give a recommendation.

Live broadcasts can be helpful for the Interested as well. The real-time aspect allows the Interested to observe the pace and the flow of the gameplay.
However, live broadcasts focus in most cases on tournaments. The tournament players are experts of the game and do perfom at a very high skill level. The commentator mostly focusses on the strategies of the players and uses the camera control to show the biggest actions of the gameplay. Thus the impressions of the gameplay might be blurred for the Interested.

Watching recorded videos has the best opportunities for the Interested to inform about the game. Video portals like youtube offer a broad variety of videos. Using such a video portal allows the Interested to easily skip between different videos in order to gain as much insights into the gameplay as possible.

Next week, it’ll be all about the ways of spectating a game. Mostly, I’ll focus on recorded videos and watching over the player’s shoulder.

[1] Cheung, Gifford; Huang, Jeff (2011): Starcraft from the stands: understanding the game spectator, in: CHI 2011 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, pp. 763 – 772.

Finding of the week #9

Game spectatorship

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This week is the beginning of a video game / e-sport spectator series. Over the next weeks, I’ll focus on video game spectatorship.
I read the article „Starcraft from the Stands: Understanding the Game Spectator“ [1]. The authors analyze and define the spectatorship of video games. At first they define the game spectator by analyzing different approaches of spectating. Additionally, they analyze the other stakeholders like commentators and the players itself. They also figure out what makes a computer game fun to watch. For that purpose, they’ve focussed on the spectatorship of StarCraft and StarCraft2.
This „finding of the week“ offers some basic definitions of video game spectatorship and gives a general overview about different approaches of spectating a video game.

Cheung and Huang define a spectator as a person who follows the in-game experience, but does not actively play the game. Instead the spectator’s intensions range from watching the game casually to being highly interested in competitive gameplay.[1]

Ways of spectating the game

Spectating a game can happen in four different ways:

  • Using a spectator mode
  • Watching over the player’s shoulder
  • Watching live broadcasts
  • Watching recorded player videos

Spectator mode is a directly implemented tool in the game itself. It allows the player to join a game without having any influence on it. The spectator mode allows the spectator to watch over the actions of the players.

Spectator personas

During their research, Cheung and Huang identified nine different spectator personas[1], which are mostly distinguished by their knowledge about the particular game.
The first one is the bystander, who has no specific knowledge about the game. For the bystander, most of the gameplay is incomprehensible due to the lack of specific knowledge.
The curious has already some basic knowledge about the game. A curious spectator is very excited about the gameplay and tries to close knowledge-gaps by watching the game.
The inspired has deep knowledge about the game and gets excited by watching it. After spectating, inspired spectators desire to play the game themselves.
The pupil is an active player of the game and tries to gain some additional knowledge and new tactics by spectating others.
The unsatisfied would rather play the game than watching over the player’s shoulder.
The entertained likes just to watch the gameplay instead to actively play the game. In this case, spectating is nothing else than entertainment.
The assistant is mostly sitting next to the player and tries to support the player during gameplay.
The commentator is spectating and commentating the gameplay. This happens mostly during live broadcasts of tournaments.
The crowd describes the entertaining aspects of watching games in a group.

Spectating is fun

The enjoyment of spectating derives on the one side from the „information asymmetry“[1]. Information asymmetry evolves if the player or the spectator has an information advantage over the other one. At the beginning of a new game, the spectator is unaware of the player’s strategy. Over time the spectator will catch up and has the same knowledge as the player. Although the player and the spectator do have the same information, the information asymmetry will still remain active because it’s uncertain how the game will end: It depends on luck and skill of the players.
Sometimes the spectator even has an information advantage over the player. This can happen if the spectator is able to watch the game developing from the point of view of both players. In this case, the spectator has information about the situation that the players don’t.
As the game progresses, the information asymmetry will be cleared.

On the other side, the entertainment of spectating derives from suspense. Suspense is created by the uncertainty of the strategies and other skill-based events of the game. A player can have a comeback or survive a heavy ambush without too many losses.

Both, information asymmetry and suspense, lead to the entertainment of spectating video games. Therefore, games which can create situations that result in information asymmetry or suspense are fun to spectate.

Next week, I’ll focus on some of the spectator personas. Additionally, I’ll give an overview about other possible reasons why spectating games attracts gaming interested people.

[1] Cheung, Gifford; Huang, Jeff (2011): Starcraft from the stands: understanding the game spectator, in: CHI 2011 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, pp. 763 – 772.

Finding of the week #8

Social gameplay in WoW?

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This „finding of the week“ offers some thoughts and own experiences about the social gameplay in World of Warcraft (WoW).

Playing World of Warcraft is a great way of experiencing cooperative gameplay with lots of other players the same time. But is this still true?

The gameplay begins with the level-phase. After the creation of the own avatar, the player begins to discover Azeroth. Just after the arrival, non-playing characters (NPC) start to offer some quests to the player. Completing quests is one major source of experience points, which are needed to reach higher character levels. After the player has solved the first quests, the npcs offer new quests and the adventure continues – or better the long journey to level 90 (the current maximum level).

Almost every quest can be completed alone. The player has no need to form groups to be able to complete the level-phase content. Of course they might see other players around major quest-hubs, but due to the fact of easy content, they mostly won’t play together.

Another way of gaining experience is joining random instance groups. The „dungeon finder“ tool forms groups of random players and sends them into a random dungeon. This is the first time when playing in a cooperative way with other players can occur. On the other side, this is just a rush through the dungeon to gain as much experience points as possible in a short amount of time. There isn’t much time to experience the social aspect of WoW. As soon as the final boss is defeated, the group disbands and the players won’t meet again in most cases.

After the journey is over and the player has reached level 90, most of the social and cooperative experience remains the same. Now, the player can choose in the dungeon finder between the already known dungeon finder, the raid finder and scenarios. Each method has mostly the same result: The player is placed in a group with strangers who won’t meet again after the dungeon is completed.

The gameplay experience is depending on the other random players: If the player is put into a group of like-minded people, the gameplay can be a lot of fun. However, if this isn’t the case, a short instance can become quite annoying and the social gameplay becomes one of the worst aspects of the whole game.
Additionally, the dungeon finder needs some time to gather enough players to form a group. Sometimes players wait more than half an hour in the raid finder. Waiting in the game for the actual cooperative gameplay can be very boring.

Of course, there’re great aspects of the social gameplay as well: Players can join guilds which are formed by like-minded players. The guild can be used as a platform to form groups of players who can play together on a regular basis. Over the time, they start knowing each other and can become friends. However to make this happen, all the players need to agree to some basic rules and have to be online the same time.

One solution that comes to my mind would be scaleable content. Why do I need 4 other random players for a dungeon, if the difficulty level can be adjusted. At the bottom line it is all about the rewards: Joining a random group just means to clear the dungeon as fast as possible to collect the rewards. There is no desire for social gameplay, it’s just about gathering reputation, experience or items. Additionally, the dungeon finder content, especially the raid finder content, is very easy in comparison to the „real“ raid instance content, which can’t be accessed using the dungeon finder. Players actively need to form a group and travel to the particular instance. In return, they will be rewarded with better and more valueable items. Why do I need to accept the burden of random players, if I could do the easy-mode content alone?
If I’m playing with my friends, I really like to play in a group and enjoy the cooperative aspect of the game. The feeling of an epic-win after defeating a hard boss is awesome. But if I’m on my own, I just like to get things done. Waiting for other unknown players is just boring – especially because I won’t see them again.

To wrap things up, the social gameplay of WoW can be one of the greatest aspects of the game as long as the group is formed by like-minded players who play together on a regular basis. On the other hand, if the social gameplay is a barrier to finish content, it can become the worst part of the game. Waiting long in the raid finder queue for a bad group isn’t fun at all.

I like the concept of „ambient sociability“ [1], but more in a way of sharing the same virtual world with others. Seeing other players walking around the major cities is Azeroth is giving me the feeling of being part of a living world. Social gameplay should be more about socializing and working together towards a shared goal, but not about farming content.

[1] McGonigal, Jane (2011): Reality Is Broken, New York.

Finding of the week #7

Team training

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: I read the article „The complexity of team training: what we have learned from aviation and its applications to medicine“ [1]. The author compares the necessity for collaboration in aviation with the necessity for collaboration during a surgery. Additionally, this papers gives an overview about important elements of team training.
This „finding of the week“ offers some thoughts about the need of collaboration in critical and daily-life situations.

The paper [1] analyzes the necessity for collaboration in aviation by looking at accidents happened in commercial aviation. In most cases the accidents were primarly caused by the flight crew itself due to the lack of good collaboration. Therefore, team training became a major goal in today’s commercial aviation. Cockpit resource management (crm) is „dealing with the interpersonal, team aspects of flying in a multipersonal crew“ [1].

According to Hamman [1], teamwork in health care is as important as it is in commercial aviation. In both situations, worst case scenarios can lead to a loss of life. Therefore, it is critical that everyone in a team is trained in collaborating with each other: Each member of a team has to know what the tasks of the other members are and what the other members need to know to fulfill their tasks. Even if a new information doesn’t apply to the own duties, for another team member this information might be critical.

In short, each member of a team has to know the duties of the others and to make good collaboration happen and to reduce the chance of issues caused by human factors.

This concept of team training doesn’t just apply to teams working in critical situations. The idea of crm can be applied to almost every situation in which teamwork occurs. The efficiency of collaboration can be increased, if every member is aware of the duties of their teammates. Furthermore, the need for non mandatory communication can be decreased as well. This allows the team to react in a more efficient way to new tasks or situations.

Finally, team training can develop one key concept of teamwork: the shared mental modell [2].

[1] Hamman, W. R. (2004): The complexity of team training: what we have learned from aviation and its applications to medicine, in: Quality and Safety in Health Care, 13 (Suppl. 1), pp. i72 – i79.

[2] Salas, Eduardo; Sims, Dana E.; Burke, C Shawn (2005): Is there a „Big Five“ in Teamwork?, in: Small Group Research, 36 (5), pp. 555 – 599.