Title: Video Game Players Play Experience
1Video Game Players Play Experience
- Jayne Gackenbach, Ian Matty, and Ashley Nicole
Samaha - Grant MacEwan College
Paper presented at the annual International
Association for the Study of Dreams Conference,
Sonoma, CA, June 2007
Edmonton, Alberta 2006
2Learning Objectives
- Appreciate an in depth analysis of a few high end
gamers self consciousness during play. - Understand how game play affects dream content
using the classic Hall and VandeCastle scoring
system relative to norms. - Learn something about the possible relationships
between lucid, control and observer dreams among
high end gamers. - Listen to a reflection to some of these concepts
from the perspective of a participant-observer.
3Explore Self Consciousness During Gaming
- Exploration of self consciousness is always a
problem. - Self consciousness was broken down into aspects
during play which were more easily recognizable. - This approach agrees with Revonsuos (2006) point
that self-awareness is the ability to become
aware of ones own phenomenal experiences (bodily
experiences, thoughts, memories) as ones own
phenomenal experiences (p. 49).
4Hard Core Player Criteria
- In order to be interviewed they had to say yes to
these four criteria - Do you play video games on average several times
a week? (frequency) - Is your typical playing session more than 2
hours? (length) - Have you been playing video games since before
grade three? (age began) - Have you played 50 or more video games over your
lifetime? (number of games played)
5Participants
- Solicited through on campus posters and emails
- 33 individuals answered the advertisement for
participants - over a two month period in early 2006
- 27 actually being interviewed, rest no shows
- 25 men and two women
- 85 were 25 years of age or younger
6Semi-structured Interview
- Protocol included these basic questions after
several closed ended questions. Each had further
elaborations as needed - Why do you play video games?
- Talk about the emotions you experience while
playing video games. - Describe the nature or quality of your thinking
while playing video games. - Discuss your sense of your body while playing
video games. - Do you ever experience motion sickness while
playing video games? - While playing video games how do you experience
time? - Please talk about your sense of self during video
game play. - Do video games come up in your dreams? If so how?
- Tell me your most recent dream.
- Tell me your most recent dream which in some way
included video games. - Finally would you tell me your most noteworthy
video game dream? - Have you ever had any experiences of alterations
in consciousness associated with your video game
play?
7Procedure
- Interviews ranged from 30 minutes to an hour
- Tape recorded using a portable digital voice
recorder (Sony ICD SX25). - After each interview the interviewer recorded
brief personal reactions to the interview. - All interviews were transcribed.
8Judges Questionnaire
- Following the interviews the interviewer compiled
a more detailed questionnaire derived from the
semi-structured questions but with elaborations
and extensions based upon the actual interviews. - A participant observer (second author, Ian Matty)
and a long time gamer, listened to all the
interviews and filled out the extended
questionnaire including various comments of his
impressions from the perspective of a high end,
long time gamer.
9Judges Questionnaire (cont.)
- responses which were coded
- frequency (never, rarely, sometimes, often)
- intensity (none, low, medium, high).
- One way within subject ANOVAs were computed to
determine most frequent/intense responses in the
eyes of the participant observer judge.
10Results Games Play
- The most favourite and most frequently played
type of game were role playing games followed by
adventure and strategy type games. - The least favourite and frequently played were
arcade games. - The most often cited specific role playing game
was World of Warcraft.
11Why Play Video Games?
- Twenty of the 27 said they were fun while almost
half noted more than one reason for playing - playing a game was like reading a novel except
that you get to be part of the story
12Emotions During Play
- joy/happiness
- excitement/arousal/energy
- frustration
- Anger
- sadness/depression (Least frequent)
Example
13Female Gamer Talking About Emotions During Gaming
- Im pretty calm when playing games. role playing
games often I feel the emotions about characters,
like if a character dies Ill sometimes cry of if
its a really happy moment I tend to feel the
happiness too. And for horror games and stuff
like that I get really scared because its like
you experience the same thing that the character
experiences for me so its like what other
gameslike Fatal Fantasy I got really scared
from. Its sort of depending on the experience
like its almost empathetic I guess towards the
characters. (008)
14Anger
- Due to research and public concern, anger was
probed for - few admitted experiencing it very much while
playing - terms of anger none were evaluated as saying they
felt angry often while 15 players were
evaluated as sometimes feeling angry
15Examples Regarding Anger
- Ive gotten incredibly angry when I was young
like Ive thrown my controllers across the room
or whatever playing Mortal Combat. (019) - its just you learn that theres appropriate
outlets to vent your frustration or anger and a
lot more constructive methods. (032)
16Thinking
- The participant observer judge rated responses
regarding attention/focus as significantly more
intense than those regarding problem
solving/information processing but saw no
difference in the frequency of attention versus
problem solving response types.
17Absorption
- theres very little distractions if Im really
set into a game like my fiancée has tried to
dosounds silly but she has tried sexual
advances on me and Ill just be oblivious to her
you know, she pretty much has to get in front of
me or shut off the game before I realize that she
wants something done. (001)
18Loss of Time
- Over half (16) of these hard core college student
gamers said they were rarely or never aware of
time passing while playing. - Some mentioned that time could be compressed
while others said it expanded, depending on the
game. - Still others said it was simply missing.
- But some learn to compensate.
19Physical Body During Play
- the judge evaluated the respondents as saying
they were aware of their body more than
experiencing discomfort with it or experiencing
any dislocation of it during play - Also asked about motion sickness during play with
few reporting it
20Body Focus Quote
- Well depending on what time of day it is I might
lose entire sense of my body. Im just there
Its not that I dont feel my body anymore
butone time I had one hand on the keyboard, and
one hand on the mouse, and there moving but its
not even almost consciously, its moving based
onbecause they just know that thats where I
want them to move. And I dont even have to
control where my arms going, and I dont even
feel my legs. (003)
21self awareness during game play
- Judge rated respondents as no difference in types
of self discussed by respondents - general self awareness,
- roof brain chatter, and
- identification with game character
22Self Awareness
- Your sort of aware of it self because you move
the mouse and your interacting with the keyboard
but you almost think in a dual personality, if I
do this and this then my character can pick this
lock, and if I do this my character will be able
to do thisThe line blurs at that point, and at
least for me, as soon as I walk away from it or
stop the character is over and its back to
reality. But when your really in depth playing,
you are the character. (011)
23this insight regarding self talk
- Sometimes it stops. I know because you dont
notice it, its like when some one says try not
to think and then you stop for a minute and then
think am I thinking? (013)
24Altered States Experiences
- Range of questions asked from simple ones like
dizziness that felt good to being outside self. - you know that your physically there but you know
that your physically in your body, but for me
its a more mental point of view, for others it
could be more of a spiritual point of view, like
your outside of yourself and you realize, like
you cant look into your eyes but you feel I guess
that your looking from an inch to the left, or an
inch to the right kinda thing so your sort of
outside yourself. (003)
25And Now Dreams..
- Hall and Van de Castle Content Analysis of Gamer
Dreams by Bena Kuruvilla, honors student at Grant
MacEwan College - Gamer Dreams Content Relevant to Consciousness in
Sleep by Alexis Zederayko, student at University
of Alberta - Gamer as Participant-Observer by Jordan
Olischefski, honors student at Grant MacEwan
College - Discussant is Sanford Rosenberg, President of
Media Research Associates, who has twenty five
years of experience in working with film, video,
and emerging technologies.