Video Game Players Play Experience

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Video 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
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Learning 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.

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Explore 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).

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Hard 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)

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Participants

• 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

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Semi-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?

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Procedure

• 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.

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Judges 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.

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Judges 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.

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Results 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.

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Why 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

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Emotions During Play

• joy/happiness
• excitement/arousal/energy
• frustration
• Anger
• sadness/depression (Least frequent)

Example
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Female 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)

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Anger

• 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

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Examples 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)

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Thinking

• 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.

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Absorption

• 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)

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Loss 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.

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Physical 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

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Body 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)

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self 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

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Self 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)

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this 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)

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Altered 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)

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And 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.