Well, hello there. It looks like this may be one of the last weekly blog posts that I will make. In one week, I will be giving my presentation and I am really looking forward to sharing my research with those of you able to attend.
However, as an update, I have been editing and practicing my PowerPoint this week with my project advisors. So far, they have liked it and have given me some great ideas for improvement.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
Week 11 (4/21/17)
Each week brings us closer to presentations! In order to prepare for them, I have been editing my PowerPoint and my Research Paper. I have also been working on my presentation script so that the presentation will be full of information while being 12 minutes or less. I am planning on practicing my presentation with my Faculty Advisor, Mr. Estes, next week so I am looking forward to see how it goes.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Week 10 (4/14/17)
I'll make this blog entry quick and simple. This week, I have been working on both my research paper and my PowerPoint presentation. So far, they look quite nice, but I still have some more work to do on them in order to finalize them.
In case you are interested in reading my research paper, I will include a version of it on my blog (hopefully) after I finish the edits and making it look nice and pretty. However, you will have to wait to see my PowerPoint until my presentation on May 5th (it will be the first SRP presentation too)! Afterwards, I will also post it on my blog.
In case you are interested in reading my research paper, I will include a version of it on my blog (hopefully) after I finish the edits and making it look nice and pretty. However, you will have to wait to see my PowerPoint until my presentation on May 5th (it will be the first SRP presentation too)! Afterwards, I will also post it on my blog.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Week 9 (4/7/17)
This week, I have been writing my own research paper. You may think writing a 10 page paper may seem boring, but it actually isn't. It is very cool and satisfying to recap all that I have worked on for the past 9 weeks into a paper and seeing all the progress I have made. By the way, I have about 12 pages done so far and I am just finishing up the Results section. I will also be writing a Discussion and Conclusion section to review my findings from other researcher. As a result, the paper still has some time (and pages) to go. I also made some cool graphs from my collected data and they look pretty fancy if I do say so myself.
Anyways, I still have some more work to do on finishing up the paper and I plan to begin designing my PowerPoint presentation next week.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Week 8 (3/31/17)
As I mentioned in last week's post, I read Tynan Sylvester's book, Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences, over the course of this week. After reading the book, I have learned a lot about the process of designing a video game and how all sorts of different elements exist in a video game in order to make them enjoyable and memorable.
I specifically looked at the book's second part, "Game Crafting" in order to gain a better understanding of the tools video game designers utilize, and how video games affect people on a psychological level.
However, before I discuss some of the key ideas that I found in the book's second part, I found that the author defined video games (and games in general) in an interesting way during the first part of the book. According to Sylvester, "A game is an artificial system for generating experiences," (Sylvester 44). Now, if you ever search up, "What is a video game" on Google, you will find a very basic definition that looks at the physical identification of a video game. In fact, here is exactly what Google spits at you (copy and pasted) as the first search result.
When you compare the two definitions, you can see how Sylvester identifies the psychological feature of video games as a key component of a game's definition. As a game designer, Sylvester knows the importance of understanding human psychology in order to make a game entertaining and memorable for the consumer. With the psychological element of a video game, it is important to understand that games can affect a player just as any other sort of action or experience that a person encounters in day-to-day life. Additionally, it is important to note Sylvester's inclusion of "artificial" in his definition. Although video games are made by humans, they do offer a lot more diverse types of experiences that can't simply be obtained in nature. In addition, these games can be structured so that a specific experience is created that may be beneficial or advantageous to the human player.
During my reading from last week, I encountered a research article by the title of, "The Benefits of Playing Video Games," by Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, and Rutger C.M.E. Engels. In this paper, the authors discussed the importance of "play," which is an important concept in developmental psychology. The authors looked at "play" in the eyes of psychologists such as Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky, and described "play" as an important part in childhood development for yielding social cognition. The authors of the article related this psychological concept to video games and explained how video game studies have shown that "play" can also be obtained through video games where players/participants develop behaviors that reflect the particular game they were tested on. This process of learning from video games is due to the fact that video games are immersive. As discussed in another paper that I read last week (the one by Jagad Lakshmi), the immersive nature of video games is the reason why people can transfer what they learn in a video game to real life.
Anyways, the reason why I brought up what I read last week was to explain the importance of immersion in video games. Sylvester's book does a great job discussing the tools designers use to make a video game immersive, as well as design choices that should be avoided that reduce immersion. Sylvester describes immersion as "when the mental division between the player's real self and his in-game avatar softens, so events happening to the avatar become meaningful as though they were happening to the player himself," (Sylvester 40). The author later describes in great detail the process to maximize immersion in three parts. According to Sylvester, "First, [video game designers] create flow to strip the real world out of the player's mind. Second, we create an arousal state using threats and challenges in the game mechanics. Finally, we use the fiction layer to label the player's arousal to match the character's feelings," (Sylvester 42). Sylvester discusses how in-game player decisions increase the amount of flow among other game mechanics. He also dives into the multiplayer function of video games where players actually learn to think in complex ways of Game Theory (the mathematical study, not the YouTube channel) in seemingly mind-numbing games like shooters. This has led me to reconsider my previous beliefs that games like Halo are more mentally complex than they first appear.
There was a TON more fascinating things that I read and learned about in this book that I have not thought about before reading. If you are at all interested in reading the book, I highly suggest it and I will give a link to the book on Amazon here.
Next week, I will begin writing my 10 page paper on my project. Yay!
I specifically looked at the book's second part, "Game Crafting" in order to gain a better understanding of the tools video game designers utilize, and how video games affect people on a psychological level.
However, before I discuss some of the key ideas that I found in the book's second part, I found that the author defined video games (and games in general) in an interesting way during the first part of the book. According to Sylvester, "A game is an artificial system for generating experiences," (Sylvester 44). Now, if you ever search up, "What is a video game" on Google, you will find a very basic definition that looks at the physical identification of a video game. In fact, here is exactly what Google spits at you (copy and pasted) as the first search result.
vid·e·o game
ˈvidēō ˌɡām/
noun
- a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display screen.
When you compare the two definitions, you can see how Sylvester identifies the psychological feature of video games as a key component of a game's definition. As a game designer, Sylvester knows the importance of understanding human psychology in order to make a game entertaining and memorable for the consumer. With the psychological element of a video game, it is important to understand that games can affect a player just as any other sort of action or experience that a person encounters in day-to-day life. Additionally, it is important to note Sylvester's inclusion of "artificial" in his definition. Although video games are made by humans, they do offer a lot more diverse types of experiences that can't simply be obtained in nature. In addition, these games can be structured so that a specific experience is created that may be beneficial or advantageous to the human player.
During my reading from last week, I encountered a research article by the title of, "The Benefits of Playing Video Games," by Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, and Rutger C.M.E. Engels. In this paper, the authors discussed the importance of "play," which is an important concept in developmental psychology. The authors looked at "play" in the eyes of psychologists such as Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky, and described "play" as an important part in childhood development for yielding social cognition. The authors of the article related this psychological concept to video games and explained how video game studies have shown that "play" can also be obtained through video games where players/participants develop behaviors that reflect the particular game they were tested on. This process of learning from video games is due to the fact that video games are immersive. As discussed in another paper that I read last week (the one by Jagad Lakshmi), the immersive nature of video games is the reason why people can transfer what they learn in a video game to real life.
Anyways, the reason why I brought up what I read last week was to explain the importance of immersion in video games. Sylvester's book does a great job discussing the tools designers use to make a video game immersive, as well as design choices that should be avoided that reduce immersion. Sylvester describes immersion as "when the mental division between the player's real self and his in-game avatar softens, so events happening to the avatar become meaningful as though they were happening to the player himself," (Sylvester 40). The author later describes in great detail the process to maximize immersion in three parts. According to Sylvester, "First, [video game designers] create flow to strip the real world out of the player's mind. Second, we create an arousal state using threats and challenges in the game mechanics. Finally, we use the fiction layer to label the player's arousal to match the character's feelings," (Sylvester 42). Sylvester discusses how in-game player decisions increase the amount of flow among other game mechanics. He also dives into the multiplayer function of video games where players actually learn to think in complex ways of Game Theory (the mathematical study, not the YouTube channel) in seemingly mind-numbing games like shooters. This has led me to reconsider my previous beliefs that games like Halo are more mentally complex than they first appear.
There was a TON more fascinating things that I read and learned about in this book that I have not thought about before reading. If you are at all interested in reading the book, I highly suggest it and I will give a link to the book on Amazon here.
Next week, I will begin writing my 10 page paper on my project. Yay!
Friday, March 24, 2017
Week 7 (3/24/17)
This week, I did a lot of reading and found out quite a bit of information on video game studies that research the potential benefits that can arise from the virtual media. I ended up reading multiple research papers that looked at the psychology behind video games and how video games could improve one's sense of cooperation. Get ready since this post will probably be pretty long (After writing this post, I'll argue that it is quite long, so prepare yourself... mentally).
In one article, I found that the researcher, Mike Schmierbach (what a fun last name to say!), wanted to see how different game modes affected players' aggression. During his experiment, he had different groups of participants play the game, Halo, in various modes that included single player campaign, co-op campaign, and Slayer mode. After the participants played their respective game modes, Schmierbach gave them a survey that required participants to complete certain words. This particular survey gave a couple of letters to start off with and let the participants fill out the rest of the letters to complete the word. Since Halo is a first-person shooter game, Schmierbach expected the completed words to typically have aggressive denotations and connotations. When comparing the selected words from each group of participants, he found that players who played in the co-op campaign mode were much more likely to make words that were nonviolent in nature. As a result, Schmierbach's experiment showed that there is a social aspect of gaming that can influence a person's point of view.
I also found two other experiments that used Halo as a selected game to test participants' behavior and looked at how a violent game could yield Tit-for-Tat behaviors. Before I discuss the experiments, I will explain what exactly is a Tit-for-Tat behavior. In a nutshell, Tit-for-Tat behaviors are actions that reflect previous actions. In other words, if someone does something to you, you are likely to do the same thing to them. In the first experiment, participants were organized into different groups and played different game modes of Halo with a partner where participants either played cooperatively with or competitively against their selected partner. After participants played Halo, the researchers told them that they would compete in a "reaction time task" against their Halo partner. During the reaction competition, the loser would have to listen to an unpleasant noise as a punishment, where the winner could choose how loud that noise would be. From this experiment, researchers found that participants who played cooperatively with their partner set the noise punishment at a significantly lower level that participants who played competitively against their partner. In the other Halo Tit-for-Tat experiment, the experiment was set up similarly where participants would either play with or against their opponent in Halo. However, the difference between this experiment and the previous one was that when the researchers looked to measure a player's Tit-for-Tat behavior, they gave each participant four dimes and a partner. The researchers told the participants that they could keep their dimes or give some/all of their dimes to their partner where any dime given to a partner would be doubled in value. This process was repeated for nine rounds so that the participants could see how much money they were given, and then decide whether or not they want to give/keep more or less of their dimes in the next round. According to the results, players in the cooperative group exhibited more Tit-for-Tat strategies where each partner tended to give more in order for both of them to receive a larger sum of money at the end of the experiment. I did briefly look at this particular experiment when I was designing my own research and decided to adopt an altered version of the Give/Keep Test since I thought that it would be interesting and useful for my own results.
Besides looking at research papers detailing experiments on video games, I also read articles that discuss more of the social aspects of gaming whether that may be focused on the immediate team that plays a video game or a massive online community that works together in order to help educate other players on the ins-and-outs of a particular game. Since video games encourage and even demand the use of teams, this form of media has helped people improve their skills in communication, leadership, and teamwork with other players that not only exists in video games, but also spreads out into the real world. According to Lakshmi Jagad's paper, teachings in video games can be transferred to real life when the two settings are similar. Jagad quotes another researcher, by the name of Dede, that the transfer can happen since "multi-user virtual environments provide a sense of psychological immersion due to design strategies that 'combine actional, symbolic, and sensory factors in manipulating one's avatar to further the suspense that one is 'inside' a virtual environment'" (Jagad 18).
I also read another paper that discussed video games with a behavioral psychology perspective, which looked at the cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social benefits of video games. However, I will not dive in too deep into that paper since I know that this blog post is already long and intimidating to look at.
In case you have made it this far into the post, congrats! I am planning on doing more reading for next week and I have a book that specifically discusses the elements of video game design. So hopefully I will get a deeper understanding of the elements in play with video games.
In one article, I found that the researcher, Mike Schmierbach (what a fun last name to say!), wanted to see how different game modes affected players' aggression. During his experiment, he had different groups of participants play the game, Halo, in various modes that included single player campaign, co-op campaign, and Slayer mode. After the participants played their respective game modes, Schmierbach gave them a survey that required participants to complete certain words. This particular survey gave a couple of letters to start off with and let the participants fill out the rest of the letters to complete the word. Since Halo is a first-person shooter game, Schmierbach expected the completed words to typically have aggressive denotations and connotations. When comparing the selected words from each group of participants, he found that players who played in the co-op campaign mode were much more likely to make words that were nonviolent in nature. As a result, Schmierbach's experiment showed that there is a social aspect of gaming that can influence a person's point of view.
I also found two other experiments that used Halo as a selected game to test participants' behavior and looked at how a violent game could yield Tit-for-Tat behaviors. Before I discuss the experiments, I will explain what exactly is a Tit-for-Tat behavior. In a nutshell, Tit-for-Tat behaviors are actions that reflect previous actions. In other words, if someone does something to you, you are likely to do the same thing to them. In the first experiment, participants were organized into different groups and played different game modes of Halo with a partner where participants either played cooperatively with or competitively against their selected partner. After participants played Halo, the researchers told them that they would compete in a "reaction time task" against their Halo partner. During the reaction competition, the loser would have to listen to an unpleasant noise as a punishment, where the winner could choose how loud that noise would be. From this experiment, researchers found that participants who played cooperatively with their partner set the noise punishment at a significantly lower level that participants who played competitively against their partner. In the other Halo Tit-for-Tat experiment, the experiment was set up similarly where participants would either play with or against their opponent in Halo. However, the difference between this experiment and the previous one was that when the researchers looked to measure a player's Tit-for-Tat behavior, they gave each participant four dimes and a partner. The researchers told the participants that they could keep their dimes or give some/all of their dimes to their partner where any dime given to a partner would be doubled in value. This process was repeated for nine rounds so that the participants could see how much money they were given, and then decide whether or not they want to give/keep more or less of their dimes in the next round. According to the results, players in the cooperative group exhibited more Tit-for-Tat strategies where each partner tended to give more in order for both of them to receive a larger sum of money at the end of the experiment. I did briefly look at this particular experiment when I was designing my own research and decided to adopt an altered version of the Give/Keep Test since I thought that it would be interesting and useful for my own results.
Besides looking at research papers detailing experiments on video games, I also read articles that discuss more of the social aspects of gaming whether that may be focused on the immediate team that plays a video game or a massive online community that works together in order to help educate other players on the ins-and-outs of a particular game. Since video games encourage and even demand the use of teams, this form of media has helped people improve their skills in communication, leadership, and teamwork with other players that not only exists in video games, but also spreads out into the real world. According to Lakshmi Jagad's paper, teachings in video games can be transferred to real life when the two settings are similar. Jagad quotes another researcher, by the name of Dede, that the transfer can happen since "multi-user virtual environments provide a sense of psychological immersion due to design strategies that 'combine actional, symbolic, and sensory factors in manipulating one's avatar to further the suspense that one is 'inside' a virtual environment'" (Jagad 18).
I also read another paper that discussed video games with a behavioral psychology perspective, which looked at the cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social benefits of video games. However, I will not dive in too deep into that paper since I know that this blog post is already long and intimidating to look at.
In case you have made it this far into the post, congrats! I am planning on doing more reading for next week and I have a book that specifically discusses the elements of video game design. So hopefully I will get a deeper understanding of the elements in play with video games.
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Week 6 (3/18/17)
I took off this week for Spring Break. As a result, I did not do too much with respect to my Senior Research Project and, instead, enjoyed some time off. But don't worry, I will be working quite a bit on my project next week by reading various texts and articles where I will post my findings on them.
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