GUEST BLOG: That's me in the corner... a video game psychologist's FAQ!

On a recent hospital visit the nurse (a woman in her 50s) asked me what I do for a living. I gave her my standard reply: "I am a psychologist specialising in cyberpsychology, so how humans interact with technology and specifically video game play." She gave me a fascinated look (it's the response I usually get) and replied: "I love playing Temple Run – why do I find it so compelling?" I answered her: "Because it makes you happy and getting high rewards compared to the effort you’re putting in makes you want to play more."

Psychologists have used physiological measurements such as heart rate to measure engagement

This conversation wasn’t a one off for me. When people find out what I do, they often want to know more and are instinctively interested in why humans engage in video game play. Personally, I think this speaks volumes about the power video games as entertainment on a global scale.

Developers are even more fascinated than gamers in the answer to that elusive question: “What makes people so engaged in video game play?” While developers  have many ways of gauging engagement, such as churning data, sales, time spent playing, etc., as a psychologist, I am more interested in scientific measurements as a result of research around gamer engagement, which can complement and even challenge the measurements developers already use to heighten the experience for the gamer.

A comprehensive review on game play engagement is published in Computers in Human Behaviour conducted in 2012 by Elizabeth Boyle, Thomas Connolly, Thomas Hainey and James Boyle. It sheds some light on engagement and highlights gaps in the research in this area. The study reviewed research from a ten year period between 2001 and 2011 excluding educational and serious games. All the papers reviewed were from research that was referenced in academic journals and included a large number of research papers all looking at different aspects of engagement.

The paper highlights the lack of consensus about what engagement actually is, although lots of constructs have been proposed: immersion, enjoyment, presence and flow, for example. Perhaps the best known concept is flow, which is often characterised by complete optimal experience and absorption in the task one is involved in to the exclusion of everything else. Other researchers challenge this suggesting that actually immersion is a better construct as it can be more varied in terms of the subjective experience and does not, as flow does, concern itself solely with the optimal experience.

Outside of the subjective experience, engagement may be measured objectively by studying the time spent playing a game, although some researchers suggest this is difficult to justify as a concrete measurement as factors like negative motives for playing may hinder this measurement. Lab research around physiological responses in gameplay are interesting, such as work around eye movements and re-engagement post play as a useful objective measurement of immersion, whilst other physiological measurements such as heart rate can inform around emotional responses, these can be ambiguous when measured.

According to psychologists enjoyment levels and motivation to play can predict engagement

Boyle's review showed that surveys were the most popular method of studying motivation and engagement, which is fine as long as they are scientifically designed to have good validity and reliability. However, there is a lack of good qualitative research which would further enhance our understanding of the subjective experience of engagement, and this is an area that developers may consider embarking upon in terms of research.

Players want more and more out of the gaming experience and developers could utilise scientific psychological measurements of engagement as objective robust measurement tools that can be specific to genre, gamer profile, target market as well as platform. The scope to get really close to the gamer using psychological scientific measurements combined with more traditional developer measurements can only be a good thing in terms of quality of the game experience for the player.

So, if you meet a cyberpsychologist in real life, please don't ask us what we do.

Reference

Boyle, E.A., Connolly, T.M., Hainey, T., Boyle, J.M. (2012). Engagement in digital entertainment games: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behaviour, 28(3), 771-780

This blog was written by Berni Good who is the founder of Cyberpsychologist Limited (www.cyberpsychologist.com) and who is speaking at Develop in Brighton – www.developconference.com. 

GUEST BLOG - AJ GRAND-SCRUTTON: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

When I was asked to write a blog post about something I feel passionate about in terms of game development there was something which was very prominent in my mind: the way in which people are treated in the so-called chain of command.

                                                                                                          (Aj - right)
Looking at my career and the careers of my friends, it feels that the higher certain individuals move up that chain the more they behave like assholes to those below them. Whether this be seniors, leads, producers, directors, it was always the same, suddenly a holier than thou attitude of “Well, I’ve got a more important job title so I’m better than you,” appears.

One thing I didn’t understand until now is that job titles are just words. Since Dlala was formed last June, Craig [Thomas, co-founder Dlala Studios] and I have had an assortment of titles each. I’ve been Creative Director, Chief Creative Officer and now Chief Executive Officer and for the majority of that time we were the only two full time staff members!

Don’t get me wrong, job titles can serve a good purpose. Having roles defined can be a good thing, but not for the purpose of forcing authoritative nonsense down the throats of incredibly talented, and often underappreciated, individuals. Job roles, and their titles, should be seen as a driver and a reward, not as a stamp of power. Looking back on my own career now I can think of one time in particular that I had some absolutely horrendous arguments over a ‘promotion’. Reality was I was already doing the job itself. All the tasks, responsibilities, etc… they were all mine already, but I wanted that job title, I wanted that stamp of approval that acknowledged my hard work and effort. Not to feel superior to anyone but to know that I was progressing and recognised.

I should point out at this point that this isn’t the ranting of some disgruntled developer, or a chance for me to take cheap shots at people. This is a post from someone who has moved into a role which is more focused on production/direction/management. And in that role I try to remember the following two points every day:

1              Protect Your Team

“Congratulations! You’ve been promoted, you are now a manager.” What does this mean? This means you now have a responsibility to protect your team no matter what. The second Craig and I started hiring people we noticed a massive change of focus onto the security of our little family at Dlala. We know that if something went wrong tomorrow we could get back in the parents’ garages and start again, but now we won’t let it happen because we have four amazing guys who count on us to keep this studio going.

It’s not just about job security, though, you need to protect your team from blame. Reality is everyone fucks up and it shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. The second you are scared to make mistakes is the second that making games becomes hard. Most important of all, protect them from yourself. It’s easy when you are being shouted at to turn around, blame your team, and then take them into a room and unleash on them. Your team should never be told, “If you don’t do better you will probably be out of job,” because it should never get to that point. Fear is an awful, unproductive motivator.

2              You need them, they don’t need you

How many successful projects have been made with just a producer, just a director or just a manager of some type? NONE. Now how many projects have been made by a single developer or a developer/artist combination? A metric fuck ton. Just remember that without your staff there is no game but without you there still could be.

As I said this isn’t a post for me to slag anyone off and this is definitely not me saying I know best. This is a post for me to warn myself and a reminder of what I don’t want to become.

This blog was written by AJ Grand-Scrutton, CEO of Dlala Studios. Visit http://dlalastudios.com/ for more information or contact AJ on Twitter @dnost.