Social and pervasive gaming
Feckr! The Game for Closet Sociopaths at CHI2011
May 9th
Oh crap, here we go again!
Feckr is an Android application that allows you to secretly “tag” people with messages. Tags are anonymous, permanent and public – every Feckr player can see all the tags for people around them. Unless they also play Feckr, your victims will never know what you really think of them.
The only problem: Feckr is scattershot – when you create a new tag, it gets applied to everyone nearby, whether you mean it or not.
One of our favourite uses of Feckr is as a sort of “rude radar”. If you open Feckr and walk around an area, the app updates nearby tags LIVE, so you can see how tags change as you walk between different groups of people. It works especially well at larger social events like conferences or festivals, since you will often encounter the same people and have a greater chance of seeing more tags.
Feckr is available for FREE for Android devices – Either search on the market, open this link on your device, or scan the QR code below to download and start playing.
If you are attending CHI 2011 you can use Feckr to enhance your conference experience! As the week goes on, use Feckr to tag fellow conference attendees and to find out what other Feckr users think about the people around you.
Feckr is part of our research into playfulness and mischief in HCI – we all have frustrations when in social situations but social norms prevent us from doing anything about them. Feckr provides a secret shared outlet for these frustrations in a playful and cheeky way.
Visit the Feckr.me to find out more information on Feckr and to download the game.
Mindtrek 2010
Oct 14th
LiSC had a presence again this year at Mindtrek in Tampere, Finland. This nifty little conference blends together games studies, social media and ubicomp along with business talks from industry pros.
We had two papers to present. Firstly, Ben had a paper about “Emergence and Playfulness in Social Games” (free pdf).
Although the paper is about social games exclusively, the appearance of runaway hit Minecraft prompted a change in focus of the presentation. The talk, shown below, talks about emergence in Minecraft and how it relates to the same playfulness with which many players of Social Games such as Farm Town engage.
Mindcraft – or why emergence makes Farmville as important as Minecraft
View more presentations from bkirman.
The presentation was well received – Sebastian Deterding does a great job of placing these points in context, and talking about the importance of “underspecifying” in game design.
The second presentation was Derek’s paper on the “Step Matron” project that tested the effects of social competition on exercise at work. It is called “Motivating physical activity at work: using persuasive social media for competitive step counting” (free pdf).
This presentation also went very well – we were honoured that it was chosen as Best Academic Paper at Mindtrek!
Unfortunately Derek wasn’t able to attend the ceremony, but kindly Ben stepped forward to take the credit and copious liquid rewards.
Kiitos paljon!
First Meeting of the journal club – 12th march 2010 – What is Blowtooth?
Mar 16th
| The first meeting was essentially a trial run of the journal club idea – and it seemed to be quite an interesting and useful exercise. The topic under discussion was an introspective one – we decided to take a critical look at a paper that we recently published, along with the reviews it attracted in order to see if we could figure out how to move forward with similar work.
The paper itself is based on our pervasive airport security game ‘Blowtooth’ and has recently been accepted to the alt.chi track of chi 2010 – the worlds leading HCI conference. The paper itself had drawn very interesting reviews that implied how the game is interesting – but they didn’t agree on why. Some suggested that it is an example of critical game design, others – surveillance art and others simply as an interesting example of pervasive games design. Discussions on friday focused on how the game – like a lot of computer games – runs counter to traditional thinking in HCI – its appeal is based on making the user more anxious, rather than less anxious. We liked this as a theme and have decided to work on improvements to the original blowtooth game that can help us investigate it further. We also intend to design further game-based pervasive applications that will examine the idea of computers that deliberately make you more anxious. We’ll keep the blog updated as this work progresses. Next weeks session will be similar – we are looking at a paper that has been accepted to CHI and we will discuss how best to move forward with this research, based on relevant stuff we have read. |
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CHI 2010
Feb 21st
We are delighted to have a strong representation at CHI 2010, with five separate pieces of work that have been accepted to various tracks of the conference. CHI 2010 takes place from April 10th – 15th in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. CHI (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) is the premier international conference for the field of human-computer interaction. CHI 2010 looks outward to the human experience of computing in the world. “We are HCI†challenges our community to embrace the diversity of HCI in the world and to exclaim our commitment as a profession to empower people from all walks of life.
Ben will present a main conference track paper on social network analysis entitled “Improving Social Game Engagement on Facebook through Enhanced Socio-Contextual Information.” We will present two papers at the alt.chi track of the conference. The first of these examines pervasive gaming in high security environments and is based around an initial evaluation of the Blowtooth game (see http://www.blowtooth.com). The second of our alt.chi papers deals with the possible advantages of analysing feedback delivered by persuasive applications in a way that is influenced by the findings of behavioural science. This paper is entitled “There’s a Monster in My Kitchen: Using Aversive Feedback to Motivate Behaviour Change.”
The two remaining contributions are Work-in-Progress poster presentations. The first of these presents a social tagging-based methodology for determining content of food photographs, while the second, presented by Derek Foster, details the results of a pilot study of an application that combines the use of pedometer data and social networks to motivate users to increase the amount of exercise.
MindTrek 2009
Jul 27th
LiSC are delighted to be attending the 2009 MindTrek Conference in Tampere, Finland, which takes place from 30th September to 2nd October. MindTrek is the leading Nordic digital media and business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. The conference brings together entrepreneurs, researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines that are involved in the development of media in various fields, ranging from sociology and economy, to technology.
Ben Kirman will present a paper entitled “Mario, Luigi and Dave: The Effect of Language on the Social Structure of a Bilingual Online Mobile Game.”
Abstract – In this paper, we explore the structure of a social community built in an online game that was released in two languages, specifically examining the behaviours of players involved in inter-lingual interaction. This asynchronous social game was released simultaneously in Italian and English. The player base was seeded with English and Italian players but allowed to grow organically without restriction. Despite the built-in segregation by language, we found that the entire player-base formed into a single social network and developed strategies for overcoming the challenges faced by a multi-lingual game community.
Using Network Analysis, we break down the community in the game based on language and play style. We demonstrate that the behaviour of both English and Italian players was equivalent, and that play style had no effect on the likelihood of players deliberately engaging in inter-lingual communication.
In the context of the strategies used by the players in our experiment, we discuss game design patterns that provide incentives for users to behave more socially and how to create tools to enable the players to cross the lingual and cultural barriers in online games.
Conor Linehan will be presenting a paper entitled “Developing a serious game to evaluate and train group decision making skills.”
Abstract – The success of a serious game depends on whether the skill being taught and practiced in the game is the same as that which is required in the real world. The current paper describes the building of a serious game designed to teach group decision making skills to a unique audience; people who co-ordinate responses to real-world emergencies such as floods, fires, volcanoes and chemical spills.
Eighteen participants were recruited and videotaped while playing a paper prototype of the game. Players’ actions within the game were analysed in terms of whether the challenges that are present in real world decision-making environments are also present in the game-world decision making environment. It appears that the defining characteristics of group decision making behaviour, especially the mistakes, are evident in groups that play our game. In addition, the round-based game structure allows a tutor the opportunity to deliver in-depth qualitative feedback without interrupting game play. Thus, the game design should prove to be a valid environment in which to train, practice and evaluate the decision making behaviours of groups and function as a valuable and engaging part of a group decision making skills training course.
8th International Conference on Entertainment Computing
Jul 14th
| The 8th International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) takes place in Paris from 3-5th September 2009. ICEC is the longest established and most prestigious conference in the field of entertainment computing and an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst researchers and developers in the field of entertainment computing.
Ben Kirman is presenting a paper entitled “Hardcore Classi cation: Identifying Play Styles in Social Games using Network Analysis.” Abstract – In the social network of a web-based online game, all players are not equal. Through network analysis, we show that the community of players in a online social game is an example of a scale free small world network and that the growth of the player-base obeys a power law. The community is centred around a minority group of “hardcore” players who de fine the social environment for the game, and without whom the social network would collapse. Methods are discussed for identifying this critically important subset of players automatically through analysing social behaviours within the game. |
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2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing
Jul 14th
The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing takes place in Vancouver from August 29-31st, 2009. This conference provides a key forum for researchers and industry practitioners to exchange information regarding advancements in the state of art and practice of social computing. Social Computing can be broadly defined as computational facilitation of social studies and human social dynamics as well as design and use of information and communication technologies that consider social context.
Ben Kirman will present a paper entitled “Gaming on and off the Social Graph: The Social Structure of Facebook Games.”
Abstract—Games built on Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become a phenomenon since 3rd party developer tools were released by OSNs such as Facebook. However, apart from their explosive popularity, little is known about the nature of the social networks that are built during play. In this paper, we present the findings of a network analysis study carried out on two Facebook applications, in comparison with a similar but stand-alone game. We found that games built both on and off a social graph exhibit similar social properties. Specifically, the distribution of player-to-player interactions decays as a power law with a similar exponent for the majority of players. For games built on the social network platform however, we find that the networks are characterised by a sharp cut-off, compared with the classically scale-free nature of the social network for the game not built on an existing social graph.
Future and Reality of Games Conference (F.R.O.G.) 2009
Jul 13th
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3rd Vienna Games Conference Future and Reality of Games (F.R.O.G.) 2009 “Exploring the Edge of Gaming” Vienna, Austria, Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September 2009 Vienna’s annual Games Conference FROG brings together leading game studies researchers, game designers, players, and education professionals from around the world. The main objective of FROG 09 is to explore the edge of gaming and discuss insights into how to reach beyond the limits of theory and practice of game play. LiSC are contributing to two sessions at this event. Ben Kirman is presenting a paper on “Gaming on the Edge of Good Taste: Playful Misconduct in Social Games” on Friday 25th September, Conor Linehan is presenting “A behavioural framework for designing educational computer games” on Saturday 26th. Abstract – Research has indicated that computer games can be innovative and powerful tools for education. Combining psychological research and games design principles offers a framework for developing educational games that promote learning while maintaining high motivation of the players. However, there has yet to be consensus on the most effective method of combining psychological research with games design principles. The current paper proposes that behavioural teaching methodologies already resemble game structures in some respects, and thus may be ideally suited to inform the design of educational computer games. Indeed, designing games based on behavioural teaching principles would have the reciprocal benefit of providing a medium through which these highly successful teaching programmes can be rolled out on a much larger scale than is currently possible. For more details click here |
Play our new Facebook games!
Jul 13th
We have created three games designed to utilise facebook in order to investigate the role of social networking in game playing and the effect of facebook games on subsequent social interactions. All three games – Familiars, Magpies and Beachcombers – are free to play and are currently available to all facebook users.
Familiars (http://apps.facebook.com/familiar) is a game that assigns an animal companion to the player based on an analysis of their Facebook activity, along with votes from friends and output from facial analysis of users’ photographs.
The animal companions – or ‘Familiars’ – change form primarily according to the social behaviour displayed by the player on facebook. For example, a user may be very socially active one week, commenting on friends’ walls and photos and receiving many comments from their friends. In this case, the familiar will reflect this by becoming a social creature such as a rabbit or a wolf. On the other hand, if a user is particularly inactive in a week the familiar may reflect this by becoming a less social creature, such as a bear or lobster. The player can tell their familiar what kind of animal they would like it to be, but it knows how you behave, so will always reflect this.
‘Familiars’ is based on PASION technology and is designed to provide players and their friends with intuitive visual feedback on underlying social behaviours – thus enhancing their experience of using social networking sites such as facebook.
Magpies are birds that are famous for collecting shiny objects. ‘Magpies’ (http://apps.facebook.com/magpiemagpie) is a game based on collecting ‘shiny objects’ – cool stuff! Players create collections – or stashes – based around themes and other players can contribute pictures, locations and internet links to the stash if they like the theme. For example, players have created stashes based on cute animals, best films and odd inventions. Players can also band together in groups in order to compete together. The quality of the stashes and the social interactions displayed by players in the game are analysed in order to find out who is King of the Magpies!
Beachcombers are people who search beaches for hidden treasures. ‘Beachcombers’ (http://apps.facebook.com/beachcombers) is similar to Magpies, as it is also a game about creating collections of cool stuff such as pictures, locations and internet links. However, Beachcombers provides a simpler scoring mechanism that does not involve social network analysis. Simply the quality of stashes is calculated in order to find out who is King of the Beachcombers!
All three games are free to use and completely open to all Facebook users, so please pass on this invitation to anyone you think would be interested.