Rosa Mikeal Martey

Performing the Looking-Glass Self: Avatar Appearance and Group Identity in Second Life

This article explores avatar appearance of 211 individuals in the virtual world Second Life (SL). Through analysis of observations, online interviews, and a survey, it examines the ways that players use avatars to perform self contextualized by group identities, from gender, race, and sexuality to specific communities, such as furries or role players. Drawing on literature from fashion and dress, we examine how players choose avatar appearance in relation to participation or alignment with groups and their prevailing social norms. We found that although Second Life provides unprecedented freedom in appearance, local social contexts, as much as external ones, created powerful boundaries and expectations, leading many participants to seek socially acceptable appearance that would be interpreted in certain ways as part of their interactions.

The strategic female: gender-switching and player behavior in online games

As players craft and enact identities in digital games, the relationship between player and avatar gender remains unclear. This study examines how 11 in-game chat, movement, and appearance behaviors differed by gender and by men who did and did not use a female avatar – or ‘gender-switchers’. Drawing on social role and feminist theories of gender, we argue that gender differences in behavior align with the social roles and norms that establish appropriate and inappropriate behavior for men and women. Thus we complicate questions of ‘gender-switching’ by examining not only player gender, but also player psychological Gender Role as measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory to examine how gender does – and does not – manifest in digital worlds. Analysis revealed that men may not necessarily seek to mask their offline gender when they use a female avatar, but there is evidence they do reinforce idealized notions of feminine appearance and communication. Movement behaviors, however, show no differences across men who do and do not gender-switch. That is, selecting avatar gender may be less a matter of identity expression, and more a strategic selection of available multi-modal codes that players take up in their navigation of this digital space.

Visual spaces, norm governed places: the influence of spatial context online

Current theories of social interaction and normative influence in Computer-Mediated Communication were developed in the era of the internet predominated by text-based interaction. With the growth of visual-spatial worlds like Second Life, these theories need to be re-examined. The evolution of thinking about social norms online has moved from a mechanistic view to a systems view of humans and communication technology intertwined in a complex relationship that includes groups, identity, communication, and norms. Missing from that system is explicit attention to context and the important role of the environment that encases interaction. This article discusses theories of how architecture and embodiment shape offline life and how such theories increasingly apply in online interaction in visual social spaces. We argue that such spaces communicate normative information that influences behavior within a given context in both conscious and unconscious ways. This article then discusses implications of visual-spatial environments on existing theories of interaction online.

Measuring Game Engagement: Multiple Methods and Construct Complexity

Background. Engagement has been identified as a crucial component of learning in games research. However, the conceptualization and operationalization of engagement vary widely in the literature. Many valuable approaches illuminate ways in which presence, flow, arousal, participation, and other concepts constitute or contribute to engagement. However, few studies examine multiple conceptualizations of engagement in the same project. Method. This article discusses the results of two experiments that measure engagement in five different ways: survey self-report, content analyses of player videos, electro-dermal activity, mouse movements, and game click logs. We examine the relationships among these measures and assess how they are affected by the technical characteristics of a 30-minute, custom-built, educational game: use of a customized character, level of narrative complexity, and level of art complexity. Results. We found that the five measures of engagement correlated in limited ways, and that they revealed substantially different relationships with game characteristics. We conclude that engagement as a construct is more complex than is captured in any of these measures individually and that using multiple methods to assess engagement can illuminate aspects of engagement not detectable by a single method of measurement.

Serious Efforts at Bias Reduction: The Effects of Digital Games and Avatar Customization on Three Cognitive Biases

As research on serious games continues to grow, we investigate the efficacy of digital games to train enhanced decision making through understanding cognitive biases. This study investigates the ability of a 30-minute digital game as compared with a 30-minute video to teach people how to recognize and mitigate three cognitive biases: fundamental attribution error, confirmation bias, and bias blind spot. We investigate the effects of character customization on learning outcomes as compared with an assigned character. We use interviews to understand the qualitative differences between the conditions. Experimental results suggest that the game was more effective at teaching and mitigating cognitive biases than was the training video. Although interviews suggest players liked avatar customization, results of the experiment indicate that avatar customization had no significant effect on learning outcomes. This research provides information future designers can use to choose the best medium and affordances for the most effective learning outcomes on cognitive processes.

Communicating age in Second Life: The contributions of textual and visual factors

Although considerable research has identified patterns in online communication and interaction related to a range of individual characteristics, analyses of age have been limited, especially those that compare age groups. Research that does examine online communication by age largely focuses on linguistic elements. However, social identity approaches to group communication emphasize the importance of non-linguistic factors such as appearance and non-verbal behaviors. These factors are especially important to explore in online settings where traditional physical markers of age are largely unseen. To examine ways that users communicate age identity through both visual and textual means, we use multiple linear regression and qualitative methods to explore the behavior of 201 players of a custom game in the virtual world Second Life. Analyses of chat, avatar movement, and appearance suggest that although residents primarily used youthful-looking avatars, age differences emerged more strongly in visual factors than in language use.

Analytics-Driven Design: Impact and Implications of Team Member Psychological Perspectives on a Serious Games (SGs) Design Framework

The number of educational or serious games (SGs) available to educators has increased in recent years as the cost of game development has been reduced. A benefit of SGs is that they employ not only lesson content but also knowledge contexts where learners can connect information to its context of use with active participation and engagement. This, in turn, improves learners’ ability to recall, integrate, and apply what they learn. Much of the research on game analytics has examined learner in-game trails to build predictive models that identify negative learner actions (e.g., systematic guessing after the fact). However, analytics can also be used in the game design and development phases. Drawing on evidence-centered design (ECD), the chapter outlines ways that analytics can drive the development of scenarios and activities in a game and thus allows SGs to function as contextual apprenticeships, providing robust assessment opportunities. We describe how ECD theory was applied in a project to develop and test a SG that trains people to reduce their reliance on cognitive biases. We describe instances during the design process where our team encountered obstacles due to differing psychological and learning/teaching orientations, a topic rarely explored in the SG or ECD literature. Furthermore, we describe the final analytics-based game design features. We propose an additional element (persona) and how we anticipate incorporating that ECD extension into future projects.

Balancing Play and Formal Training in the Design of Serious Games

This article discusses the design and development of two serious games intended to train people to reduce their reliance on cognitive biases in their decision-making in less than an hour each. In our development process, we found a tension between rich and flexible experimentation and exploration experiences and robust learning experiences that ensured the lesson content was easily understood and recalled. In line with game-based learning research, initial designs were oriented toward exploration and discovery. Analyses of interviews, playtesting, logs, and surveys revealed that many players were frustrated or confused by the interface and content of the more complex games, even when consistent differences between levels of visual detail or narrative complexity were not present. We conclude that teaching complex topics such as cognitive biases to the widest range of learners required reducing the games’ playful and exploratory elements and balancing formal training content with simpler visuals and text.

FIND MORE, DO MORE, REVEAL LESS

Understanding the relationship between gender and technology demands more than simply tracking the numbers of women and men online or lists of their activities. Gender theorists call for more research into how and why women perform certain online activities, emphasizing the role of identity and the importance of context on perceptions and behavior. In order to examine the influence of gender in everyday online activities, this project examines womens perceptions of the internet within a specific context: looking for a job. It asks, how do perceptions of the internet influence womens techniques and strategies in navigating gender barriers and affordances in a job search? Interviews with 20 women looking for jobs online reveal that associations between gender and technologies and between gender and occupations can affect the job search process at various stages, including how and where people look for jobs, which jobs they apply to, and feelings of confidence and interest. Three characteristics of the internet emerged as central to womens strategies for navigating gender associations: (1) the volume and range of information online; (2) productivity and efficiency; and (3) anonymity. These characteristics are aspects of the ways in which the internet can both improve and limit womens online job searches.

The Temporal Attentive Observation (TAO) Scale: Development of an Instrument to Assess Attentive Behavior Sequences During Serious Gameplay

The engaging nature of video games has intrigued learning professionals attempting to capture and retain learners’ attention. Designing learning interventions that not only capture the learner’s attention, but also are designed around the natural cycle of attention will be vital for learning. This paper introduces the temporal attentive observation (TAO) instrument, an instrument developed to assess attentive behavior sequences during serious gameplay. We use an established three-step process for developing observational systems that includes identifying the construct, determining validity, and demonstrating practicality criteria. We conclude that the TAO instrument reliably measures attention behaviors where participants’ faces can be recorded during an experiment. Furthermore, we suggest that TAO should be considered as a part of an attention measurement package.