Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Video Games
- Creators: McNamara, Danielle
- Creators: Forbes, Allison
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
The gameplay experience can be understood as an interaction between player and game design characteristics. A greater understanding of these characteristics can be gained through empirical means. Subsequently, an enhanced knowledge of these characteristics should enable the creation of games that effectively generate desirable experiences for players. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between gameplay enjoyment and the individual characteristics of gaming goal orientations, game usage, and gender. A total of 301 participants were surveyed and the data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This led to an expanded Gameplay Enjoyment Model (GEM) with 41 game features, an overarching Enjoyment factor, and 9 specific components, including Challenge, Companionship, Discovery, Fantasy, Fidelity, Identity, Multiplayer, Recognition, and Strategy. Furthermore, the 3x2 educational goal orientation framework was successfully applied to a gaming context. The resulting 3x2 Gaming Goal Orientations (GGO) model consists of 18 statements that describe players' motivations for gaming, which are distributed across the six dimensions of Task-Approach, Task-Avoidance, Self-Approach, Self-Avoidance, Other-Approach, and Other-Avoidance. Lastly, players' individual characteristics were used to predict gameplay enjoyment, which resulted in the formation of the GEM-Individual Characteristics (GEM-IC) model. In GEM-IC, the six GGO dimensions were the strongest predictors. Meanwhile, game usage variables like multiplayer, genre, and platform preference, were minimal to moderate predictors. Although commonly appearing in games research, gender and game time commitment variables failed to predict enjoyment. The results of this study enable important work to be conducted involving game experiences and player characteristics. After several empirical iterations, GEM is considered suitable to employ as a research and design tool. In addition, GGO should be useful to researchers interested in how player motivations relate to gameplay experiences. Moreover, GEM-IC points to several variables that may prove useful in future research. Accordingly, it is posited that researchers will derive more meaningful insights on games and players by investigating detailed, context-specific characteristics as compared to general, demographic ones. Ultimately, it is believed that GEM, GGO, and GEM-IC will be useful tools for researchers and designers who seek to create effective gameplay experiences that meet the needs of players.
ContributorsQuick, John (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Committee member) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are important predictors of performance in educational settings. Thus, understanding the processes underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence is important. Three large scale individual differences experiments were conducted to determine the mechanisms underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to assess whether individual differences in strategic behavior contribute to the variance shared between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. In Experiment 3, competing theories for describing the underlying processes (cognitive vs. strategy) were evaluated in a comprehensive examination of potential underlying mechanisms. These data help inform existing theories about the mechanisms underlying the relation between WMC and gF. However, these data also indicate that the current theoretical model of the shared variance between WMC and gF would need to be revised to account for the data in Experiment 3. Possible sources of misfit are considered in the discussion along with a consideration of the theoretical implications of observing those relations in the Experiment 3 data.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Redick, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This qualitative study examined how culture and community are created in the popular sports video game, NBA 2K. Sports video games are some of the most popular video games, but there has been lack of critical scholarship into these games. By engaging two popular cultural theories, the circuit of culture and the fields of cultural production, this study critically examined how culture shapes online communities in sports video games.By employing a variety of ethnographic methods including thick descriptions of cultural artifacts, an intake questionnaire, interviews with 17 NBA 2K players, and in-game participant observation, this study established cultural patterns, insider language, and other elements of culture within the NBA 2K community. The researcher learned to play NBA 2K, critically examined both physical and virtual cultural artifacts, conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with game players, and participated in NBA 2K with study participants to contextualize their experiences.
This study established NBA 2K as having some of the most advanced functions of any sports video games, including sophisticated multi-user domains (MUDs) and complex avatar (MyPLAYER) creation. NBA 2K offers a unique opportunity to create diverse MyPLAYER representations, setting the bar for sports video games to include people from varied physical identities. Though the game has made strides to include WNBA athletes, the lack of gendered options for the MyPLAYER feature reinforces misogynistic and hegemonic power structures that
are common in both sports culture and gaming culture.
ContributorsForbes, Allison (Author) / Gilpin, Dawn (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Kishonna (Committee member) / Reed, Sada (Committee member) / Silcock, Burton (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021