In the open discussions regarding what games are, how to study play, and what the value of games will be in the 21st century, I'd like to bring an example of fascinating research regarding a game that Professor Jagoda mentioned in class: PeaceMaker. As Jagoda discussed, PeaceMaker made waves for its "serious" political play that tried to influence opinions on the conflict in Israel-Palestine. The concept of a game that could induce empathy-oriented decision making and lead to political unity is an extremely appetizing one: a game that is fun, and educational, and can effectively change people's minds on one of the most divisive topics in centuries? It's a pipe dream.
This is what Dynamic Decision Making (DDM) researchers decided to put to the test when they followed a group of students who played the game as part of an Arab-Israeli history course. DDM researchers focus on the ways that people arrive at decisions, but they look beyond traditional models of opportunity cost and rational choice theory; instead, they combine the many different factors influencing one's decision making process to understand as much of their mindset as possible. In the case of PeaceMaker, they had a structured decision making habitat (the game) and background information on the participants (identity and beliefs). With every attempt by a player, the game generated a log file:
This log file contains information about the role being played; the difficulty level selected; the time it takes for the user to make each decision; the number and type of actions taken in the game (such as AI actions, security, political, or construction); and the resulting score (further broken down by change in points for all satisfaction polls).
And prior to the game, players had to fill out a self-questionnaire:
Variables measured in the background questionnaire included the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) measure of personality, a self-rated measure of personal involvement with the conflict, religious affiliation, US political affiliation, typical hours spent gaming, and their trusting personality, measured in a scale originally developed by Yukawa (1985).
Now, I linked their 23 pages of analysis in this post, so I won't dive deep into the numbers and results. But they found that, yes, personality does influence both play style and success rate, and they made some interesting conclusions. First, players with Thinking/Judging personalities who are more focused on fairness improved the most and performed the best likely due to their desire to feel in control. Second, players with untrusting personalities performed better than trusting players, which the researchers suggest comes from their reluctance to trust that certain decisions would be universally well-received, even if the game wanted you to think that they would be.
Ultimately, the rhetoric of making these serious decisions did influence how players approached conflict-resolution; otherwise, we wouldn't have seen improvement in scores. The researchers were able to quantify the play style of participants, and they found that play must be different for different people, which further muddies the waters of "what is play?" For some, this game must've been at least engaging enough for them to improve, but for others it was just an assignment to be completed. The context of play must also be addressed, considering both who is playing the game and for what reason. For me, this continues to suggest that games are better seen as systems, and the systems at work will never be able to account for the external pressures such as identity that will interrogate their methods. As much as games can push us to experience the world anew, we can push them to collapse and find new methods of rendering experience into something distributive and affective.
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