The CoE in Game Culture Studies proudly presents a series of OASIS Lunch Time Talks! These talks will take place in Tampere during the spring 2019.

See you in OASIS!

Schedule:

Thursdays, 12-13, Tampere University City Center Campus, OASIS (Pinni B, 2nd floor)

21.2. Tom Apperley, The Gamer Logic of “Selfies are Avatars”: Toxic Masculinity and James Franco’s Strategic Vulnerability

7.3. Sabine Harrer, Intimate Games: Queering the Conventional Mouse Controller for Cooperative Play

14.3. Jan Švelch, Resisting Patches & Updates: Struggles against Protocological Power in Video Games

28.3. Dale Leorke, Games and Play in the City (postponed to a future date)

4.4. Brendan Keogh (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane), Understanding the Australian Videogame Field through Formal, Informal, and Embedded Gamemakers

11.4. Jussi Holopainen (Games Computing, University of Lincoln) and Andrew Westerside (School of Fine and Performance Arts, University of Lincoln), Sense of Place in Videogames: Case Red Dead Redemption

25.4. Marleena Huuhka, Performing the Anthropocene in Video Games

2.5 Pauliina Raento, Title to be added

Alha, K., Koskinen, E., Paavilainen, J., & Hamari, J. (2019) Why do people play location-based augmented reality games: A study on Pokémon GO. Computers in Human Behavior. 93, 114-122.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.008

Pokémon GO’s unforeseen success brought location-based games into the attention of both media and the game industry. To understand why people play location-based games, specifically Pokémon GO, we created an online survey (n=2612) with open questions about the reasons to start, continue, and quit playing Pokémon GO, and composed categories of the answers through a thematic analysis.

The reported reasons to adopt the game were categorized into previous experiences, interest, social influence, popularity, positivity, technology, situation, keeping up, social features, mechanics, and the nature of the game. The most common reasons from these were earlier experiences especially with the Pokémon franchise and fandom. The starting reasons were not associated with how much the players played the game after adoption.

Progression, situation, positivity, game mechanics, social features, social influence, interest, expectations, nature of the game, previous experiences, keeping up, and technology were the categorized reasons to continue playing the game. Progressing was clearly the most frequently reported reason to continue playing, whether trying to collect all of the Pokémon, advancing in the game, or reaching personal goals. Continuance reasons were more clearly associated with playing frequency than the reasons to start playing. Progressing in the game had the strongest correlation to playing frequency, whereas technology was negatively associated, indicating that the novelty of the technology might wear off quickly.

The player’s situation, various problems, shortcomings, poor game mechanics, slow or difficult progression, the nature of the game, changes, the company behind the game, and social influence were mentioned as reasons for quitting the game. From these, the player’s personal situation outside the game and playability problems as a whole were the most significant reasons to quit the game.

Based on our findings, utilizing well-known brands and IP in their games is important especially in location-based alternative reality games. Games that utilize novel technology usually have a higher threshold for adoption, hence familiar characters, themes, and concepts lower the barrier of entry. For retention purposes, focus on versatile progression mechanics is important, as it was the most common reason to continue playing. On the other hand, slow progression was the second most common reason to quit the game, further underlining the importance of good progression mechanics. Lastly, the design quality in the form of playability should be a high priority as problems related to functionality, usability, and gameplay mechanics were common reasons to quit the game.

Our study complements the earlier research on the topic, and found new, important motivations for playing or quitting the game. These reasons should be taken into account when further studying and designing location-based alternative reality games. After exploratory studies have revealed the key reasons for playing, these categories can now be transformed into variables, and used and verified through quantitative studies.

Want to read more? Go see:

Alha, K., Koskinen, E., Paavilainen, J., & Hamari, J. (2019) Why do people play location-based augmented reality games: A study on Pokémon GO. Computers in Human Behavior. 93, 114-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.008

Welcome to the 3rd Annual International GamiFIN conference, April 8-10, 2019, Levi, Finland!

GamiFIN is a leading international conference for gamification research. GamiFIN is chaired by the professor of Gamification, Juho Hamari and gamification scholar Jonna Koivisto. The conference is organized by the Gamification Group and past keynotes have included notable scholars from the field of Gamification such as Sebastian Deterding, Richard Landers and T.L. Taylor.

GamiFIN 2019 conference welcomes 1) paper submissions, 2) posters, and 3) doctoral consortium applications from a wide array of topics around e.g. gamification, serious games, VR/AR/MR, eSports, streaming, free-to-play.

The GamiFIN conference will offer an entry to the Gamification Publication Track that can help authors develop their papers from the first manuscript version to the final journal paper and thus aim to increase the predictability and rigorousness of the publication process. Papers accepted to the GamiFIN 2019 conference will be welcomed to a fast/light-track in the HICSS 2020 conference and to a journal special issue in Internet Research (revealed in more detail soon).

For more information please see: http://gamifinconference.com/