An Ecological Investigation to Contextualize Rewards in Games
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Backtracking: An Ecological Investigation to Contextualize Rewards in Games Thesis Presented by Jack Hart to The College of Arts, Media and Design In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Game Science and Design Northeastern University Boston, Massachussetts May, 2019 1 Contents 1 Introduction 7 2 Background 10 2.1 Rewards . 10 2.1.1 Rewards in Games . 11 2.1.2 A Note On Gamification . 14 2.1.3 From The Designers . 15 2.2 Biometrics . 18 2.2.1 Biometrics & Rewards . 18 2.3 Metroidvanias in Academia . 19 2.4 Review of Metroidvanias . 20 3 Game Development: Is your Game Design as Good as your Research De- sign? 22 3.1 initial design . 22 3.2 Blockvania . 26 3.3 Reward Design Methodology . 26 3.3.1 Access . 27 3.3.2 Facility . 28 3.3.3 Sustenance . 28 3.3.4 Glory . 29 3.3.5 Sensory Feedback . 29 3.3.6 Positive Feedback . 30 3.3.7 Narrative . 30 4 Methods 31 2 4.1 Participants . 31 4.2 Procedure . 31 5 Measures 32 5.1 Physiological . 32 5.2 Subjective . 33 6 Study Results 33 7 Study Discussion 34 8 Design Discussion 37 8.1 The Participant Experience . 37 8.2 Games for Research . 39 8.3 To What End? . 40 9 Study Conclusion 43 10 Appendix 50 10.1 Surveys . 50 3 Abstract Rewards have always been an important part of games to motivate and increase engagement in players. In recent years, work to taxonomies and understand rewards has been made. However this work often lacks extrinsic validity due to the lack of environmental and player experience considerations. In this work I argue for a more ecological design of games to understand different aspects of rewards. I built Block- vania, a metroidvania style game aimed at understanding how rewards affect player behavior through Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), and Qualitative analysis. Finally, I retrospectively analyze my thesis as a case study to understand where shortcomings in player experience and games user research exist. I argue for a more a holistic approach to researching games as well as caution when developing games for research. A distinction should be made between the \participant experience" and the \player experience" and games researchers should do more work to make their studies replicable. 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost I'd like to thank my advisor Christoffer Holmgard who not only dealt with my insanity but managed to help me mold it into a work that I'm actually happy with. I'd also like thank Alisa who is genuinely one of the greatest people I've ever met and also let me stand in her office and yell a lot. I'd also like to thank my cat Jeremy. Jeremy, sorry I was late feeding you sometimes. Thanks to my mom and dad who've supported for my entire life and allowed me to do what ever I wanted which has always been great. Finally thank you to Allison who has supported me in ways that I will always find amazing and am completely in awe of. 5 For Allison, another dogshit day in suck city. Figure 1: Samus using her \morph-ball" ability 1 Introduction It is 1994, you are playing Super Metroid for the first time. You see a a path that is much too small for Samus, the player character (PC), to fit in. You poke and prod to no avail. It must be something wrong with the game. Later on you upgrade Samus's suit and are able to turn into a morph-ball, allowing for Samus to shrink significantly in size (figure: 1). This is when it dawns on you, as the player: you are able to go back to the path that was too small, use your newfound ability and access a previously impossible to reach part of the game. This is the metroidvania experience in a nutshell; hit an impossible task, upgrade the player character and backtrack to overcome an obstacle. These upgrades are some of the most direct reward experiences in games. They change the game itself leaving a lasting impact on the way the player interacts with the environment. For this reason, the metroidvania genre is ripe with potential for games researchers who are interested in developing games to investigate how rewards affect players. Rewards are a fundamental part of the metroidvania genre, and allow for an organic player experience where the amount of rewards can be rich, and the types of rewards are diverse. Rewards have been and will continue to be an essential part of the player experience in video games. Rewards can be intrinsic or extrinsic motivators that reinforce desired behav- 7 ior [8]. Early examples of rewards in games are high scores in arcades or secret unlockable fighting characters in Mortal Kombat. In years since, rewards in games have evolved con- siderably including Xbox achievements, a popular form of rewards that exist outside of the game itself, or loot boxes; virtual slot machines with in-game items. Understanding how rewards motivate players, and the way players perceive rewards is important for academics, and recreational game designers. As Amon Rapp has critiqued in previous works, definitions of rewards are often created through expert knowledge, and not the player experience [35]. It leaves a hole in the literature where we do not know if the way we discuss rewards is indicative of the player experience. If these two parties are diametric in their thinking we as researchers need to reassess how we discuss rewards. As game designers seek to understand how to get more engagement and enjoyment from players, it is important to understand the effects of rewards in games. Rewards are not often compared to each other. Previous work in rewards research has not investigated the relationship between qualitative and physiological data. Some work such as [31] used qual- itative measures like the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) combined with physiological work, however these questionnaires only assess overall motivation and do not specifically investigate the rewards. Efforts have been made to classify different types of rewards [35], [36], [13], [32]. To date there is little research that has investigated how these rewards affect players differently. Johnson et al. investigated the impact of the number of rewards given for a specific action [17]. Philips et al. investigated how different rewards affect overall player motivation [31]. The works mentioned above both investigated the compounding effect of multiple rewards affect participants, however they do not study if there is a measurable difference between reward types. Understanding the individual difference of rewards is important for several reasons. One, if meaningful differences can be found in individual reward types, it suggests different rewards 8 could be implemented to elicit a different player experiences. Second, if there is no meaningful different to the player when comparing difference rewards, the current rewards literature should be reassessed to create strong methodologies for creating reward frameworks. To this end, I developed a metroidvania, Blockvania, to find out if there is a measurable difference in Philips and Colleagues Revised Videogame Reward Taxonomy [32]. To assess the impact of each reward type players were asked to rank the rewards from favorite to least favorite [48]. Their survey data was compared to their galvanic skin response (GSR, sweat response) from each time they received a reward. This method was conducted to also see if the physiological response from players has a relationship with their subjective feelings towards the game. Johnson et al. has studied the physiological response to rewards with the same taxonomy [17], however they do not assess the difference between individual reward types. Investigating the measurable difference between rewards is important for several reasons. One, The Video Reward Taxonomy categorizes rewards based on how the reward impacts the player, if these rewards are not measurably different from a player perspective we should further investigate the language we use to discuss rewards in games. Second, if rewards are measurably different for players, understanding why and how they are ranked is also important. Third, I discuss the lack of reward delivery method in the literature and I aim to understand if there is a relationship between rewards and the mechanic players do to get said reward. Research Question 1: Is there a meaningful difference in player response to different rewards? Research Question 2: Is there a correlation with the physiological response to rewards and a qualitative ranking of said rewards? Previous research in this vain has often focused on either the physiological response or how rewards impact the overall motivation of a game. Research Question 3: Do specific rewards pair better with specific reward mechanisms 9 then others? After, I conclude the results and discussion of the study, I also reflect on the project itself and call into question whether this style of player experience research has any merit regardless of results. In retrospect, collecting data from participants in a usability lab seems averse to the way people play recreational games. Additionally, I call researchers to be more reflective of their study methodology, the design of the games they create for research, and the generalizability of their findings. 2 Background In this section I discuss the literary findings that I base much of my work on. I addi- tionally discuss how game designers who are not academics discuss games to get an outside perspective on the work being done here. Third, I review a collection of Metroidvania games to gain an understanding of what makes up the genre due to the lack of a formalized under- standing of the genre.