A Conceptual Analysis
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Lasse Sakari Honkala COOPERATIVE GAME PLAY A Conceptual Analysis Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences Master’s Thesis April 2021 ABSTRACT Lasse Sakari Honkala: Cooperative Game Play: A Conceptual Analysis Master’s Thesis Tampere University Master's Degree Programme in Game Studies April 2021 Cooperative game play has emerged as an intriguing topic for academic and commercial research in the last decade or so, with actors from various fields investigating its impact on social interaction, player experience, and gamified serious contexts. So far, however, the notion has lacked dedicated analyses elaborating on the concept itself. While consist- ently described as an activity involving a common goal between the players, the entailed subtleties are rarely specified much further, making one ill-equipped to make substantial claims about the assumed effects, either. To fill this gap, this study proposes an intentional explanation for what cooperative game play is, how the players’ goals, goal-relations, and the related attitudes distinguish it from other types of cooperative affairs and social play forms, what kind of collectively stronger and weaker versions can be identified by mixing these elements, and to what extent mul- tiplayer game play presupposes cooperation in general. These questions were approached by the method of conceptual analysis, with the aim of providing the necessary and suffi- cient conditions for the external and internal readings of cooperative game play (“game play as cooperation,” “cooperation as game play”) and the relevant subcategories, viewed as species of planned, playful, and prosocial activities. The theoretical framework consists of philosophical studies on collective intentionality, definitions of games and play, as well as psychological accounts on goals, frames, and social interdependence. The findings suggest that cooperative game play is defined not only by the goal-contents at different levels of abstraction, but also the conative and epistemic modes (intentions, acceptances) directed at them. It is also argued that this structure involves a paradoxical double perspective, with the meaning of the plan changing when switching from one psy- chological frame to another. Depending on the specific attributes and relations of these components among the agents, the activity is then further classified by the corresponding interaction relationships, agential modes, and framing alignments—the combinations of which amount to several possible forms of cooperative game play (externally and inter- nally), varying in the prevalence of the entailed individualistic and collective interests. Compared to the previous descriptions and classifications of the notion, the theory pre- sented in this thesis expands on the intricacies related to the participants’ goals, illustrat- ing the complex ways that self-oriented and group-oriented aims may intertwine during the activity. It therefore offers a more detailed and flexible framework for conceptualizing cooperative game play in design and research, while also contributing to the debates about the role of the self and the group in multiplayer game play generally. Keywords: cooperation, game play, collective intentionality, goals, conceptual analysis The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Previous Literature ........................................................................................ 2 1.1.1 Game Play as Cooperation (GPaC) ............................................... 3 1.1.2 Cooperation as Game Play (CaGP) ............................................... 5 1.1.3 Summary ....................................................................................... 8 1.2 Method .......................................................................................................... 9 2 GOALS AND INTENTIONALITY ......................................................................... 13 2.1 Acceptance ................................................................................................. 15 2.2 Intention ...................................................................................................... 16 2.3 Contents ...................................................................................................... 19 2.4 Summary ..................................................................................................... 22 3 GOALS AND GAME PLAY .................................................................................. 23 3.1 Acceptance ................................................................................................. 24 3.1.1 Pretend Acceptance ..................................................................... 25 3.1.2 Voluntary Acceptance .................................................................. 29 3.2 Intention ...................................................................................................... 32 3.2.1 Autotelic Intention ........................................................................ 33 3.2.2 Allotelic Intention .......................................................................... 35 3.3 Contents ...................................................................................................... 37 3.3.1 Participant Frame ......................................................................... 37 3.3.2 Player Frame ............................................................................... 41 3.4 Summary ..................................................................................................... 44 4 GOALS AND COOPERATION ............................................................................ 46 4.1 Acceptance ................................................................................................. 47 4.1.1 I-mode Acceptance ...................................................................... 48 4.1.2 We-mode Acceptance .................................................................. 50 4.2 Intention ...................................................................................................... 56 4.2.1 I-mode Intention ........................................................................... 56 4.2.2 We-mode Intention ....................................................................... 59 4.3 Contents ...................................................................................................... 64 4.3.1 Predicates .................................................................................... 64 4.3.2 Agentive Subjects ........................................................................ 67 4.4 Goal Relations ............................................................................................. 71 4.4.1 Positive and Negative Interdependence ....................................... 72 4.4.2 Persistence Interdependence ....................................................... 77 4.5 Summary ..................................................................................................... 79 5 SYNTHESIS ........................................................................................................ 83 5.1 Game Play as Cooperation (GPaC) ............................................................. 85 5.2 Cooperation as Game Play (CaGP) ............................................................. 88 5.3 Frame Relations .......................................................................................... 90 5.3.1 Depth ........................................................................................... 90 5.3.2 Alignment ..................................................................................... 92 6 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 94 6.1 Application Areas ........................................................................................ 96 6.2 Limitations and Future Guidelines ............................................................... 97 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................... 99 APPENDIX 1: GOALS AND COOPERATIVE GAME PLAY ...................................... 109 1 INTRODUCTION Cooperation and games have long appeared interrelated in academic literature. While the latter has traditionally been employed as an example of the former (see, e.g., Mead, 1925; Parten, 1932), the evolution of digital gaming and the popularity of online multiplayer games have also attracted attention to the reverse case. Indeed, industry actors and schol- ars from a wide variety of fields have shown growing interest in the design and analysis of cooperative game play, in contexts such as learning environments, interaction, and in- gameplay experience (Sedano et al., 2013). The reasons for this are manifold. In educational research, for instance, collaborative se- rious games have been viewed as a potential tool for supporting learning through visual- ization, as well as improving knowledge creation, decision-making processes, teamwork, motivation and attitudes (Oksanen, 2014, p. 22). Some experimental studies have com- pared the effects of cooperative and competitive games on people’s contributions in gam- ified systems, such as crowdsourcing platforms (Morschheuser et al., 2019), while others have been interested