research-article

Player talk—the functions of communication in multplayer role-playing games

Authors:

Anders Drachen,

Jonas Heide SmithAuthors Info & Claims

Computers in Entertainment (CIE), Volume 6, Issue 4

Article No.: 56, Pages 1 - 36

https://doi.org/10.1145/1461999.1462008

Published: 24 December 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Communication is a vital component of multiplayer gameplay, constituting a large part of the total player interaction. This article presents a comprehensive study of the role of interplayer communication during the gaming process in digital and tabletop role-playing game formats. A series of empirical game experiments are presented and the player-based communication analyzed, with the aim of clarifying how format (media of expression) impacts on verbal communication in multiplayer games; as well as examining player communication in general. The results show distinct differences in the communication patterns between the two game formats, directly related to the limitations and requirements of the tabletop and digital media utilized, for example in the amount of “in-character” communication. Interplayer communication in both formats is highly focused on functional content, that is, oriented towards supporting practical gameplay; however, functional content has different meanings on the two platforms. These and other results are discussed in the context of format differences and in the larger context of the functions of verbal communication during the playing of multiplayer games.

References

[1]

Akin, Ö. 1986. Psychology of Architectural Design. Pion, London.

[2]

Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.

[3]

Aylett, R., Louchart, S., et al. 2006. Unscripted narrative for affectively driven characters. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 26, 3, 42--52.

Digital Library

[4]

Aylett, R., Louchart, S., Tychsen, A., Hitchens, M. Figueiredo, R. 2008. Managing emergent character-based narrative. In Proceedings of INTETAIN.

Digital Library

[5]

Bartle, R. 2003. Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders, Indianapolis, IN.

Digital Library

[6]

Björk, S., et al. 2001. Pirates&excl; Using the physical world as a game board. In Proceedings of the Interact Conference.

[7]

Bøckman, P. and Hutchison, R. (eds.) 2005. Collected papers for Knutepunkt 2005. In The 9th Annual Nordic Conference on larp.

[8]

Castronova, E. 2005. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Digital Library

[9]

Chen, L., Rose, R., Qiao, Y., Kimbara, I., Parrill, F., Welji, H., Han, T. X., Tu, J., Huang, Z., Harper, M. P. Quek, F. K. H., Xiong, Y., Mcneill, D., Tuttle, R., and Huang, T. S. 2005. VACE multimodal meeting corpus. In Proceedings of Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction Workshop, 40--51.

[10]

Chen, L., Harper, M. P., Franklin, A., Rose, R. T., Kimbara, I., Huang, Z., and Quek, F. K. H. 2006. A multimodal analysis of floor control in meetings. In Proceedings of Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction Workshop, 36--49.

[11]

Combs, N. 2004. The intelligence in the MMOG: From scripts to stories to directorial AI. In Proceedings of Other Players, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

[12]

Cross, N., et al. 1996. Analysing Design Activity. Wiley, New York.

[13]

Darlington, S. 1998. A history of role-playing. In Places to Go, People to Be. http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html.

[14]

Edwards, R. 2001. GNS and other matters of role-playing theory. The Forge. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/.

[15]

Eladhari, M. and Eindley, C. 2004. Story construction and expressive agents in virtual game worlds. In Proceedings of Other Players.

[16]

Ericsson, K. A. and Simon, H. A. 1993. Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

[17]

Fine, G. A. 2002. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

[18]

Gabriel, G. C. and Maher, M. L. 2002. Coding and modeling communication in architectural collaborative design. Automation in Construction 11, 199--211.

[19]

Hallford, N. and Hallford, J. 2001. Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role Playing Games. Prima Tech., Roseville, CA,

Digital Library

[20]

Henry, L. 2003. Group narration: Power, information, and play in role playing games. http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/liz-paper-2003/.

[21]

Holmes, R. M. and Pellegrini, A. D. 2005. Children's social behavior during video game play. In Handbook of Computer Game Studies, J. Raessens and J. Goldstein (eds.), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

[22]

Hutchison, A. 2003. Analyzing the performance of interactive narrative. In Proceedings of DAC.

[23]

Kim, J. 2003. Story and narrative paradigms in role-playing games. http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/paradigms.html.

[24]

King, B. and Borland, J. 2003. Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Digital Library

[25]

Lazzaro, N. 2004. Why we play games: Four keys to more emotion in player experiences. In Proceedings of the Game Developers Conference.

[26]

Lindley, C. 2004. Trans-reality gaming. In Proceedings of the Second Annual International Workshop in Computer Game Design and Technology.

[27]

Lindley, C. A. and Eladhari, M. 2005. Narrative structure in trans-reality role-playing games: Integrating story construction from live action, table top and computer-based role-playing games. In Proceedings of the International DiGRA Conference.

[28]

MacKay, D. 2001. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC.

[29]

Maher, M. L. and Simoff, S. 2000. Collaboratively designing within the design. In Proceedings of the CoDesigning Confernce.

[30]

Mäkelä, E., et al. 2005. The process model of role playing. In Proceedings of Dissecting Larp - Knutepunkt Conference. http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/kp05/.

[31]

Manninen, T. 2004. Rich interaction model for game and virtual environment design. Tech. Rep., Dept. of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu.

[32]

Mateas, M. 2003. Expressive AI: Games and artificial intelligence. In Proceedings of the International DiGRA Conference.

[33]

Murray, J. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck—The Future of Narrative on Cyberspace. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Digital Library

[34]

Padol, L. 1996. Playing stories, telling games: Collaborative storytelling in role-playing games.

[35]

Peinado, F. and Gervás, P. 2004. Transferring game mastering laws to interactive digital storytelling. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Springer Verlag.

[36]

Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. 2004. Rules of Play—Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Digital Library

[37]

Schick, L. 1991. Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-playing Games. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.

[38]

Searle, J. R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

[39]

Smith, H. 2007. The imago effect: Avatar psychology. Presentation at the Game Developers Conference.

[40]

Smith, J. H. 2006. Plans and purposes: How videogame goals shape player behaviour. Center for Computer Games Research. IT University of Copenhagen.

[41]

Söderberg, J., Waern, A., et al. 2004. Enhanced reality live role playing. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Pervasive Computing.

[42]

Sudweeks, F. and Simoff, S. J. 2005. Leading conversations: Communication behaviours of emergent leaders in virtual teams. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Digital Library

[43]

Tauroza, S. and Allison, D. 1990. Speech rates in British English. Applied Linguistics 11, 1, 90.

[44]

Taylor, T. L. 2006. Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Digital Library

[45]

Tosca, S. P. 2003. The quest problem in computer games. In Proceedings of the TIDSE 03 Conference, Fraunhofer IRB Verlag.

[46]

Trappl, R. 1997. Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors: Current Issues and Some Perspectives, Springer Verlag.

[47]

Tychsen, A., Hitchens, M., et al. 2005. The game master. In Proceedings of the Interactive Entertainment Conference.

Digital Library

[48]

Tychsen, A. 2006. Role playing games: Comparative analysis across two media platforms. In Proceedings of the CGIE Conference.

Digital Library

[49]

Tychsen, A. and Hitchens, M. 2006. Ghost worlds—Time and consequence in MMORPGs. In Proceedings of the TIDSE 06 Conference.

[50]

Tychsen, A., Hitchens, M., et al. 2006. Control and communication in live role playing games—Review and implications for MMORPGs. In Games & Culture, 1, 252--275.

[51]

Tychsen, A., Smith, J. H., et al. 2006. Communication in multi-player role playing games—The effect of medium. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Springer Verlag.

Digital Library

[52]

Tychsen, A., Tosca, S., and Brolund, T. M. 2006. Personalizing the player experience in MMORPGs. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Springer Verlag.

[53]

Tychsen, A., et al. 2007. Cross-format analysis of the gaming experience in multi-player role playing games. In Proceedings of the DiGRA Conference, Tokyo, Japan.

[54]

Tychsen, A. 2008. Tales for the Many: Process and Authorial Control in Multi-Player Role-Playing Games. In Spierling, U. and Szilas, N. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2008 Interactive Storytelling Conference, Erfurt, Germany.

Digital Library

[55]

Vera, A., et al. 1998. Expertise and collaborative design. In Proceedings of CHI. ACM, New York.

[56]

Wright, T., et al. 2002. Creative player actions in FPS online video games. Game Studies 2, 2.

[57]

Young, M. J. 2005a. Theory 101: System and the shared imagined space. Places to Go, People to Be. http://ptgptb.org/0026/theory101-01.html.

[58]

Young, M. J. 2005b. Theory 101: The impossible thing before breakfast. Places to Go, People to Be. http://ptgptb.org/0027/theory101-02.html.

Cited By

Johansson KRobinson RBack JBowman SFey JMárquez Segura EWaern AIsbister K(2024)Why Larp? A Synthesis Article on Live Action Roleplay in Relation to HCI Research and PracticeACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/368904531:5(1-35)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689045
Simpson J(2023)Towards Collaborative Conversational User Interfaces for Team TrainingCompanion Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581754.3584106(211-213)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3581754.3584106
Gupta SMathur N(2022)Youth and Multiplayer Mobile Games AdoptionInternational Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications10.4018/IJESMA.29657414:1(1-23)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/IJESMA.296574
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Player talk—the functions of communication in multplayer role-playing games

Recommendations

Game format effects on communication in multi-player games
Future Play '08: Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share

Communication is a vital component of multi-player game play, constituting a large part of the player interaction in most game formats. In this article, the structure and intensity of the verbal communication between players in three different types of ...
Character play: the use of game characters in multi-player role-playing games across platforms
Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment

Avatars are a commonly used mechanism for representing the player within the world of a game. The avatar forms the main point of interaction between the player and the game, and thus the avatar is an important game design feature. Character-based games ...
Communication in multi-player role playing games – the effect of medium
TIDSE'06: Proceedings of the Third international conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment

The Pen-and-Paper role-playing game is a successful example of collaborative interactive narrative. Meanwhile, computer-based role-playing games, while structurally similar, offer quite different narrative experiences. Here results are presented of an ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Computers in Entertainment

Computers in Entertainment Volume 6, Issue 4

SPECIAL ISSUE: Media Arts (Part II)

December 2008

218 pages

EISSN:1544-3574

DOI:10.1145/1461999

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 December 2008

Accepted: 01 July 2008

Revised: 01 July 2008

Received: 01 July 2007

Published in CIE Volume 6, Issue 4

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
1,825
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)59
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Johansson KRobinson RBack JBowman SFey JMárquez Segura EWaern AIsbister K(2024)Why Larp? A Synthesis Article on Live Action Roleplay in Relation to HCI Research and PracticeACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/368904531:5(1-35)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689045
Simpson J(2023)Towards Collaborative Conversational User Interfaces for Team TrainingCompanion Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581754.3584106(211-213)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3581754.3584106
Gupta SMathur N(2022)Youth and Multiplayer Mobile Games AdoptionInternational Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications10.4018/IJESMA.29657414:1(1-23)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/IJESMA.296574
Simpson JStening HNalepka PDras MReichle EHosking SBest CRichards DRichardson M(2022)DesertWoZ: A Wizard of Oz Environment to Support the Design of Collaborative Conversational AgentsCompanion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3500868.3559711(188-192)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3500868.3559711
Rice MTay HNg JKoh RBegole BKim JInkpen KWoo W(2015)Communication in the Changing Dyadic Interaction of Diverse PlayersProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2702613.2732502(613-623)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2702613.2732502
Ntina CMa XDeng Z(2015)Less Talk Is More PlayComputers in Entertainment 10.1145/2582186.263343711:3(1-16)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2582186.2633437
El-Nasr MMorie JDrachen A(2011)A Scientific Look at the Design of Aesthetically and Emotionally Engaging Interactive Entertainment ExperiencesAffective Computing and Interaction10.4018/978-1-61692-892-6.ch013(281-307)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61692-892-6.ch013
McGee KMerritt TOng CStevenson D(2011)What we have here is a failure of companionshipProceedings of the 23rd Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference10.1145/2071536.2071568(198-201)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2071536.2071568

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents