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心理学家论述MMO游戏玩家成瘾性和游戏结构特征

发布时间:2011-03-29 13:58:56 Tags:,,,

游戏邦注:本文作者为心理学研究者和作家Neils Clark,其从心理学和神经系统学角度论述了MMO游戏玩家存在的有害行为。本文为其研究论文的节选,由游戏邦编译整理。

摘要

论文全面考量了有关视频游戏的各学科作品,其中包括通讯学、心理学、社会学和神经系统学。本文主要论述MMO(大型多人网游)玩家也存在心理学和神经系统学所述的有害行为。

MMO Games

MMO Games

引言

我最近在马阿诺夏威夷大学完成了一项研究,我发现游戏玩家的行为和偏好与成瘾性有直接关系。此项研究的对象为MMO玩家,如暴雪公司《魔兽世界》或者Square Enix《最终幻想XI》的游戏玩家。

研究调查了各个等级玩家的行为,发现和真实朋友共玩游戏,探险或者拍照之类的辅助活动以及社交公会的会员不易产生有害游戏行为。相反有控制欲玩家,以及那些参加定期公会活动的玩家更容易产生成瘾性。从不同层次的数据分析来看,PvP(Player versus player)行为与破坏性小的成瘾行为有关。虽然存在这些关系,但游戏是否真的是这些行为的成因,我们不得而知,或者这些仅仅是那些成瘾玩家的行为。

基于这些关系,调查表明成瘾的过程十分复杂。研究需要更多调查游戏行为和游戏成瘾性,我们需要进行纵向研究(某段时候内集中调查某群玩家)来决定游戏是否为罪魁祸首。此外,调查发现研究游戏设置和成瘾性的关系通常能帮助成瘾玩家走出来。详细见如下调查:

“这些游戏共有100万个小截面。理解这个过程可以帮助真正的问题玩家。研究原型游戏世界可以有效帮助其他非游戏成瘾玩家。”

研究还为未来视频游戏研究的数据收集方式提供了若干建议。在尝试用新方法收集玩家数据后,研究探讨了视频游戏研究数据收集方面的技术和道德缺陷。

虽然缺乏有效信息来界定“成瘾性”,但玩家和广告商对该词语的使用已经十分泛滥。将“成瘾性”作为质量的标签不仅伤害了玩家,也损害了销量。玩家已经混淆了好游戏和有害的过度体验。请看研究第一章:

“营销者长期滥用概念和模式将对问题玩家产生致命影响。了解成瘾性和视频游戏的关系是第一位,接着是分析何为成瘾性,最后是寻找解决途径,帮助那些生活受消极影响的玩家。”

下文为整篇论文的节选。

MMO游戏的用户群体及结构特征

虽然我们对成瘾性和游戏之间的关系知之甚少,但探索这些世界确实需要花费很大的功夫。研究方法也许不尽完美,但至少让我们了解游戏对象以及其体验目的。虽然还有许多人口统计变量需要考虑在内,但不妨将现有变量与成瘾性资料做比较,获取这些世界的相关信息。

Figure 2. Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft

Figure 2. Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft

不同MMO游戏(如《无尽的任务》或者《魔兽世界》)有不同的机制。游戏邦发现即便是同款游戏,其机制也存在很大不同,因为每款游戏平均至少在1、20或者甚至100多个服务器上运作,这取决于游戏的受欢迎程度。暴雪公司的《魔兽世界》是目前最大的MMO游戏,其至少在108台服务器上运作,业内人士称服务器为“域”。游戏越受欢迎,这一数据就会变得越庞大,但也可能被新诞生的热门游戏击败。服务器刻录了游戏世界,该游戏世界拥有自己的内部机制;服务器会因为社区、经济或者国籍的不同而发生变化。

具体来说,购买MMO游戏,开设付费帐户后,玩家得选择游戏世界的“服务器”。大多数的用户调查并没有特别说明他们是如何对服务器或者游戏进行取样的,虽然目前看来这并不是导致研究失败的主要原因。抽样的失败在于大多数的研究瞄准的是外部网站的用户,特别是特定游戏的“社区网站”。游戏邦认为这里要关注的两大要点是:1. 足够数量的热门社区网站 2. 游戏以外社区无法代表游戏社区。

理论概念的结构特征

虽然视频游戏的相关文章层出不穷,很少有人真正定义视频游戏或者分析游戏结构。在研究传统的单玩家游戏中,Wood et al.通过探究游戏玩家突出的结构特征,分析了视频游戏结构。许多结构特征并不完全适用MMO游戏,如“游戏持续性”和“映像”。但游戏邦发现有些特征适用MMO游戏,如界面选择、诙谐性和品牌保证,但它们却被排除在研究之外,只不过是为了缩小研究规模。

Figure 3. Structural characteristics map the structures available for interaction within

Figure 3. Structural characteristics map the structures available for interaction within

Yee的MMO游戏动机

Nicholas Yee在MMO影响研究领域颇有威望,3年间其调查研究了《网络创世纪》、《无尽的任务》、《卡米洛的黑暗时代》和《星球大战:星系》的3万名玩家。在2006年发表的论文中,他阐述了MMO游戏的积极影响和消极影响。Yee归纳了5种游戏动机:成就感、人际关系、沉浸感、逃避现实和控制欲。

基于结构特征(受操纵游戏的真实结构)区分游戏动机十分重要。虽然有所区别,但游戏邦认为可以将Yee使用的标准稍作修改和细化,那么这些动机就可以被视为类似结构特征的衡量标准。例如,Yee的控制欲观念包括如下问题:“我可以骗取他人的金钱或者道具”,以及“我喜欢奚落或者惹恼其他玩家。”这些问题稍作改动就可以用于研究MMO游戏结构。

Yee使用的有些衡量标准并没有改变。例如,在“沉浸感”中,玩家一心就想为人物创造传奇故事或者这起码是游戏的主要部分。在《Eve Online》和《城市英雄》中,玩家可以在人物角色的历史中填充信息,这样其他玩家就可以读到该人物的相关信息或者传奇故事。《魔兽世界》虽然没有此类结构,但我们常常可以听到玩家谈论他们在RP(role-playing)或者RP服务器上创造的传奇故事。游戏邦认为事实上它们的结构相同,不过是以不同的方式呈现,这有时甚至发生在同款游戏中。

MMO游戏玩家的人口统计特征

我们所知道的游戏信息主要都是来自于Yee的研究,尤其是其Daedalus Project。游戏邦发现虽然几乎所有Yee搜集的信息都来自自愿受调查者,但研究关注很高,以致数据常常为游戏玩家人口统计相关的学术作品引用。

从职业来看,50%的调查对象为全职工作者,22.2%为在校生,还有13%为家庭主妇。此外,女性MMO玩家年长者偏多,23-28岁年龄层的女性玩家超过对应男性玩家,往后年龄层亦是如此。Yee认为,这一观点消除了这样的认识:游戏玩家都是无业游民,男性为主,且偏向年轻族群;事实恰恰相反,游戏具有广泛的吸引力。

Yee还发现,60.9%的调查对象连续玩游戏的时间都在10个小时以上,这一比例符合不同年龄层的玩家。15.8%的男性用户和59.8%的女性用户和伴侣一同体验MMOs,而25.5%的男性用户和39.5%的女性用户和家人一同体验游戏。更重要的是,Yee发现,“MMORPGs吸引广泛的用户群,且吸引力极大,用户在游戏中投入的时间极多。”

MMOs社交网络&黑手党组织

“黑手党崇尚古代的荣誉制度,长者需要协调矛盾,做出决断,而其他人有义务遵守。事实上,自古外部势力就对西西里岛虎视眈眈,例如,西班牙和法西斯就迫使当地人民不得不组织反抗,抵御外部压迫,这随后就演变成了犯罪组织,这或多或少是因为黑手党意识到他们可以利用强大的组织为自己谋取财富。《无尽的战争》也是重复了该模式。社交网站需十分重视口碑,这是因为游戏中玩家得自己控制游戏环境,以确保自己在面对潜在干扰和缺乏有效的可靠控制系统的时能够拥有积极的游戏体验。但是最终这些网站都当做落实系统规则的捷径。”

将《无尽的任务》社会结构、公会的主要框架和黑手党的社会结构作比较咋看似乎有些可笑。然而上段引文表明,MMO游戏的体验方式已经大大改变,随着玩家达到游戏的最高等级,他们越来越喜欢这些社交网站。换句话说,在游戏开始阶段,公会、在线朋友和现实联系是玩家成功的支撑,而在游戏尾声阶段,这些则成为玩家居于主导地位的纽带。

Figure 4. The members of both social and goal-oriented guilds will occasionally line

Figure 4. The members of both social and goal-oriented guilds will occasionally line

显然,Yee所说的互动和个人主义(个人偏好依靠自己的力量玩游戏)之间的关系需要进一步扩展。游戏邦发现在黑手党中,家庭是忠诚的强大基础。玩家忠于家庭,家庭就会忠于玩家。Jakobsson 和Taylor认为MMO游戏运作模式大多相似,所谓相似是指现实生活为朋友的玩家较游戏中的泛泛之交而言对彼此有更高的忠诚度。

接下来就分别讨论两种关系的沟通方式;真实朋友和游戏之交,以及重新修订这些标准,以便更好反映互动层次。由于因为标准强调互动,因此从某种程度上看,个人主义就是Yee团队/个人标准的扩展。也许有些玩家偏向和真实朋友体验游戏,而有些则希望和网友一起体验,但其实那些一点儿也不希望互动的玩家差异最大。

问卷调查

Clark论文的部分是对291名玩家进行91问的问卷调查.下文将详细说明所用工具,并附有图片说明调查结果。

目前研究数据表明,玩家对于各式游戏结构特征的认知与各个层次的成瘾性和沉迷性有关。游戏邦发现负价(沉迷于无价值的社会活动)、辅助活动和MMO游戏中真实朋友之间的互动和不同层次的成瘾性和痴迷性有显著的关系。

当结构特征受约束时,PvP进展和公会偏好就会成为成瘾性或者沉迷性的有效预警器。虽然调查主要的目标是提供原始数据,进行结构特征和成瘾性的比较,但这其实也是在权衡抽样调查MMO游戏玩家方式的利与弊。

Table 1 - Game Element Reliability (Cronbach’s E) and Correlation (Pearson’s r) with Addiction and Engagement

Table 1 - Game Element Reliability (Cronbach’s E) and Correlation (Pearson’s r) with Addiction and Engagement

衡量工具

成瘾指数。成瘾程度的界定是根据心理学研究人员John Charlton博士和Ian Danforth的《阿圣龙的召唤》(Asheron`s Call)成瘾标准,共包含14个程度等级,对于当前的研究可信度很高,其alpha值为790。在本文的研究中,调查对象的答案选项是基于李克特式的5分制:1=极不同意,5=十分同意。成瘾指数的分值越高代表成瘾程度越高,几乎无能力控制游戏体验。

沉迷指数。沉迷程度的界定是根据心理学研究人员John Charlton博士和Ian Danforth的《阿圣龙的召唤》(Asheron`s Call)沉迷标准,共包含15个程度等级,在研究中具有很高的可信度,其alpha值为845。在本文中,调查对象的答案选项是基于李克特式的5分制:1=极不同意,5=十分同意。成瘾指数的分值越高代表成瘾程度越高,几乎无能力控制体验游戏。

视频游戏结构特征。特征来自各个方面,如概念章节所述。游戏邦发现范围规模各不相同,但均具有一定的可信度,其alpha值范围723-906。每个度量方法的可靠性如表1所示。在这些范围中(其为附表B问卷调查的一部分),调查对象的答案选项是基于李克特式的5分制,该部分在概念章节有论述。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

Addiction and the Structural Characteristics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Introduction

I recently completed a study at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa finding that gamers’ activities and preferences within games could be linked to addiction. The study looked at players within massively multiplayer online games, for instance Blizzard’s World of Warcraft or Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XI.

The study, which examined in-game behaviors on a number of levels, found that playing with real life friends, side activities like exploration or taking pictures, and membership to social guilds may be related to less harmful play. On the other hand, stealing from or otherwise manipulating players, along with membership to more goal-oriented “hardcore” raid guilds may be related to addiction. Player versus player activity was related to both less damaging and addictive behaviors on different levels of data analysis. While these relationships are present, it is not known whether games are actually the cause of this behavior, or if these are simply behaviors that already addicted players seek out.

Based on these relationships, the study suggested that the process of becoming addicted is likely very complex. It is suggested that more research connecting in-game activities and addiction is needed, and that determining whether games are to blame will most likely require a longitudinal study, looking at a group of gamers over a length of time. It is also noted that studying this link between gameplay and addiction could open doors for addicts generally. From the study:

“There are a million little pieces working together in these games. Understanding this process not only holds the potential for helping the people with real gaming problems. Research within prototypical game worlds may have real implications for helping people with other kinds of non-game addictions.”

There were also a number of suggestions on improving the ways in which future studies of videogames collect their data. After making the attempt at using one new method for getting data on gamers, the study made a number of observations on the technical and ethical limitations for data collection in videogame studies.

It is also noted that despite a lack of good information on what “addiction” could actually mean, gamers and advertisers use the term far too much. Popularizing the word “addiction” as a mark of quality hurts not only players, but also sales. Players already widely confuse good games with harmful overuse. From chapter one of the study:

“The sustained misuse of perceptions and stereotypes on the part of marketers will likely have an increasingly devastating impact on game players that do have problems. Understanding the intersect between addiction and videogames is a necessary precursor toward first, understanding what to regard as addiction, and second, search for clues as to how we might begin to help the people whose play is having a clearly negative affect on their lives.”

What follows are select extracts from this thesis. At the end of this article, you may download the thesis in its entirety, in PDF format, which also includes details of the works cited in the following pages.

Player Populations and Structural Characteristics of MMO games

While we may not know a great deal about addiction as it relates to these games,there has nonetheless been a great deal of work exploring these worlds. The methods of these studies may not be perfect, yet they nonetheless give strong hints as to who is playing and why. Even if many demographic variables have yet to be sampled scientifically, what exists can be compared against information on addiction in order to garner information regarding these worlds.

Each MMO, for instance EverQuest or World of Warcraft, is a different game, with different mechanics. Within games there can be large differences as well, as each game will, on average run one, 20, or even 100+ servers, depending on the popularity. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, currently the real world’s largest MMO, runs at least 108 servers, which they call “realms.” This number increases as World of Warcraft gains popularity, yet may collapse if newer games grow in favor. A server is a single copy of the game world, with its own internal mechanics; likely variations between servers are community, economy, or nationality.

To be more specific, after purchasing an MMO and creating a billing account, one will have to choose which particular “server” of this game world they would like to play in. The bulk of player population studies do not explicitly explain how they treat sampling with regard to servers or games, though this is not the major downfall to such studies so far. A major sampling downfall is that the bulk of studies looking at player populations have been elicited through outside websites, particularly “community websites” for particular games. Two major concerns with this are (1) the sheer volume of such popular community websites, and (2) the low likelihood that those seeking community outside the game will be representative of those playing within (especially those pathologically addicted).

Structural Characteristics as a Theoretical Concept

Though literature pertaining to videogames is growing rapidly, few have stopped to actually define videogames or analyze their structure (Wood, Griffiths, et al., 2004). In a study of more traditional single-player games, Wood et al. set out to assess video game structure by way of asking which structural characteristics were most salient among game players (Wood et al., 2004). Many of his structural characteristics were not entirely applicable to MMO play, for instance ‘duration of game’ and ‘mapping’ (creating custom levels for a single player game). Other characteristics apply to MMO games, such as interface options, use of humor, and brand assurance, yet were omitted from this study in order to restrict its size.

Yee’s MMO Motivations

Nicholas Yee, one of the more recognizable names in the study of MMO effects, in a 3 year period surveyed over 30,000 players from the MMO games Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, and Star Wars Galaxies. In a paper set to be published in 2006, he explores positive and negative effects of MMO playing. Qualitatively, Yee identified five factors of MMO motivation: achievement, relationship, immersion, escapism, and manipulation.

It is important to differentiate motivations for play from structural characteristics, the actual structure within the game that is being manipulated. This distinction notwithstanding, the criteria used by Yee can be modified and clarified so that these motivations may be measured as if they were structural characteristics. For instance, Yee’s concept of manipulation includes the questions, “I scam other people out of their money or equipment”, and, “I like to taunt or annoy other players.” His questions do not have to be changed drastically for a successful query of MMO structures.

The wording of some measures taken from Yee remain unchanged. In “immersion”,for example, creating a back-story for one’s character can be entirely in the mind of the game player, or it can be an integral part of the game. Eve Online and City of Heroes are two games where players are encouraged to enter information about their character’s history, in a structure that allows other players to then read that information and/or back-story. World of Warcraft has no structure for this, but it is not uncommon to hear a player talking about their created back-story on an RP, or role-playing server. The same structure is here operating in radically different ways, sometimes even within a single game.

Demographics of MMO game players

What we know about gaming comes primarily from Yee’s studies, particularly his Daedalus Project. While nearly all of the information collected by Yee came by way of selfselected respondents seeking out his surveys, the many thousands of people attracted for his studies have made his data likely the most widely cited in academic work on game player demographics.

In terms of employment, 50.0% of respondents were shown to work full time, 22.2% were full-time students, and 13% of female players referred to themselves as “homemaker.” Additionally, the number of female MMO players seems to increase with age, surpassing the number of males in the 23-28 age range, and in each subsequent age range (Yee, 2006). Yee argues that this data dispels the notion that all gamer players are unemployed, male, and young; rather games have a universal appeal.

Other findings from Yee are that 60.9% of respondents had played for at least 10 contiguous hours, this effect being roughly equivalent along age groups. 15.8% of men and 59.8% of women play MMOs with a romantic partner, while 25.5% of men and 39.5% of women play with a family member, suggesting that women are primarily being introduced to MMO games by a spouse or family member. Most importantly, Yee points out, “…the data demonstrate that MMORPGs appeal to a very wide demographic and that this appeal is strong and elicits high time investment from users.” (Yee, 2006).

Comparing the Social Networks within MMOs with those of the Mafia

“…the mafia initially grew out of an ancient honor system where elders were entrusted to negotiate in conflicts and pass judgments that the others were obliged to adhere to. The fact that Sicily historically has been targeted by outside interests such as the Spanish and fascists has also contributed to a need for organized resistance against outside oppression. The transition into a criminal organization came later, possibly more or less because the mafia realized that they could use their powerful organization to achieve fortune for themselves. This pattern is repeated in EQ [EverQuest]. The strong emphasis on reputation in the creation of social networks grows out of a need from the players to self-govern their gaming environment in order to secure a positive experience in the presence of potential disturbances and a simultaneous absence of an effective and reliable governing system. But ultimately these networks are also used to take shortcuts through, or trick, the formal rules of the system.” (Jakobsson& Taylor, 2003)

Comparing EverQuest’s prominent framework for social structure, the guild, to the social structure of the mafia should seem laughable at first. The above quote however illustrates and contextualizes ways in which play style shifts strongly within MMO games, favoring these social networks as players approach the highest levels of in-game achievement. Put another way, where a player’s guild, online friends, and real-life connections at early stages of play provided the support required to succeed, at the end-game they become the connections that allow a player to dominate.

Here it begins to become apparent that Yee’s (2006) conceptions that deal with interaction (how much a person talks, shares feelings, etc.) and perhaps also individualism, a person’s preference toward playing on their own, may need to be expanded. In the mafia, family provides a strong foundation for commitment. You stick with your family, and they stick with you. Jakobsson and Taylor are here arguing that MMO games work similarly, where people who know each other outside of the game have a much higher commitment to each other than to friends that they know strictly through the game.

The idea here was then to split up communication between these two types of connections; real-life friend, and strictly online friend (individuals or guildmates), and then to rework these criteria in order to better reflect levels of interaction. Individualism was expanded from Yee’s group/solo criteria in part due to this emphasis on interaction. If some players prefer playing with reallife friends, and others with online friends, then perhaps those that prefer no interaction at all differ in equally significant ways.

The Study

As part of Clark’s thesis, a pool of 291 MMO players were given a 91-question survey. The following extract explains the tools used, and an accompanying image shows the survey’s results.

The current research provides data which suggests that a player’s perceived use of varied structural characteristics within a game is related to differing addiction and engagement levels. In particular, the constructs of negative valence, side activities, and interaction with real life friends within MMO games had distinct relationships with each addiction and engagement levels.

When structural characteristics were controlled for, PvP advancement and guild preference appeared to be significant predictors of addiction or engagement. While the primary aim was to offer preliminary data comparing structural characteristics and addiction, this work also discusses the benefits and limitations of sampling respondents within MMO game worlds.

Tools

Addiction Composite. Level of addiction was measured by adapting the Asheron’s Call Addiction (ACAddiction) measure from Charlton & Danforth, 2004. This scale contains 14 items and showed good reliability in the current study with an alpha of .790. In this scale, participants respond to questions on a 5-point Likert-type scale on which 1 = very strongly disagree, and 5 = very strongly agree. A high score on the Addiction Composite represents high addiction, and a considerable inability to control play.

Engagement Composite. Level of engagement was measured by adapting the Asheron’s Call Engagement (ACEngagement) measure from Charlton & Danforth, 2004.This scale contains 15 items and shows good reliability in this study with an alpha of .845. In this scale, participants respond to questions on a 5-point Likert-type scale on which 1 = very strongly disagree, and 5 = very strongly agree. A high score on the Addiction Composite represents high addiction, and a considerable inability to control play.

Videogame Structural Characteristics. These characteristics came from a variety of diverse sources, as covered in the concepts section. These scales vary in size, and generally showed acceptable reliability, with alpha scores ranging from .723 to .906. The exact reliabilities for each measure are provided as part of Table 1. In these scales, which are part of the questionnaire provided in Appendix B, participants respond to questions on 5-point Likert-type scales which are discussed at length in the concepts section.

Abstract of the Thesis

This work also provides a comprehensive review of videogame-related literature in fields as diverse as communications, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience; this reading suggested that behaviors noted as detrimental in psychology and neuroscience were being observed in studies of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) gamers. (Source:Gamasutra)


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