Video Game Players Play Experience

1. Video Game Players Play Experience Jayne Gackenbach, Ian Matty, and Ashley Nicole Samaha Grant MacEwan College Paper presented at the annual International Association for the Study of Dreams Conference, Sonoma, CA, June 2007 Edmonton, Alberta 2006

2. Learning Objectives • Appreciate an in depth analysis of a few high end gamers self consciousness during play. • Understand how game play affects dream content using the classic Hall and VandeCastle scoring system relative to norms. • Learn something about the possible relationships between lucid, control and observer dreams among high end gamers. • Listen to a reflection to some of these concepts from the perspective of a participant-observer.

3. Explore Self Consciousness During Gaming • Exploration of self consciousness is always a problem. • Self consciousness was broken down into aspects during play which were more easily recognizable. • This approach agrees with Revonsuo’s (2006) point that “self-awareness is the ability to become aware of one’s own phenomenal experiences (bodily experiences, thoughts, memories) as one’s own phenomenal experiences” (p. 49).

4. Hard Core Player Criteria • In order to be interviewed they had to say yes to these four criteria: • Do you play video games on average several times a week? (frequency) • Is your typical playing session more than 2 hours? (length) • Have you been playing video games since before grade three? (age began) • Have you played 50 or more video games over your lifetime? (number of games played)

5. Participants • Solicited through on campus posters and emails • 33 individuals answered the advertisement for participants • over a two month period in early 2006 • 27 actually being interviewed, rest no shows • 25 men and two women • 85% were 25 years of age or younger

6. Semi-structured Interview • Protocol included these basic questions after several closed ended questions. Each had further elaborations as needed: • Why do you play video games? • Talk about the emotions you experience while playing video games. • Describe the nature or quality of your thinking while playing video games. • Discuss your sense of your body while playing video games. • Do you ever experience motion sickness while playing video games? • While playing video games how do you experience time? • Please talk about your sense of self during video game play. • Do video games come up in your dreams? If so how? • Tell me your most recent dream. • Tell me your most recent dream which in some way included video games. • Finally would you tell me your most noteworthy video game dream? • Have you ever had any experiences of alterations in consciousness associated with your video game play?

7. Procedure • Interviews ranged from 30 minutes to an hour • Tape recorded using a portable digital voice recorder (Sony ICD – SX25). • After each interview the interviewer recorded brief personal reactions to the interview. • All interviews were transcribed.

8. Judges Questionnaire • Following the interviews the interviewer compiled a more detailed questionnaire derived from the semi-structured questions but with elaborations and extensions based upon the actual interviews. • A participant observer (second author, Ian Matty) and a long time gamer, listened to all the interviews and filled out the extended questionnaire including various comments of his impressions from the perspective of a high end, long time gamer.

9. Judges Questionnaire (cont.) • responses which were coded • frequency (never, rarely, sometimes, often) • intensity (none, low, medium, high). • One way within subject ANOVA’s were computed to determine most frequent/intense responses in the eyes of the participant observer judge.

10. Results – Games Play • The most favourite and most frequently played type of game were role playing games followed by adventure and strategy type games. • The least favourite and frequently played were arcade games. • The most often cited specific role playing game was World of Warcraft.

11. Why Play Video Games? • Twenty of the 27 said they were fun while almost half noted more than one reason for playing • playing a game was like reading a novel except that you get to be part of the story

12. Emotions During Play • joy/happiness • excitement/arousal/energy • frustration • Anger • sadness/depression (Least frequent) Example

13. Female Gamer Talking About Emotions During Gaming • I’m pretty calm when playing games…. role playing games often I feel the emotions about characters, like if a character dies I’ll sometimes cry of if it’s a really happy moment I tend to feel the happiness too. And for horror games and stuff like that I get really scared because it’s like you experience the same thing that the character experiences for me so it’s like what other games…like Fatal Fantasy I got really scared from. It’s sort of depending on the experience like it’s almost empathetic I guess towards the characters. (008)

14. Anger • Due to research and public concern, anger was probed for • few admitted experiencing it very much while playing • terms of anger none were evaluated as saying they felt angry “often” while 15 players were evaluated as sometimes feeling angry

15. Examples Regarding Anger • “I’ve gotten incredibly angry when I was young like I’ve thrown my controllers across the room or whatever playing Mortal Combat.” (019) • “it’s just you learn that there’s appropriate outlets to vent your frustration or anger and a lot more constructive methods.” (032)

16. Thinking • The participant observer judge rated responses regarding attention/focus as significantly more intense than those regarding problem solving/information processing but saw no difference in the frequency of attention versus problem solving response types.

17. Absorption • there’s very little distractions if I’m really set into a game like my fiancée has tried to do…sounds silly but [she has] tried sexual advances on me and I’ll just be oblivious to her you know, she pretty much has to get in front of me or shut off the game before I realize that she wants something done. (001)

18. Loss of Time • Over half (16) of these hard core college student gamers said they were rarely or never aware of time passing while playing. • Some mentioned that time could be compressed while others said it expanded, depending on the game. • Still others said it was simply missing. • But some learn to compensate.

19. Physical Body During Play • the judge evaluated the respondents as saying they were aware of their body more than experiencing discomfort with it or experiencing any dislocation of it during play • Also asked about motion sickness during play with few reporting it

20. Body Focus Quote • Well depending on what time of day it is I might lose entire sense of my body. I’m just there… It’s not that I don’t feel my body anymore but…one time I had one hand on the keyboard, and one hand on the mouse, and there moving but it’s not even almost consciously, it’s moving based on…because they just know that that’s where I want them to move. And I don’t even have to control where my arm’s going, and I don’t even feel my legs. (003)

21. self awareness during game play • Judge rated respondents as no difference in types of self discussed by respondents • general self awareness, • roof brain chatter, and • identification with game character

22. Self Awareness • Your sort of aware of it [self] because you move the mouse and your interacting with the keyboard but you almost think in a dual personality, if I do this and this then my character can pick this lock, and if I do this my character will be able to do this…The line blurs at that point, and at least for me, as soon as I walk away from it or stop the character is over and it’s back to reality. But when your really in depth playing, you are the character. (011)

23. this insight regarding self talk • Sometimes it stops. I know because you don’t notice it, it’s like when some one says try not to think and then you stop for a minute and then think am I thinking? (013)

24. Altered States Experiences • Range of questions asked from simple ones like dizziness that felt good to being outside self. • you know that your physically there but you know that your physically in your body, but for me it’s a more mental point of view, for others it could be more of a spiritual point of view, like your outside of yourself and you realize, like you cant look into your eyes but you feel I guess that your looking from an inch to the left, or an inch to the right kinda thing so your sort of outside yourself. (003)

25. And Now Dreams….. • Hall and Van de Castle Content Analysis of Gamer Dreams by Bena Kuruvilla, honors student at Grant MacEwan College • Gamer Dreams Content Relevant to Consciousness in Sleep by Alexis Zederayko, student at University of Alberta • Gamer as Participant-Observer by Jordan Olischefski, honors student at Grant MacEwan College • Discussant is Sanford Rosenberg, President of Media Research Associates, who has twenty five years of experience in working with film, video, and emerging technologies.