4.3. Study Three – Action

4.3.Study Three – Action

The third study examined how players settle into a course of action when playing digital games. Much like for the previous study, ten participants were recruited for the third study. The testing cohort’s degrees and types of gaming experience and familiarity were also varied, but structured in a similar fashion to the participants in the second study. Four participants – Irene, Milo, Adam, and Scott – were game design students, and all reported playing a variety of digital games regularly, and otherwise keeping up with gaming trends and discourses. Three participants –Martin, Michael, and Kyle – were keen players of specific genres of games, mostly FPSs and action-adventure titles. Two participants – Mary and Caroline – mostly played casual and party games, in an infrequent fashion. The final participant, Nate, reported not having played any digital games for the thirty or so years prior to the study.

All ten participants managed to explore all relevant areas and reach the final room in TestingHouse, the first-person horror game prototype developed for the study. During the data analysis, the study participants were divided into two groups on the basis of the action they took towards Olivia, the unarmed, medical-suit-clad NPC in the basement corridor.

1) The Gunslingers included Martin, Michael, Kyle, Irene, and Mary, all of whom shot Olivia in the basement corridor. 2) The Holstered included Milo, Scott, Adam, Caroline, and Nate, all of whom did not shoot Olivia in the basement corridor.

Despite this similarity in behavior towards Olivia, the participants in these two groups varied from each other in terms of gaming experience and preferences. While all Gunslingers reported some familiarity with FPSs and horror games, not all of them expressed appreciation for these game types: Irene and Mary, for example, stated that they did not enjoy single-player FPSs nor intense genres like horror, while Martin and Kyle mentioned FPS games as their preferred genres. Among the Holstered, only Milo mentioned FPS games in a neutral light in the profiling questionnaire, while the rest of the participants in the group either outright stated that they did not enjoy them, or they did not mention it as a genre of games. There were also variations in genre familiarity and experience, with the game design students (Irene, Milo, Adam, and Scott) generally mentioning more diverse genres and titles than the rest of the study participants.

When asked for reasons for their actions and behavior during the basement encounter in the post-play-session interview, the Gunslingers listed the following reasons:

1) Security/protection: Several of the Gunslingers reported feeling threatened and insecure in the basement encounter, mostly because of the various design elements that they encountered earlier in the game. Among others, these included: o the game’s physical setting (an empty residential house, with signs of violent events), o spatial exploration progression (from the upper floors to the initiallylocked basement), o sound design (the persistent background humming sound and the two audio triggers which resembled deep growls or moans), o lighting design (inability to see far ahead, blurriness of objects when examined closely), o narrative elements (the written note warning of danger in the basement), and o the presence of a weapon in the form of the gun found upstairs. o Either in isolation or combination (depending on the participant), these design elements were enough for the Gunslingers to categorize the game as a horror shooter game, which served as one form of justification for shooting Olivia. 2) Perceived monstrosity/Otherness:The Gunslingers also described Olivia and/or

Remy in inhumane terms, as monsters, zombies, creatures, or as general threatening Others. These descriptions were once again the result of several different design elements working in tandem – most often, the written note and the two sound cues interpreted as growls or moans of something inhumane in the basement. The game’s physical setting and spatial exploration progression were also cited as contributing elements to the interpretation that the basement was home to, specifically, enemies to shoot and kill. 3) Instinct: Lastly, Michael and Kyle in particular mentioned that their violent action towards Olivia was the result of their instincts taking over, rather than of any sort of rational calculation. In simple terms – these two participants saw a silhouette walking towards them in a dark and oppressive basement location, and, having the gun in their possession, had the gut reaction to shoot.

Most of the Gunslingers did not care much for ethical issues in TestingHouse or in other games – with the two outliers being Mary (who strongly opposed shooting animals in digital games, but not humans, as long as they were coded as enemies) and Irene (the only Gunslinger who expressed regret over her quick handling of the basement situation). Though most of the Gunslingers played quickly (with Kyle finishing the game in record time of four minutes), their

styles of play were varied, ranging from slow and stealthy (Michael, Martin) to rapid and direct (Kyle, Mary).

On the other hand, when asked for reasons for their pacifist handling of the basement corridor situation, the Holstered’s responses fell into one of the following four categories:

1) Uncertainty: All of the Holstered chose to wait for Olivia to come to them in the basement corridor section, and were generally not ready to shoot her beforehand.

Four of the Holstered – Milo, Scott, Adam, and Caroline) mentioned that they were waiting to see aggressive movement on behalf of the NPC before shooting, while Adam and Scott expressed additional doubt that there was any sort of danger for the player in the basement, being unconvinced by any of the previously encountered horror design elements. These two participants engaged in metainterpretation of TestingHouse’s design, understanding the game as a commentary on the horror game genre or a subversive game design experiment. 2) Lack of (perceived) threat: For the Holstered, Olivia did not represent any sort of threat primarily because of her movement speed and walking animation, which led them to conclude that the game was not a horror shooter game, but rather a different kind or type of game altogether (such as “thriller game,” “art game,”

“puzzle game,” or “walking simulator”). Furthermore, Milo, Scott, Adam, and

Caroline all described Olivia in much more humane terms, as “innocent” or

“wounded” – principally because they were able to actually see her character model before taking any sort of action towards her. 3) Preference for non-violence: In this group, ethical concerns had much more of an effect on gameplay than was the case with the Gunslingers. Milo, Scott, Adam, and Caroline mentioned being guided by their ethical attitudes (to different degrees) in their course of action during the game. These participants reported that they preferred non-violent options in general and, on several occasions, compared their in-game behavior to real-world behavior in terms of ethicality (e.g. decided not to shoot a gun in someone’s room because such a course of action was not morally correct). 4) Weapon equipping difficulties: Nate, the outlier in the group, did not shoot

Olivia for the simple reason of not being able to equip the gun. Rather, he stated in the interview that he would have shot her had he known how to do that, because of the instinct to defend himself. Caroline and Milo also had problems equipping the gun, but downplayed the role of these difficulties in their actions towards

Olivia.

Much like the Gunslingers, there were also differences in the styles of play among the Holstered, with Caroline and Nate – the two less experienced participants – playing much more slowly and cautiously compared to Milo, Scott, and Adam. Nate was not only the slowest

participant among the Holstered, but also in the entire study, taking around 20 minutes to reach Remy and the final area of the game.

In light of these results, the study’s findings regarding ludic habitus and its operation in digital gaming practice can be summarized as follows:

• When faced with a situation of limited information and the need to make a quick decision therein, the players of TestingHouse tended to act in one of two ways: o Some participants acted proactively, preferring to shoot Olivia rather than waiting for her to approach. o Other participants acted reactively, preferring to wait for Olivia to approach rather than shooting her. • The participants who acted more proactively also interpreted the game as a straightforward action horror experience, on the basis of one or more of its design elements. These participants were less likely to consider issues of ethics at specific moments during their playthrough (such as in the basement corridor) and in general when playing games. They also categorized TestingHouse in clearer, stricter terms. • The participants who acted more reactively interpreted the game as, essentially, a subversion of the action horror experience, being unconvinced by one or more of its design elements and not perceiving Olivia as any kind of a threat due to her movement speed and walking animation. These participants were more likely to consider ethical issues and perspectives, both when playing TestingHouse and when discussing games in general. They also categorized TestingHouse in much less clear, more ambiguous terms. • The participants’ behavior during their time with TestingHouse provided the basis for the ludic habitus spectrum, a model of player tendencies in digital games which range from proactive to reactive (Fig. 24).

Figure 24. The ludic habitus spectrum, mapping the behavior of the participants from the third study.

• More proactive players tend to act in digital games; more reactive players tend to think. The proactive players interpret and categorize new gaming situations quickly and effectively; the more reactive players are slower and need more time and evidence to disambiguate gaming situations.