facilitating game play: how others affect performance at and enjoyment of video games
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Facilitating Game Play: How OthersAffect Performance at and Enjoyment ofVideo GamesNicholas David Bowman a , Rene Weber b , Ron Tamborini c & JohnSherry ca Department of Communication Studies , West Virginia University ,Morgantown , West Virginia , USAb Department of Communication , University of California-SantaBarbara , Santa Barbara , California , USAc Department of Communication , Michigan State University , EastLansing , Michigan , USAPublished online: 15 Feb 2013.
To cite this article: Nicholas David Bowman , Rene Weber , Ron Tamborini & John Sherry (2013)Facilitating Game Play: How Others Affect Performance at and Enjoyment of Video Games, MediaPsychology, 16:1, 39-64, DOI: 10.1080/15213269.2012.742360
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Media Psychology, 16:39–64, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1521-3269 print/1532-785X online
DOI: 10.1080/15213269.2012.742360
Facilitating Game Play: How Others AffectPerformance at and Enjoyment of
Video Games
NICHOLAS DAVID BOWMANDepartment of Communication Studies, West Virginia University, Morgantown,
West Virginia, USA
RENE WEBERDepartment of Communication, University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara,
California, USA
RON TAMBORINI and JOHN SHERRYDepartment of Communication, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
The current study implements the drive theory of social facili-
tation to explain the influence of audience presence in video
game play. This integration is an important one for research aim-
ing to understand the experience of video game play, as the so-
cial aspect of video game play is a relevant dimension of the
technology often ignored in research on gaming experiences. The
study finds a significant positive association between non-gaming
cognitive abilities (such as hand–eye coordination and mental
rotation ability) and performance at a first-person shooter. Data
also support the social facilitation hypothesis: Game play in the
presence of a physical audience significantly predicts increased
game performance. Social facilitation effects are only found for
low-challenge games where the drive-inducing capacity of task
challenge is minimized. Resultant influences on game enjoyment
are less clear.
N. D. Bowman would like to extend his sincerest thanks to Gwen Wittenbaum, MichiganState University, and Frank Biocca, Syracuse University, for their comments on early versionsof this manuscript.
Address correspondence to Nicholas David Bowman, Department of CommunicationStudies, West Virginia University, 108 Armstrong Hall, Morgantown, WV 26501. E-mail:[email protected]
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40 N. D. Bowman et al.
While often thought of as an isolated pursuit, video gaming has a substantialsocial component. Yet, the majority of experimental gaming research featureslaboratory settings with participants playing and evaluating games in relativeisolation. Although most researchers acknowledge that games are playedsocially, few studies examine the potential impact of the presence of otherson the video game experience—and of these (cf. Ewoldsen et al., 2012;Ferguson & Garza, 2011; Lim & Lee, 2009) the focus is on the mediatingeffects of audience presence on the link between game play and aggressiveoutcomes. While interesting, these studies do not examine another theoret-ically and practically relevant aspect of audience presence: Its influence onperformance. After all, video games are a performance good just as muchas they are an experience good; a display of mastery (Grodal, 2000) asmuch as a vehicle for narrative transportation (Brookes, 2010). The drivetheory of social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965, 1980) has been used extensively toexplain audience effects in a variety of industrial and entertainment contexts,usually focusing on performance effects stemming from increased arousal.Yet, it has been applied only sparingly to video games and with mixedresults. To this end, our study looks to understand how the social dynamicof gaming in terms of mere audience presence can influence the video gameexperience—both in terms of performance and enjoyment stemming fromperformance.
VIDEO GAMES AS A SOCIAL ACTIVITY
The social aspect of video games is apparent. A 2003 Pew study that foundnearly half of all college students—over 46%—play multiplayer video gamesas part of their daily social activities ( Jones, 2003). More current data from theEntertainment Software Association (ESA; 2011) reports that 65% of gamerssurveyed play in co-location with other gamers; that is, gamers are physicallypresent with each other when playing. Massively multiplayer online gamessuch as World of Warcraft, first launched in 2004, boast as many as 12 millionplayers worldwide after expanding to the Chinese market (Blizzard, 2010),and the worldwide crash of Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN; Wybrow, 2011)sent online gamers into a frenzy as they were locked out of playing theirfavorite games with others from around the world.
Much attention is paid to playing video games via networked connec-tions, but playing with co-located others is just as popular, as suggestedby ESA. While not as prominent as it was in the late-twentieth century,public video game arcades still enjoy economic success. A substantial portionof gaming industry profits—$3.5 billion as recently as 2006 (BMI Gam-ing, 2012)—still comes from the public arcade market (e.g., games suchas Incredible Technologies’ Golden Tee golf simulation boasting as many as
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Facilitating Game Play 41
10 million registered users playing on an estimated 100,000 public machines)and arcade chains (e.g., Dave and Busters in the United States earning nearly$530 million; Roose, 2011). Another popular form of public video game co-playing is the Internet gaming center, which can be found across the globe.These centers are often the social gathering point for computer gamers,featuring dozens of gamers playing the newest computer games shoulder-to-shoulder often while an audience of admirers and gamers alike await theirturn to play (Vorenberg, 2006).
Beyond public co-playing, an often overlooked but historically impor-tant element of video games is playing with others at home, on one’s owngame console. In fact, since the 1977 release of the Atari VCS game console,rarely has a mass-produced home video game console been released withoutat least two game controller ports and a library of game titles that sup-port multiplayer gaming. The leading seventh-generation consoles—Sony’sPlayStation 3, Microsoft’s X-Box 360, and Nintendo’s Wii—all support fourwireless controllers per use on one console; in fact, Nintendo’s ‘‘Wii’’ moniker(pronounced ‘‘we’’) was designed to be symbolic of two individuals standingside-by-side while playing (Carless, 2006). This multi-controller support hasoffered increasingly unique ways of co-located playing, including a nightclubdance contest (Dance Party and Dance Dance Revolution), preparing andcooking multicourse meals with help (Cooking Mama), and a full simulationof a rock-and-roll band, complete with lead singer, lead and bass guitar, anddrummer (Rock Band and Guitar Hero series). In each of these examples,the presence of others—both as spectators and active participants in gameaction—is a central component of the experience.
While much of this social gaming may be encouraged or even requireddue to the design of specific games, research has shown this social elementto be an integral aspect of the game play experience. Research into gamingpatterns of British and Japanese youth reports that gamers play to meetsocial needs: for a sense of companionship in U.K. youth (Colwell & Kato,2005), and with a preference for friends in Japanese youth (Wan & Chiou,2006). Studies like these suggest that video games are an important socialactivity, specifically in the lives of youth. Some have gone as far as tosuggest that a childhood without video games may even be detrimentalto development (Durkin, 2006), as a salient aspect of the experience ofplaying video games includes competition and mastery of others as wellas discussing game experiences as part of youth culture. As well, researchfocused on aggressive outcomes has found that children with no prior ex-posure to video games tended to have the most aversive reactions to theircontent (cf. Kutner & Olson, 2008). There is a social dimension to videogaming, and it is our contention that this social aspect, specifically thepresence of an audience during game play, can have a profound effecton the overall video game experience, both in terms of performance andenjoyment.
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42 N. D. Bowman et al.
AUDIENCE EFFECTS ON PERFORMANCE—THE SOCIAL
FACILITATION PROCESS
Empirical investigations into the effects of the presence of others on individ-ual performance can be traced back to Triplett’s (1898) observation of bicycleracers. When comparing cyclists’ race times, he found that those cyclists whorode with the peloton—a densely packed group of riders who constitute themiddle of the pack in a cycling race—significantly outperformed those whorode alone, sometimes by as much as 20–30 seconds. Although several the-ories were posed to explain this observed phenomenon, Triplett concludedthat ‘‘the bodily presence of another contestant participating simultaneouslyin the race serves to liberate latent energy not ordinarily available’’ (p. 533).Triplett’s albeit-imprecise explication of his observation (which can be ex-plained to some extent in terms of physics and reduction of drag resultingfrom the densely packed group resulting in less effort being required to ridefaster) was later explained by Zajonc (1965, 1980), who described how thepresence of others affects individual task performance in his social facilitationtheory (SFT). Based on the logic of drive theory (Hull, 1943; Spence, 1956),SFT holds that behavior can be explained as the product of individual habitand drive; mathematically expressed as: E D f (H � D), with E representingexcitatory potential toward a behavior, H representing the strength of a habit,and D representing drive. In this formula, drive is an indiscriminant multiplierof habit. When a dominant habit exists in a hierarchy of mutually exclusivehabits, increased drive should increase the probability of the dominant habit’soccurrence. In the SFT literature, the terms habit and skill are often usedinterchangeably; conceptually and operationally in our study, these termsare the same. An illustration of this process in action is the hitting ability of aprofessional baseball player, whose dominant response to a pitched ball is alevel, powerful swing; this habitual swing is also understood as the player’sbatting skill.
Zajonc (1980) argued that the mere presence of others was sufficientto increase drive and demonstrated this by studying male billiards players.He found that good players (players whose dominant responses were akinto success at pool) experienced a 12% increase in their shot accuracy in thepresence of an audience, while poor players saw a nearly 12% decrease.Zajonc (1965) explained that individuals respond with their dominant skill,which, in turn, affects performance. If this dominant response is conduciveto success at the activity, performance will be increased; in contrast, if thedominant response is not conducive to success at the activity, performancewill be decreased. Although the drive theory explanation has been chal-lenged by some (Cottrell, 1972; Cottrell, Wack, Sekarak, & Rittle, 1968), meta-analysis of social facilitation literature (cf. Bond & Tutus, 1983) supportsZajonc’s (1980) contentions. Figure 1 outlines the social facilitation drivetheory logic.
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Facilitating Game Play 43
FIGURE 1 The social facilitation model.
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORY AND VIDEO GAMES
Investigations testing SFT in the context of video game play have reportedmixed results. Some research shows evidence for audience presence ongame performance (Kimble & Rezabek, 1992), but explains this effect usingan evaluation apprehension account of SFT that has been challenged inthe literature (Bond & Titus, 1983). Other research (Brown, Hall, Ho1tzer,Brown, & Brown, 1997) seems to dismiss the applicability of SFT to thevideo game context all together. After reviewing these studies below, theirimplications for the current research are discussed and testable hypothesesapplying SFT logic to predict video game performance are offered. Twoprominent features of SFT that are particularly pertinent to the present studydeal with the manner in which dominant skill and task challenge moderatethe influence of audience presence on performance in a video game context.
SFT and Dominant Skills in a Video Game Context
Brown and colleagues (1997) tested the effect of an audience on participants’performance at the video game Pong and found evidence that the presenceof an audience hindered performance for all participants in their study; thatis, no social facilitation effect was reported. Similarly, Kimble and Rezabek(1992) found that audience presence hindered performance for individu-als who played a difficult game. Although these findings are explainedas evidence of evaluation apprehension, both studies are consistent withSFT. Moreover, as evaluation apprehension logic has been challenged inthe literature (Bond & Titus, 1983), drive theory rationales may offer amore robust explanation of these findings. Two prominent features of SFTrelevant to these explanations address the manner in which both dominantskill and task challenge can moderate the influence of audience presenceon performance in a video game context. SFT would posit that the merepresence of an audience is sufficient to cause an indiscriminant increase ineffort, and increased effort is understood to trigger a dominant skill response.If the skill is conducive to success at the game, performance should improve;by contrast, performance should worsen when the skill is lacking. In bothof the aforementioned studies, the video games used were intended to be adifficult task (i.e., one where individuals lacked the dominant skill requiredto perform the activity). Thus, we might argue that the observed decrease inperformance in both studies resulted from a lack of proper dominant skillor skills required to play each video game. However, because neither study
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defined or measured player skill, this explanation was not tested and cannotbe ruled out.
It seems likely that the performance deficiencies observed in this re-search were due to the lack of a required dominant skill. Yet, to test this beliefand examine the role of video game specific dominant skills in SFT processes,skills central to game performance must first be identified. One promisingclass of skills in this regard has been identified in recent work exploringthe influence of cognitive abilities on video game performance (Bowman& Sherry, 2006; Sherry, Rosaen, Bowman, & Huh, 2006). This research hasfound significant correlations between game-specific cognitive skills (such asthree-dimensional mental rotation and targeting ability) and performance onvideo games that highlighted these skills (such as three-dimensional puzzleand shooter games). SFT logic can be applied here to explain how variancein cognitive skills could account for observed differences in video game per-formance. The theory holds that the presence of an audience will influenceperformance based on an individual’s skill at the task at hand (in this case,a video game). If the presence of an audience causes an increase in effort,which in turn causes players to respond according to their dominant skill, weshould expect to see the presence of an audience moderate the relationshipbetween game-specific cognitive ability and performance. Specifically, thepresence of an audience will cause individuals with high levels of theseskills to perform better, and individuals with low levels of these skills toperform worse.
SFT and Task Challenge in a Video Game Context
Of course, audience presence is not the only variable that can positivelyinfluence drive. Worchel, Shebilski, Jordan, and Prislin (1997) tested theeffects of audience presence on flight trainees’ performance at a video gameflight simulator, and found that the simulator’s level of challenge rather thanthe presence of an audience explained a significant amount of variancein performance. Specifically, Worchel et al. found that when trainees wereoffered an extrinsic challenge, those trainees with a high level of skill per-formed significantly better than trainees who were offered no challenge; aswell, those trainees with a low level of skill performed significantly worse.When the study was replicated manipulating the size of each experimentalgroup—trainees used the simulator either alone, in front of two people,or three people—no effect was reported for audience condition on per-formance. These findings were interpreted to suggest that the presence ofchallenge, not audience presence, was a significant predictor of performance.For video game researchers, this would suggest that audience presence hasno effect on video game play, as a primary motivator for video game playis to overcome increasing levels of challenge (Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, &Lachlan, 2003).
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Facilitating Game Play 45
A closer look at SFT reveals that Worchel’s et al. (1997) findings areindeed consistent with theory. Zajonc (1965, 1980) argued that other vari-ables besides audience presence, such as challenge and competition, canalso increase drive; in other words, challenge would have the same effecton performance as audience presence. Therefore, Worchel et al.’s failure tofind an effect for audience presence on game performance might simplybe indicative of a drive ceiling resulting from the extreme levels of drivecreated by the challenge manipulation in their study. In other words, highlychallenging activities require so much drive from the individual engagingin them that we would not expect the presence of additional environmentalfactors to play a substantial role in further increasing drive; there simply is nomore effort that the individual can expend. This logic suggests that if levelsof challenge in a video game were varied, audience effects on performanceshould be observable only when other drive-producing forces such as thepresence of a challenge are not operating at a maximum—that is, a high-challenge video game should be theoretically capable of producing the samesort of drive ceiling that was observed (at least, by our interpretation) inWorchel et al. (1997). Since video games can offer varying levels of challenge,we might expect to see SFT under some levels of challenge and not others.Using game features that allow players to manually adjust the challenge levelof a game’s artificial intelligence system, we would expect that audiencepresence should influence game performance, but only at lower challengelevels, where the challenge-induced drive should be minimal. Working fromthe assumption that game performance should decrease as the drive createdby task challenge increases, we can use SFT to develop logic predictinghow task challenge and audience presence should combine to influencegame performance.
VIDEO GAMES: ENJOYMENT FROM PERFORMANCE
While our study focuses on establishing the link between audience presenceand game performance as understood through SFT, we also recognize thatvideo games as an entertainment medium are played for enjoyment. Grodal(2000) argues that much of the enjoyment one experiences from playingvideo games is a result of the games ability to offer control; that is, playersare able to immerse themselves and perform within a virtual environmentand the pleasure derived from the experience comes from the performanceitself. When discussing flow theory, Sherry (2004) argues that flow states—which have been conceptually and empirically linked to enjoyment—are theresult of an individual’s skill at playing a video game balanced with the levelof challenge the video game environment provides. From this perspective,video game enjoyment would be the result of an individual successfullyattaining and sustaining a state of flow, marked by (among other things) a
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clarity of goals, an autotelic desire to continue the task at hand (in this case,play the video game), a loss of time and space, and a resulting overall positiveevaluation of the experience. Flow states by their nature are attained throughpositive performance and extending this logic to game enjoyment suggeststhat heightened performance would result in a greater state of flow, whichwould increase enjoyment of the video game experience. Even without aprotracted discussion of flow and control experiences, other studies (cf.Holbrook, Chestnut, Oliva, & Greenleaf, 1984; Klimmt, Hartmann & Frey,2007) have established an empirical link between video game performanceand enjoyment, suggesting simply that video games require performance—at their core, video games are more similar to logic puzzles than they are tonarrative-driven entertainment media (Sherry et al., 2006b) and, therefore,enjoyment of the experience is dependent on the individual’s ability to meetthe challenges presented in the game.
HYPOTHESES
To formalize our study’s hypotheses, we first predict that increased cognitiveability will result in increased game performance, as has been found in pastresearch (cf. Bowman & Sherry, 2006; Sherry et al., 2006b).
H1: Greater cognitive skills will lead to a significant increase in performanceat video games.
Establishing the connection between cognitive skill and game performance,SFT logic allows us to predict a positive influence of audience presenceon game performance due to the increased drive exerted by individualsperforming in front of others. However, as increased challenge is also knownto increase drive exerted, we only expect the positive relationship betweenaudience presence and performance under conditions of low challenge. Aswell, this relationship should exist when controlling for the influence ofcognitive skill on performance.
H2: Controlling for cognitive skill, the presence of an audience should in-crease performance at video games for low-challenge games only.
Notably, increased drive stemming from audience presence should positivelypredict performance but only for individuals whom have the necessary skillsto perform in the video game. For low-skill players, this increased drive willtrigger a dominant response (that is, skill set) not conducive to performance,resulting in lower performance scores. Conversely for high-skill players, in-creased drive should result in the highest game performance levels observed.
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Facilitating Game Play 47
As with Hypothesis 2, in both cases this interaction is predicted only whenother drive-inducing variables such as challenge are at a minimum.
H3a: Audience presence and cognitive skill should interact such that thepresence of an audience should increase performance for higher skilledgamers, but only in the low-challenge condition.
H3b: Audience presence and cognitive skill should interact such that thepresence of an audience should decrease performance for lower skilledgamers, but only in the low-challenge condition.
Although secondary to the main focus of this article, we offer explanationsas to how game performance and audience presence might influence en-joyment. We focus particularly on enjoyment as it is a pinnacle experienceof video game play as an autotelic process (Sherry, 2004) and it is closelytied to performance. It is well established that increased game performanceis a positive predictor of enjoyment (cf. Holbrook et al., 1984; Klimmt et al.,2007), and we have proposed in Hypothesis 1 that cognitive skill shouldpositively predict game performance. Therefore, we proposed that gameperformance as a variable should mediate the relationship between cognitiveskill and enjoyment.
H4: Game performance will mediate the relationship between cognitive skilland enjoyment.
Hypotheses 2 and 3 provide logic to suggest how audience presence mightinfluence enjoyment via its influence on performance, and Hypothesis 4suggests how performance and cognitive skill are related to enjoyment. Aswe expect the social facilitation process to be successful at increasing gameperformance only under conditions of low challenge and we expect thatincreased performance should lend to increased enjoyment, we likewise ex-pect that enjoyment will be highest for gamers playing a low-challenge gamein the presence of an audience. As with Hypothesis 2, tests of Hypothesis 5are conducted controlling for the potential influence of cognitive skill.
H5: Controlling for cognitive skill, the presence of an audience should in-crease enjoyment of video games for low-challenge games only.
Finally, as with Hypothesis 3, an interaction of audience presence and gameskill is predicted such that the highest enjoyment levels will be found forhigh-skilled individuals playing in the presence of an audience, as theseindividuals are expected to perform best at the video game. As well, thisinteraction is only expected under conditions of low game challenge, whereaudience-induced drive is able to have maximal impact on performance andresultant enjoyment.
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H6: Audience presence and game skill should interact such that the presenceof an audience should increase enjoyment for higher skilled gamers, butonly in the low-challenge condition.
METHOD
Participants
Participants (N D 62) were recruited from a large Midwestern university andoffered course credit for their involvement in the study. The average age ofthese participants was 21.1, SD D 1.81, with 39 males.
Procedure
A 2 � 2 � 2 mixed-factorial design was used in this study with audiencepresence (isolation or actual audience) and player skill (high or low) asbetween-subjects factors and game challenge (low or high) as a within-subject factor. All participants were instructed that the study was beingconducted to investigate the enjoyment of different forms of video games,and that the study would require two experimental sessions to complete.In the first session, participants completed tests designed to measure sixgame-specific cognitive skills. Test order was randomized, and all tests werecompleted within 30 minutes. In the second session, participants were ran-domly assigned to one of two audience conditions and instructed to playa computer game twice, once at each level of challenge for 10 minutes;order of game challenge was randomized.1 After each game was played,participants completed a questionnaire about their game play experience.Between gaming sessions, participants were given a buffer task so that theywould not readily recognize the challenge manipulation. The second sessionlasted about one hour in total.
Materials and Measures
In the first experimental session, participants were tested on six differentcognitive skills thought to be related to performance at video games, in-cluding targeting ability (both fixed and moving targeting ability), mentalrotation ability (both two-dimensional and three-dimensional mental rotationability), hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skill. The selection of theseskills was based on their ecological validity with the video game used inour study—a first-person shooting game—as well as prior research relatingselected skills to game performance (Bowman & Sherry, 2006; Sherry et al.,2006b).
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Facilitating Game Play 49
FIXED AND MOVING TARGETING ABILITY
Fixed targeting ability is understood to be the ability to strike a stationaryobject from a distance. To measure this, an 8-inch circular Velcro targetwas suspended by a wooden axe handle about 47 inches from the ground.Participants stood about 8 feet from the apparatus, and were instructed totoss a tennis ball seven times, underhanded, at the target, a method suggestedby Kimura (1999). One point was awarded for hitting the target, two pointsfor sticking the ball to the target, and three points for sticking the ball tothe center of the target. For measuring moving targeting ability—the abilityto estimate the trajectory of both the target and the device being used tostrike it—the fixed target was set in motion and stopped after it traveledonce through one inverse parabolic arc. Each subject’s score was the sum ofall tosses, resulting in a possible range of 0 to 21 for each measure.
TWO-DIMENSIONAL MENTAL ROTATION ABILITY
Two-dimensional mental rotation ability measures the capacity to envisionrotations of drawn objects on their x- and y-axes. To test this, the ETS (1975version) Card Rotations Test S-1 (Rev.) survey was used. This 20-item testasks participants to decide which of eight objects is a rotation of a referenceobject. Two 3-minute sessions were administered with 10 items per session.Participants were scored based on the percentage of items they answeredcorrectly.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL MENTAL ROTATION ABILITY
Three-dimensional mental rotation ability is similar to two-dimensional abil-ity, except it incorporates rotations on the z-axis as well as the x- and y-axes.To test this ability, an AutoCAD-redrawn version (Peters et al., 1995) of theVandenberg and Kuse (1978) 24-item Mental Rotations Test (MRT–A) wasused. This test asks participants to identify which two of four objects arerotations of a referent. The test was administered in one 7-minute session.Participants were scored based on the percentage of items they correctlyidentified both rotated versions of the referent image.
HAND-EYE COORDINATION
Hand-eye coordination measures the ability for a vision system to coordinatethe information received through the eyes to control, guide, and direct thehands (Krapp & Wilson, 2005). To test this, two yardsticks were boundtogether and suspended from a doorway approximately 84 inches tall. Adapt-ing methods by Hoeger and Hoeger (2004), participants were given sevenchances to catch the yardsticks as they dropped from the ceiling. The numberof inches from zero at which participants caught the yardsticks for each ofthe seven trials was averaged. Lower scores on this task represent higherlevels of hand-eye coordination.
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FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Fine motor skills measure control of small movements of the hands, wrists,fingers, and other appendages (Krapp & Wilson, 2005). To test this skill,participants were given a wooden triangle, approximately 4 inches on allsides, containing 15 holes, one filled with a rubber stopper-grip, leaving 14open holes. Participants were given three attempts to place 14 multicoloredplastic golf tees into the holes as quickly as possible, and timed in millisec-onds using a digital stopwatch; the average time for the three trials wasrecorded. Lower scores on this task represent higher levels of fine motorskill.
In the second experimental session, participants played a video gameat two different levels of game challenge, completing a questionnaire afterplaying each game. The experimenter then recorded the age and sex of eachparticipant, fully debriefed each one, and escorted them from the laboratory.
VIDEO GAME
Participants played Quake 3: Arena, a first-person shooter game in whichplayers use futuristic weaponry to kill other combatants in an arena-stylebattlefield. The game was played on a notebook computer with a wirelesskeyboard and mouse, and displayed on a 54-inch viewable screen. Par-ticipants were seated at a table in the center of a small, theater-lit roomapproximately 108 inches from the viewable screen.
Game challenge. Quake 3: Arena has five pre-programmed discretedifficulty settings. To manipulate challenge, the researcher set the gameto ‘‘I can win’’ (the lowest setting) for the low challenge condition and‘‘Nightmare!’’ (the highest setting) for the high challenge condition.
Performance score. Performance in the Quake game was measured byusing the total number of points in each 10-minute game session. Thesescores were recorded by a research assistant who watched the video gameplay through a one-way mirror looking into the experimental room. A pointis scored each time the player successfully shoots and kills another player.
Enjoyment. To gauge participant’s enjoyment playing the video game, afour-item scale derived from the literature on flow theory was used (Sherry,2004). Items measured concepts such as enjoyment, playing the game longergiven the opportunity, recommending the game to friends, and having funplaying the game. Reliability of the scale was .961, and versions of thismeasurement have been used to measure performance-based video gameenjoyment in other studies (cf. Bowman & Sherry, 2008; Sherry et al., 2006b).
In addition to our focal enjoyment measure—and to protect againstpotential testing effects—we included the 12-item flow scale developed bySherry et al. (2006b), which contained items related to frustration (‘‘Thisgame was very irritating to play’’) and boredom (‘‘This game was verymonotonous’’) stemming from video game play as well as post-play rec-
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ollections of flow states (‘‘I felt absorbed by the game’’ and ‘‘I was caughtup in the video game’’). As our study was not a test of flow theory we didnot include these variables in analysis, but we note that our measure ofenjoyment had a strong, significant and positive correlation with the flowitems (r D .901) as well as a strong, significant, and negative correlationwith the frustration (r D �.238) and boredom (r D �.521) items We see thisas evidence of construct validity related to our performance-based measureof enjoyment. Measures of presence derived from the sense of presenceinventory (Lessiter, Freeman, Davidoff, & Keogh, 2001) were also includedin our study, but these measures were used only as foil questions and notincluded in data analysis.
Audience presence. To manipulate audience presence, two undergrad-uate students served as confederates. In the audience presence condition,two confederates sat in the room with the participant during game play. Theresearcher introduced the confederates as participants waiting their turn andinstructed everyone not to speak during game play. In the isolation condition,participants played the game alone. For both conditions, participants wereobserved by a research assistant through an inconspicuous one-way mirror.In data analysis, audience presence was coded as 1 in regression models.
Buffer task. In between each game session, participants were taken toanother area of the laboratory where they were given time to play one oftwo versions of a war simulation video game. This not only allowed theresearcher ample time to configure the Quake game for each experimentalcondition (i.e., adjust the challenge settings and restart the game), it was anattempt to mask the challenge manipulation. It was thought that having theparticipant play several different video games in a relatively short period oftime would help to obscure the fact that task challenge was being varied, orat least make this variance a less salient factor in the minds of players whenthey were evaluating their game experiences; in fact, no participants wereable to deduce the experimental manipulations of the study when asked atthe conclusion of the study. Each participant played both versions of the wargame, and the order of these versions was randomized.
RESULTS
Manipulation Checks
GAME DIFFICULTY
To ensure that game challenge was successfully manipulated, a paired-samples t-test was calculated confirming game scores from the low-challenge(M D 45.00, SD D 29.78) and high-challenge (M D 10.38, SD D 8.12) differedsignificantly, � game score D 34.62, t (61) D 11.30, p < .001, Cohen’s d D
1.59, 95% C.I. dupper D 3.62, dlower D �5.81.
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COGNITIVE SKILL
It is important to note that while our study uses six distinct measures ofdifferent cognitive skills, it is rarely the case that cognitive skills are con-ceptualized to be orthogonal from each other (cf. Spearman, 1927). Ourcognitive measures of video game skill were analyzed to ensure that eachwas empirically related to measure game performance as well as their in-terrelation to one another. This was done by correlating the six measureswith a composite measure of game score to determine which cognitiveskill measures were empirically associated with video game performance,and performing a principal component analysis on the skill measures todetermine their interrelations. After standardizing all six scores, all but onemeasure (fine motor skill, r D .084, p D .426) was significantly correlated withperformance; therefore fine motor skill was dropped from further analysis.PCA using Varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization found two stablefactors for assessing game skill: rotation ability (a combination of our two-dimensional and three-dimensional rotation measures), and hand-eye tar-geting ability (a combination of our fixed targeting, moving targeting andhand-eye coordination measures). This two-factor solution converged inthree iterations and explained 59% of the variance in game skill; these twocognitive skills were considered independently in analysis. Rotation abilitywas calculated as the mean of the two-dimensional and three-dimensionalpercentage correct scores for each subject. Hand-eye targeting was calculatedas the sum of the tossing trials and the eye-hand coordination distancemeasure.
Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis 1 predicted a positive association between cognitive skills andgame performance. Both rotation ability (r D .353, p D .005, 95% �lower D
.353, �upper D .553) and hand-eye targeting ability (r D .351, p D .005,95% �lower D .111, �upper D .552) shared significant positive correlationswith video game performance. For low challenge games, rotation ability(ˇ D .570, p < .001) and hand-eye targeting ability (ˇ D .334, p D .001)explained 44% of variance in performance (95% C.I.: R2
lower D .265, R2upper D
.615). For the high challenge game, rotation ability (ˇ D .543, p < .001) andhand-eye targeting ability (ˇ D .322, p D .002) explained 41% of variancein performance (95% C.I.: R2
lower D .232, R2upper D .588). Hypothesis 1 is
supported; see Table 1.Hypothesis 2 predicted a positive association between audience pres-
ence and game performance restricted to the low-challenge version of thevideo game. Controlling for cognitive skills, audience presence was a sig-nificant positive predictor of game performance for low-challenge games(ˇ D .276, p D .004) with the addition of audience presence explaining
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Facilitating Game Play 53
TABLE 1 Effect of Audience Presence on Video Game Performance
Low-challenge game
B SE B ˇ
Rotation ability 17.06 2.88 .570**Hand-eye targeting ability 9.07 2.62 .334**
�R2D .435**
F for �R2D 24.48
Rotation ability 17.39 2.71 .581**Hand-eye targeting ability 10.65 2.52 .392**Audience presence 16.31 5.47 .276**
�R2D .073**
F for �R2D 8.89
Rotation ability 12.85 3.71 .429**Hand-eye targeting ability 9.73 3.49 .358**Audience presence 16.59 5.44 .281**Audience presence � rotation ability 9.47 5.40 .219Audience presence � hand-eye targeting ability 1.04 5.01 .026
�R2D .025
F for �R2D 1.58
High-challenge game
B SE B ˇ
Rotation ability 4.43 .814 .543**Hand-eye targeting ability 2.38 .739 .322**
�R2D .414**
F for �R2D 20.81
Rotation ability 4.48 .806 .549**Hand-eye targeting ability 2.63 .748 .355**Audience presence 2.52 1.63 .157
�R2D .023
F for �R2D 2.41
Rotation ability 4.24 1.11 .519**Hand-eye targeting ability 3.55 1.05 .479**Audience presence 2.74 1.64 .170Audience presence � rotation ability .718 1.62 .061Audience presence � hand-eye targeting ability �1.96 1.50 �.182
�R2D .018
F for �R2D .923
*p < .05, **p < .01.
an additional 7% of the variance in performance (�R2D .073, p D .004;
95% C.I. around total R2D .508: R2
lower D .345, R2upper D .671); that is, only
participants in the audience presence condition experienced the predictedboost in performance, and participants in the isolation condition did notsee an increase. The addition of audience presence did not account for any
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54 N. D. Bowman et al.
significant additional variance in performance for high-challenge games (ˇ D
.157, p D .126), although we are careful to note here that our small sample(N D 62) introduces an increased risk for committing a type II error dueto a lack of statistical power. However, given the substantially low varianceexplained by the inclusion of audience presence in the regression model forhigh-challenge game (�R2
D .023, ns, or almost one fourth of the additionalexplained variance for the same variable with low-challenge games andless than 5% of the explained variance of our cognitive skill predictors)as well as the rather low significance level (which does not even approachsignificance at a more conservative p < .10 level) we feel confident that ourdata presented here is support of Hypothesis 2 as originally constructed; seeTable 1. However, we discuss this concern more specifically in the limitationssection of this manuscript.
Hypotheses 3a and 3b predicted an interaction between audience pres-ence and cognitive skill such that game performance should be highest forhighly skilled individuals playing the low-challenge video game and lowestfor low-skilled individuals. There was no significant interaction of audiencepresence and the two cognitive skills for either low-challenge (rotation abilityˇ D .219, p D .085; hand-eye targeting ˇ D .026, p D .836) or high-challengegames (rotation ability ˇ D .061, p D .660; hand-eye targeting ˇ D �.182,p D .198). Hypothesis 3 is not supported; see Table 1.
Preacher and Hayes’ (2004) simple mediation test was used to testHypothesis 4, the prediction that game performance mediates the associationbetween cognitive skill and game enjoyment. All variables were standardizedprior to analysis to produce standardized regression weights, and separateanalyses were calculated for each set of cognitive skills. For rotation ability,the initial direct relationship between enjoyment and cognitive skill as apredictor was significant (ˇ D .233, p D .025), but inclusion of game per-formance as a mediator rendered the direct relationship between enjoymentand cognitive skill non-significant (ˇ D .040, p D .713) with a significantindirect effect (Sobel D .193, p D .003). Hypothesis 4 is supported whenconsidering rotation ability; see Figure 2.
FIGURE 2 Mediating effect of game performance on the relationship between rotation abilityand game enjoyment. **p < .01.
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Facilitating Game Play 55
FIGURE 3 Mediating effect of game performance on the relationship between hand-eyecoordination and game enjoyment. **p < .01.
For hand-eye targeting ability, the initial direct relationship betweenenjoyment and cognitive skill as predictor of enjoyment was significant(ˇ D .259, p D .012), but inclusion of game performance rendered thisrelationship non-significant (ˇ D .117, p D .253) with a significant indirecteffect (Sobel D .142, p D .009). Hypothesis 4 is supported when consideringhand-eye targeting ability; see Figure 3.
Hypothesis 5 predicts that the audience presence should increase en-joyment of low-challenge video games, controlling for video game skill.Audience presence was not a significant predictor of enjoyment for the low-challenge (ˇ D �.141) or high-challenge (ˇ D �.169) game; in fact, thepresence of an audience during play seemed to have a slightly negative effecton enjoyment. Hypothesis 5 is not supported; see Table 2. As Hypothesis 5is not significant, tests of Hypothesis 6 are moot because an interaction effectis not statistically plausible or meaningful. Alternative explanations for thelack of significant findings here are discussed below.
DISCUSSION
For many players, the social aspect of video games is an integral part of thegaming experience. While concerns about the isolating influence of videogames and other forms of media are merited (cf. Putnam, 1995), one cannotignore the historical and empirical importance of social, co-located elementsof video game play. Related to this, the body of research on audience effectsshows that the presence of others can significant impact drive, which relatesto one’s performance at an activity as high-skilled individuals will performbetter and low-skilled individuals will perform worse. Taken in sum, a logicintegrating social facilitation and video game play can be constructed to sug-gest that the presence of others during game play coupled with one’s skillscan significantly impact their game performance, which in turn influencestheir enjoyment of the experience. Data from our research largely supportsthis logic as associated to performance, while the expected audience effectson enjoyment were not found.
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TABLE 2 Effect of Audience Presence on Video Game Enjoyment
Low-challenge game
B SE B ˇ
Rotation ability .548 .236 .282*Hand-eye targeting ability .363 .214 .206
�R2D .127
F for �R2D 4.31*
Rotation ability .537 .236 .277*Hand-eye targeting ability .310 .219 .176Audience presence �.539 .476 �.141
�R2D .019
F for �R2D 1.28
Rotation ability .555 .375 .286Hand-eye targeting ability .450 .350 .255Audience presence �.510 .514 �.133Audience presence � rotation ability �.001 .486 �.000Audience presence � hand-eye targeting ability �.278 .450 �.108
�R2D .006
F for �R2D .195
High-challenge game
B SE B ˇ
Rotation ability .817 .246 .392*Hand-eye targeting ability .260 .224 .138
�R2D .178
F for �R2D 6.37*
Rotation ability .803 .244 .385*Hand-eye targeting ability .193 .227 .102Audience presence �.697 .493 �.169
�R2D .027
F for �R2D 1.20
Rotation ability .723 .242 .347*Hand-eye targeting ability .177 .323 .093Audience presence �.692 .504 �.168Audience presence � rotation ability .168 .500 .056Audience presence � hand-eye targeting ability .017 .463 .006
�R2D .002
F for �R2D .058
*p < .05, **p < .01.
First, our study adds support to other research that has establishedsignificant links between cognitive skills and associated video game skill (cf.using video games to train attention and processing skills; Dye, Green, &Bavelier, 2009a, 2009b). Performance at a three-dimensional shooting game
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Facilitating Game Play 57
is significantly predicted independently by one’s ability to mentally rotateobjects (the three-dimensional orientation aspects of the video game) as wellas their hand-eye targeting ability (being able to track and mark stationaryand moving objects by manipulating an input device). While this findingmight seem superficial, it provides for an understanding of video game skillthat is independent of video game play; it also provides for a focus on drivetheory in that an individual’s dominant responses can be conceptualizedand operationalized by their reliance on their inherent skill sets and notthose of a specific technology (just as a baseball player’s ability to hit abaseball is a function of their ability to see and track objects in general).Moreover, while there is a growing amount of research suggesting that videogames can increase cognitive skills there are few studies—if any—that lookat the reverse causal scenario such as is proposed in our paper. Of course,practice with and experience engaging in such activities is also important(such as prior video game experience) but by placing focus on the actualcognitive abilities rather than merely game play experience, our study is ableto establish a more direct association between dominant real-world skills andperformance in virtual environments.
Having established the link between cognitive skill and game perfor-mance, our focus on the facilitating influence of audience presence on gameperformance suggested by theory is supported by our data. Specifically inlow-challenge video games where the drive-inducing influence of challenge(a known agent in increasing drive) was minimized, the mere presence ofaudience members during game play was found to significantly increaseperformance. However, the expected interaction of audience presence andcognitive skill on game performance was not found, although the effecttrended in the predicted direction for rotation ability. For the low challengevideo game, individuals higher in rotation ability was a near-significant pre-dictor of game performance in the presence of an audience (p D .085 level).Here, we note that the small sample size employed in the current study(N D 62) may have resulted in low statistical power, although this defensemight be countered by the non-significant findings associated with hand-eyetargeting (p D .836 level). Thus, it appears that the influences of cognitiveskill and audience presence on video game performance are significant andorthogonal. At the same time, it could well be the case that when testingdrive theory explanations of SFT, we might not expect the same magnitudeof effect sizes when looking at the influence of audience presence on morementally demanding virtual activities (such as performance in a video game)as compared to a more physically demanding activity (such as hitting abaseball) in which the former requires significantly less physical effort thanthe latter. In addition, the relatively small size of our audience present—twoindividuals—might not be sufficient enough to see strong social facilitationeffects. Both are plausible alternative explanations to our main findings andshould be considered in replication.
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Shifting to enjoyment, our data show that game performance mediatesthe association between cognitive skill and game enjoyment. Again, whilethis finding may seem superficial it further extends logic suggesting non-game specific individual skills play a significant role in the video game expe-rience, supporting the contentions of past research (cf. Sherry et al., 2006b).However, audience presence did not have the expected significant impact onenjoyment. In fact, the pattern of data suggests mere audience presence tohave a slightly negative impact. One alternative explanation for this findingis potentially unexpected nature of the audience presence situation. For one,participants randomly assigned to the audience presence were not aware thatthey would be playing in front of an audience—especially given the silenceand impersonal nature of the two confederate audience members. While nostudy participants expressed concern or discomfort with the audience pres-ence condition, this alternative explanation for the results cannot be ruledout and is discussed below. Related to this, confederate audience memberswere instructed not to speak to the participant during game play and, if theparticipant tried to interact with them, they were instructed to discourageany further communication. Combined, we are convinced that a negativeexpectancy violation related to the rather artificial audience presence in theoverall video game experience might have been at play here (especially asthe buffer video game was always played in isolation across conditions, andcomparing mean enjoyment scores for participants in the audience presencecondition was slightly higher when playing the buffer games, M D 3.81,SD D 1.89, that the experimental games overall, M D 3.60, SD D 1.62).
Also, we are careful to point out that there was a significant overallmain effect of game challenge on enjoyment such that across audiencepresence conditions, low-challenge games were more enjoyed that high-challenge games. Paired-sample t tests report that in both the isolation con-dition (Mlow D 4.70, SD D 1.69; Mhigh D 4.24, SD D 1.73, t (30) D 2.14,p D .041, Cohen’s d D .27, 95% C.I. dupper D .88, dlower D �0.32) and theaudience presence condition (Mlow D 3.96, SD D 1.59; Mhigh D 3.39, SD D
1.80, t (30) D 2.06, p D .020, Cohen’s d D .34, 95% C.I. dupper D .97, dlower D
�0.22) enjoyment was significantly higher with low-challenge games—nodoubt attributed to the increased performance of individuals in the low-challenge conditions (as reported in the Results section above). Such a strongmain effect likely resulted in a diminished capacity for other variables suchas audience presence to impact enjoyment uniquely, and this should beconsidered in future research.
Limitations and Future Research
Data from this study suggest a significant impact of audience presence andcognitive skill on an individual’s performance at video games. Yet, the studyis limited in its ecological scope, and should be interpreted in light of
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Facilitating Game Play 59
these limitations. First, it should be recognized that the audience presencecondition in the current study was designed to manipulate only the physicalpresence of an audience and thus restricted natural social interactions of co-playing with the participant. While this manipulation was viewed as a cleanmanipulation of physical audience presence as a drive-including variable,such a manipulating is not ecologically valid with the typical manner inwhich co-located individuals playing a video game would interact with oneanother. Related to this, our use of confederates as audience members didnot allow individuals to be in the presence of friends. Our focus was oninternal validity, but future research should expand the scope of our studyto consider a more naturalistic audience setting. Future research can addresssome of the limitations. It is plausible that familiarity with audience membersmoderated the effect of audience presence on performance, as there isevidence of this effect with other activities, such as athletic performances.Several researchers have argued that one reason for the empirically verifiedhome-field advantage that many athletic teams enjoy (i.e., the tendencyfor athletes and teams to perform better when playing at home) is theenhanced familiarity that home team members have with the environmentthey are playing in, including their familiarity with the audience (Courneya &Carron, 1992; Schwartz & Barsky, 1977). Beyond audience familiarity, furtherevidence suggests that audience effects on performance can differ basedon whether or not the audience is encouraging or discouraging. Butler andBaumeister (1998) found that encouraging audiences can actually hinder taskperformance when compared to neutral or even discouraging audiences,even though study participants often report more emotional comfort withthe supportive audience. Thus, future research should more closely examineboth audience familiarity and supportive or abusive audience behaviorsduring game play. Related to this, future research might consider the relativesize of the audience necessary to elicit (or not) social facilitation effects,to see if there is a linear or other relationship between audience size andobserved social facilitation effects.
Beyond the presence of a physical audience, another limitation for ourstudy that should be investigated further is the presence of a virtual audi-ence. Technological advances in video games have increasingly included theopportunity for gamers to engage one another through network connections.In fact, all three of the seventh-generation game consoles are pre-installedwith wireless networking hardware that facilitate online playing, and majormanufacturers such as Sony (PlayStation Network) and Microsoft (X-BoxLive) both host gaming network hubs to bring gamers together. As well, manycomputer-based games such as World of Warcraft are almost exclusivelyplayed online in gaming groups, such as clans and guilds. Weibel, Wissmath,Habeggar, Steiner, and Groner (2008) found that participants who playedvideo games with human opponents online felt more presence and enjoy-ment than computer opponents. As networked video game play has become
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an increasingly relevant aspect of gaming, future research should considerthe influence of these virtual audiences on the game play experience, bothin terms of performance and enjoyment.
A second salient limitation is concerned with the specific type of videogame we used—the violent, first-person shooter. Video games vary greatlyfrom genre to genre, both in terms of form and context. Thus, the cognitiveskills identified in our study might not be relevant to other genres of gaming,such as a puzzle game. To the extent that audience presence might influencediscrete cognitive skills differently, these formalized features of the gameplay experience should be considered in replication. Related to this, futureresearch should consider one’s experience playing video games—both ingeneral and with the type of shooting games used in this study—as gamingexperience would influence one’s performance directly as well as perhapstheir performance indirectly through modest gains in cognitive ability (cf.Dye et al., 2009a, 2009b). However, we note here that as past research hasestablished that game play can significantly improve cognitive ability, anystudy incorporating both measures would likely suffer from multicollinearityissues which might mask any unique variance provided by either variable (ifthere is indeed unique variance attributable to each separately).
A third salient limitation of the current study is our lack of considera-tion regarding participant’s previous video game experience. Although ourstudy was aimed specifically at the relationship between non-game specificcognitive ability and in-game performance, past work has found associationsbetween gaming experience and increases in various cognitive abilities (cf.Dye et al., 2009a, 2000b; C. S. Green and Bavelier, 2007; Subrahmanyam &Greenfield, 1994)—although this link has been challenged in more recentresearch (Boot, Blakely, & Simons, 2011). To this end, future work—bothconsidering SFT and in general—should focus specifically on the logicalinterplay of cognitive skill and gaming experience to better understand howboth variables might impact the gaming experience, individually and inconcert with one another.
As well, we are careful to mention that our statistical tests are based on amodest sample size of only 62 participants which can lead to underpoweredanalyses and introduces the potential for type II errors in accepting nullhypotheses that indeed should be rejected—a specific example would be thereported association between audience presence and game performance inthe high-challenge game (ˇ D .157, p D .126). We agree that replication andextension of our work with larger and more representative samples is meritedto test the stability of our claims, but if we look past the null hypothesis tests(which do not always suggest that there is zero effect of a variable, despitehow nonsignificance is often interpreted by researchers; Ferguson, 2009)we also note that the small additional explained variance (2%, comparedto over 41% variance explained by our skill variables) lends support toour claims that audience presence does not have an appreciable effect on
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Facilitating Game Play 61
performance in high-challenge games, supporting our argument of a so-called drive ceiling that might exist in challenging situations. Indeed, futureresearch might specifically examine and test this claim using a multi-methodapproach combining self-report, behavioral observations, and perhaps morepsychophysiological measurements of drive and arousal. At the same time,many of our effects were quite robust even with a small sample, which is astrength of our research as reported here.
CONCLUSIONS
The current study introduces Zajonc’s (1968, 1980) social facilitation theoryto explain the influence of audience presence in video game play. This inte-gration is an important one for research aiming to understand the experienceof video game play, as the social aspect of video game play—particularlyco-located gaming—is a particularly relevant dimension of the technology.By establishing an empirical link between an individual’s cognitive abilitiesand video game performance, study data support the social facilitation hy-pothesis: the presence of an audience during video game play significantlyand positively influences observed game performance. This effect is limitedto low-challenge games, where other drive-including variables such as gamechallenge are minimized. When considering the result of this process on en-joyment of video games, results are less clear (in part due to methodologicalissues with the current study) and, thus, future research should focus here.As past research has established the social nature of video games, the currentstudy implicates that social nature as having influence over the experienceof game play itself.
NOTE
1. The individual game sessions lasted 10 minutes each, which might seem a bit short bysome standards. However, our choice on this point was not a trivial one but rather drivenby two concerns. First, using a between-subjects experimental design with five total gameplay sessions required us to consider constraints related to potential participant fatigue.Second, it is important our game was an arena-style battle simulation more akin to asporting contest, not a narrative-driven action adventure more akin to a television showor film narrative. Thus, longer periods of game play might have felt artificial or, at least,were not deemed necessary to further involve participants into the game environment.
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