Malcolm Harriott

Production 1: Introduction

Hello, I am from the Digital Media, Masters of Arts, graduate program in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. My main interests are video games and animation which is my primary focus in the Digital Media program. I am currently working on a game as my major research project for the program so I believe this course would be a great help for it.

Production 2: Doing Things (Option 2)

Communication

Whether you are playing games with friends, playing online with people you do not know, or offline against computer players, methods of communication are the key driving factors for social interaction in games. Without social interaction, a player can feel isolated or alone in an empty room in their living room. In order to impose a sense of community in the game some kind of means of communication is often used in gaming. This is even true in most single-player games where communication seems like an unimportant factor.

Instead of through what would normally be deemed as communication, offline single-player games can instead provide the illusion of communication by simple dialogue computer players or non-playable characters may say. Other communication methods for single-player games can be asynchronous through the means of scoreboards or other player saved events. For example in the original Animal Crossing released on the Nintendo GameCube, players try to pay off their house debt and decorate their home. In Animal Crossing, multiple save files were able to be made; each save file would add a new house located somewhere else in the town. When playing on one save file, the player would be able to explore the other houses created from other save files that other players had created. This gave the game a sense of social interaction by making players able to see the progress of their peers on the same console.

With synchronous local multi-player games, communication is a given as players can wholesomely talk to each other directly while sitting next to each other. This gives little need for the game designers to determine how players will need to communicate in the game. This approach was very common in the beginnings of video games before online became a staple in nearly all multi-player games. Now that online play has taken over multi-player games, the type of communication method given to players must be thoroughly addressed in development. The method of communication offered to players by the designers can vary from game to game depending on the content matter. For example in most Nintendo games, communication is very limited due to their target audience being younger kids. In Mario Kart 8: Deluxe for the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo often only gives players the ability to say premade dialogue options such as “Good Luck!”, “Good Game!”, “Ah, I’ll get you next time!”, and more. This is done in order to censor foul language and to prevent frustration or offensive chat between players. However this method can often feel robot-like and not give the same sense of immersion as full-fledged free chatting. In addition to this, in team games where communication is a determining factor for whether a team wins or loses, premade dialogue options will not be enough. For example in games like League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena, coordinated and efficient team-play is not possible without having the ability to freely communicate between other players on the team. Therefore in League of Legends, players are able to say whatever they want in the game. This can quickly turn to offensive or toxic behaviour which creates the need for moderation. In the case of League of Legends, it uses a report system to allow players to report players who are verbally abusive. When a player has too many reports they can get banned after manual review of their chat record. Other games go as far as providing voice chat to players to talk amongst each other akin to real life communication. Voice chat is often needed in first-person shooter team-based games since players cannot type and move their character in the game simultaneously. Needless to say, these games similarly require some form of moderation to be set in place by the game developers to prevent hostile chat interactions.

References

Bogost, I. (2011). How to Do Things with Videogames (1st edition). Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press.