Social ties are the invisible glue that keeps together human ecosystems. Despite the massive amount of research studying the role of social ties in communities (groups, teams, etc.) and society at ...large, little attention has been devoted to study their interplay with other human behavioral dynamics. Of particular interest is the influence that social ties have on human performance in collaborative team-based settings. Our research aims to elucidate the influence of social ties on individual and team performance dynamics. We will focus on a popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) collaborative team-based game, Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) , a rich data set with millions of players and matches. Our research reveals that, when playing with their friends, individuals are systematically more active in the game as opposed to taking part in a team of strangers. However, we find that increased activity does not homogeneously lead to an improvement in players' performance. Despite being beneficial to low-skill players, playing with friends negatively affects the performance of high-skill players. Our findings shed light on the mixed influence of social ties on performance and can inform new perspectives on virtual team management and behavioral incentives.
Social network sites (SNS) have gradually permeated into people’s daily life recently, providing a new perspective for promoting the virtual market in games. The impact of SNS on users’ purchase ...decision for virtual goods and developers’ decision to create them has to be determined given the dilemma of online games. However, prior studies do not focus on the relationship between users and developers in the game on virtual goods and neglect the role of SNS. Thus, this study adopts an evolutionary game method to model the supply–demand relationship on virtual goods and examine the impact of SNS on it. Results indicate that psychological effect on purchasing and cost of time spent on playing influence strategic changes of both parties. Furthermore, SNS effectively stimulates users to purchase virtual goods and developers to increase virtual good creation by reversing the impact of perceived enjoyment. This study contributes to the theoretical research on SNS games and virtual goods and provides insights into game developers’ performance improvement.
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CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This study investigated how persuasive messages integrated in an online game affects children’s cognitive, affective, and conative responses to the brand, as well as their attitude toward the game ...itself. An experiment conducted among 2453 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 demonstrated that confrontation with interactive brand placement in the game resulted in more positive attitudes toward the game, higher top of mind awareness of the brand, more positive brand images, and more favorable behavioral intentions. In addition, consistent with persuasion literature and theories on child development, this study showed that there was a three-way interaction effect between exposure to the brand placement, age, and prior brand use for behavioral intentions. The youngest girls who had no prior experience with the brand were more strongly influenced by the brand placement than the oldest girls who had no prior brand experience.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
We investigated the relationship between perceived value of virtual goods and willingness to consume virtual goods in online mobile games, and examined the roles of gamers' intention to use virtual ...goods and extraversion in this relationship. We constructed a moderated mediation model
to analyze data from 894 undergraduate students in China. Perceived value was positively correlated with willingness to consume, and intention to use played a mediating role in this relationship; further, the indirect effect of intention to use was moderated by extraversion, with a weaker
effect occurring for lower extraversion. Thus, perceived value positively predicted intention to use, which increased willingness to consume, and extraversion enhanced the influence of perceived value on intention to use.
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DOBA, FSPLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study aims to uncover role of network effects, namely the social influence and network externalities, on purchasing of digital goods. We are particularly interested in the differences in network ...effects in long tail versus the head of the market. We used a novel dataset from an online game distribution platform covering 1975 games and 8000 users in this study. The results reveal that network effects are more pronounced for the tail of the market in comparison to the head of the market. For the games that are in the head of the market the purchasing may be more significantly influenced by factors unobserved in this study (such as advertising budget) yet the games in the tail benefited greatly from any change to the network effects. The games that relied on user-to-user engagement did not fare well in the tail of the market.
The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in the deployment of large-scale distributed simulations and distributed virtual environments in different domains, including military and academic ...simulation systems, social media, and commercial applications such as massively multiplayer online games. As these systems become larger, more data intensive, and more latency sensitive, the optimisation of the flow of data, a paradigm referred to as interest management, has become increasingly critical to address the scalability requirements and enable their successful deployment. Numerous interest management schemes have been proposed for different application scenarios. This article provides a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in the design of interest management algorithms and systems. The scope of the survey includes current and historical projects providing a taxonomy of the existing schemes and summarising their key features. Identifying the primary requirements of interest management, the article discusses the trade-offs involved in the design of existing approaches.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has been a controversial entity with various opinions about its clinical relevance as an independent mental disorder. This debate has also included discussions about ...the relationships between problematic gaming, various psychiatric disorders, and personality traits and dimensions. This paper outlines a developmental-theory based model of Internet gaming misuse inspired by the treatment of two adolescent inpatients. The two clinical vignettes illustrate distinct developmental pathways: an "internalized pathway"
the development of social anxiety, emotional and behavioral avoidance; and an "externalized pathway" with a low level of emotional regulation strategies and impulsivity. In both clinical cases, attachment issues played a key role to understand the specific associations of risk and maintaining factors for IGD, and gaming behaviors may be seen as specific forms of maladaptive self-regulatory strategies for these two youths. These clinical observations support the assumption that gaming use problematic in adolescents should be viewed with a developmental approach, including key aspects of emotional development that represent significant targets for therapeutic interventions.
This study investigates the effects of blockchain technology scalability limitations on the performance of Blockchain-Based Shared Manufacturing (BBSM), an innovative smart-manufacturing paradigm ...aimed at enhancing the utilization of global manufacturing resources via peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration of self-organized manufacturing assets. Despite the prevalence of research highlighting blockchain technology’s scalability limitations as the main barrier for adoption, few studies have explored their effects on the operation of blockchain-based systems. The primary goal of the presented research work is to explore the implications of blockchain technology scalability limitations on the BBSM system’s performance and user behavior. To obtain realistic behavior, an experiment is conducted using an online game played by human participants. Analysis of the players’ strategy is used for implementation of a multi-agent simulation model, which is then employed to assess the influence of varying blockchain network configurations on the BBSM concept’s performance. Preliminary experimental findings reveal that a congested blockchain network leads to increased transaction costs and reduced service prices, consequently devaluing the manufacturing role in the BBSM system and causing underutilization of existing maximum production capacities. Moreover, allocating funds to financial activities rather than manufacturing activities yields superior outcomes for system users. Simulation results indicate that the BBSM system’s response to alterations in blockchain network throughput is contingent upon the production function. The findings of this study reveal that the scalability limitations of blockchain technology impair the performance of the BBSM system and affect user behavior in the system, underscoring the necessity for future research to concentrate on incorporating scalable solutions within blockchain-based manufacturing systems.
The Labor of Fun Yee, Nick
Games and culture,
01/2006, Volume:
1, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Video games are often framed as sites of play and entertainment. Their transformation into work platforms and the staggering amount of work that is being done in these games often go unnoticed. Users ...spend on average 20 hours a week in online games, and many of them describe their game play as obligation, tedium, and more like a second job than entertainment. Using well-known behavior conditioning principles, video games are inherentlywork platforms that train us to become better gameworkers. And thework that is being performed in video games is increasingly similar to the work performed in business corporations. The microcosm of these online games may reveal larger social trends in the blurring boundaries between work and play.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background: Online gaming has gained a lot of popularity due to easy accessibility of Internet-enabled devices. This has given rise to a new phenomenon of gaming addiction. The Diagnostic and ...Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) published by American Psychiatric Association, in 2013, included the term Internet gaming disorder (IGD). Impact of IGD on physical and psychologic health warrants further exploration. Objectives and methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among medical students to find out the prevalence of IGD and the associated health effects. The study was conducted from July to September 2019. Data collection was carried out using a semistructured self-administered questionnaire consisting of sociodemographic profile, Pittsburgh sleep quality index, DSM-5 criteria for IGD and examination of participants. Data were entered and analyzed using frequency, percentage, and Chi-square test. Results: Almost three-fourth participants (72.2%) engaged in the online games out of which 30.9% had IGD. A higher proportion of male students were found to be suffering from IGD. Sleeping disorder was also found to be significantly more among those who had IGD. Conclusion: Prevalence of IGD was found to be high among medical students. The majority of gamers also faced various health consequences of which sleeping disorder was the major problem.
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