Thammasat University students interested in artificial intelligence (AI), videogames, education, sociology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 13 September Zoom webinar on Wellbeing and Videogames: Navigating the Digital Playground.
The event, on Friday, 13 September 2024 at 3pm Bangkok time, is presented by The United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau), a United Nations (UN) global think tank conducting research and training on digital technologies for sustainable development, encouraging data-driven and evidence-based actions and policies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of videogames.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://unu-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CPoqZ4cZRnCENkwqhdFRIQ#/registration
The event announcement states:
Join us to explore the complexities, benefits, and risks of digital gaming for young people, and discover what fosters positive play experiences.
Play is a central part of human experience that is widely known to provide critical developmental opportunities for learning and socialisation in childhood. But play is also important in both adolescence and adulthood, shaping leisure time, self-expression, and interactions with others throughout the life course.
Yet, with increased access to technology and the growth of the video gaming industry, the nature of play has changed.
In fact, it is now estimated that 3.3 billion people engage in some type of video game playing and this number is expected to increase. In this context, many people, especially children and young people, have access to a diverse range of videogames that can offer avenues for entertainment, connection, and learning, potentially having many positive benefits for their development and wellbeing.
But playing video games can become unhealthy or excessive among some young people, for example those who use it for escapism due to life stressors (e.g., academic pressures, anxiety, loneliness), those who do not have positive role models or formal education concerning digital use, and young people who have few recreational opportunities outside of video game contexts.
Therefore, although videogames have been a part of social life for more than 40 years and is still growing in popularity, there are controversies and inconsistencies in understanding their impacts on health and wellbeing among young people.
As such, this webinar seeks to highlight the complexities, benefits and risks for young people with regards to video games and to understand the contexts and conditions that give rise to positive play experiences. […]
Panelists
- Auxane Boch
Associate Researcher, Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (IEAI), Technical University of Munich, Germany […]
- Huang Gejun
Assistant Professor at Department of Media and Communications at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in Suzhou, China […]
- Daniel Johnson
Professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
- Lidia Liang
Digital Parenting Consultant from Tencent Well-being of Youth Users Team […]
- Wang Shu
Postdoctoral Fellow, Tencent Research Institute
Subjects to be discussed will include:
- Digital gaming and digital parenting in Chinese families
- Videogames and Well-being
- The Relationship Between Family Education and Children’s Attitudes and Behaviors toward Online Gaming
- Gametech and Its Positive Impact on Youth
In 2018, Professor Johnson coauthored an article in Computers in Human Behavior, a scholarly journal dedicated to examining the use of computers from a psychological perspective: Greater Rewards in Videogames Lead to More Presence, Enjoyment and Effort.
The article’s abstract follows:
There is currently limited understanding of whether and how different amounts and diversity of virtual rewards impact on the player experience. A repeated-measures experiment was undertaken in which participants (N = 59) were compared on subjective measures (competence, presence-immersion, tension, effort and enjoyment), as well as psychophysiological measures (electrodermal activity and heart-beat rate), during the play of a videogame with three levels of video game reward (high, medium, low). Effort, enjoyment and presence-immersion significantly varied across conditions such that they were greater when all rewards were present compared to one or both of the other conditions. Heart-beat rate was found to vary across conditions consistent with the explanation that greater rewards lead to greater arousal. Our study suggest a number of advantages to greater amount and diversity of virtual rewards in the context of a casual videogame, with potential application to the design of new gamification systems.
From the Introduction:
Real world rewards have been established as key motivators for human behaviour with clear implications for learning and behaviour. With the volume of digital interactions steadily increasing, the need to understand virtual rewards also grows. Within the context of videogame play, rewards are designed to drive in-game behaviour as well as mark the progress of the player. Consequently understanding how to deploy rewards, when and how much, is an ongoing consideration for video game designers. Parallel to this, video game rewards have been successfully coopted to motivate behaviours in other settings via ‘gamification’, or the integration of game design into non-gaming contexts. Despite the relative importance of game rewards for both recreational and serious aims, to date relatively few studies have attempted to identify the impact of differing types, amounts and diversity of rewards on the player.
Rewards and Motivation
Rewards have been posited to potentially impact both extrinsic motivation (where the activity is undertaken in order to obtain a separable outcome) and intrinsic motivation (wherein the motivation to perform the activity is related to the inherent satisfaction of doing it). Specifically, when providing rewards to motivate a behaviour, some research suggests that while there may be an increase in extrinsic motivation, there may be simultaneous decrease in intrinsic motivation. This decrease in intrinsic motivation is referred to as the overjustification effect, and is thought to occur because the introduction of an extrinsic reward converts intrinsic motivation into extrinsic motivation. However, cognitive evaluation theory (CET) asserts that the impact of a reward will depend upon how it influences the underlying psychological drives for autonomy and competence, which when satisfied produce intrinsic motivation. […]
From the Discussion:
Overall, the study provides insights regarding the impact of digital rewards in a recreational videogame on the subjective and objective player experience. Our findings extend existing research by exploring the impact of multiple reward types concurrently and comparing the impact of varying amounts and diversity of rewards. Broadly, our findings support the notion that a greater amount and diversity of rewards improves the player experience of a recreational videogame. With respect to RQ1 (impact of rewards on subjective player experience), evidence was found of a positive impact on presence-immersion and enjoyment but not competence.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)