“Grandma! Grandpa! Let`s play together!” – Effects of game mode in multiplayer video games on intergenerational social interaction: A randomized field study (Preprint)

Abstract

Maintaining social relationships is a basic human need and particularly essential in old age, including when living in a retirement home. Multiplayer video games can promote the establishment and maintenance of social relationships, due to facilitating positive social interactions between players, even from different generations. Such facilitation of positive social interactions depends, however, on specific game design. In order to systematically investigate possible effects of game design on social interaction between seniors and their co-players, the game Myosotis FoodPlanet has been developed for the present study and the impacts of three different game modes on social interaction were compared in a controlled field trial.

The study aims to compare the impacts of three different game modes (competitive, cooperative and creative) on social interactions (verbal and nonverbal communication) between seniors and their younger co-players during gameplay.

The study was conducted in a Swiss retirement home as a controlled field trial. Participants were residents of the retirement home (N=10; mean age = 84.8 years, SD = 5.9) and played in pairs with their caregivers. Each pair played three game modes in a random order. This resulted in N=30 game sequences of twenty minutes each. A within-subject design was applied with Game Mode as the within-factor - and Social Interaction as the outcome variable. To assess the quality of social interaction, the 30 video-recorded game sequences were analyzed regarding verbal and nonverbal communication sequences based on an event sampling method.

ANOVA for repeated measurements revealed significant effects: There was significantly more verbal communication in the creative mode than in the cooperative mode (P=.04) with strong effect size (f=0.611). A closer examination of verbal communication showed that there was more game-related communication in the creative mode than in the cooperative mode (P=.01) and the competitive mode (P=.09) with marginally significant effects and strong effect sizes (f=0.841). Additionally, significantly more biography-related communication occurred in the creative mode than in the cooperative mode (P=.03) with strong effect size (r=0.707). Regarding nonverbal communication (e.g., laughing together), ANOVA for repeated measurements showed significant differences between the game modes (P=.02) with strong effect size (f=0.758); results show that there was significantly more laughing together in the competitive mode (competitive > cooperative > creative).

In conclusion, the results show that game mode can be an important factor that shapes the social interactions of players playing together. More than other modes, creative game modes can increase verbal communication, stimulating both game-related and biography-related talk. In contrast, competitive modes may stimulate more laughing together. This has important implications on game design and the use of computer games for promoting social interaction between seniors and their co-players in practice.

The study is not liable to registration according to Swiss Federal Human Research Act (HRA) or WHO International Standards (it is not a clinical trial). The study is in accordance with the principles of WMA Declaration of Helsinki.