Despite the increasing normalisation of various forms of surveillance in games, we still know very little about the effects that knowingly being watched has on players. Additionally, in-game spectating is a feature of many games whereby players can watch others to learn, to be entertained, or to pass time while waiting for the next round.
Moreover, video game audiences in the form of family, friends, and strangers are common at home and at gaming events. At the same time, e-sports are becoming mainstream, and the popular video game streaming website Twitch, where viewers watch Twitch streamers play video games, has an estimated 140 million monthly viewers (Smith 2021), and more than 130 billion minutes of gameplay are watched per month (TwitchTracker 2021). To varying degrees, the use of analytics to ‘nudge’ and monetise player behaviour is now standard practice in the development of most video games (O'Donnell 2014 Nieborg 2015).
Increasingly, players are subject to various forms of observation and surveillance, both overt and covert.
#Observation game software#
In 2020, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reported that 64% of American adults play video games and 75% of Americans have at least one gamer in their household (ESA 2020). The study is also the first to show that observer type can significantly influence player outcomes. Here, we provide the largest study on observation in video games to date. Researcher Observing), we further validate Experiment 1 by extending our results to three additional game genres. In Experiment 3 ( N=1358 No Observation vs. We find that participants observed by a professor had, at times, significantly lower performance, player experience, intrinsic motivation, playing time, and higher anxiety. Professor Observing), we seek to understand whether different roles differing in their perceived evaluativeness would influence the effects of observation. In Experiment 2 ( N=843 Researcher Observing vs. Moreover, we find some support that participants observed by a researcher score higher on player experience and intrinsic motivation. Researcher Observing), we find that participants observed by a researcher played significantly longer, and performed significantly better, across three video games. In Experiment 1 ( N=1489 No Observation vs.
But little is known about these phenomena in the context of video games, with recent advances finding that they do not necessarily extend to games (Emmerich and Masuch 2018). It is well known that the presence of other people (in-person or remote, actual or perceived) increases performance on simple tasks and decreases performance in complex tasks (Zajonc 1965).