Choosing human team-mates: perceived identity as a moderator of player preference and enjoyment

Although there has been research suggesting that people will treat computers socially and even consider computers as team-mates, there does not seem to have been any research looking specifically at how the perception of team-mate identity affects game enjoyment and team-mate preference in real-time cooperative games. In order to study this question, a quantitative study was conducted in which 40 participants played a real-time, goal-oriented, cooperative game. During the study, all participants played the game twice: once with an AI team-mate and once with a "presumed" human team-mate (i.e., an AI team-mate that they believed was a human team-mate). Thus, the team-mate performance and behaviors were essentially the same for both conditions. Participants in the study showed a much higher preference for the "presumed" human team-mate, indicating significantly higher levels of enjoyment and cooperation during the game sessions with that team-mate. The results suggests that perceived identity is a strong moderator of game enjoyment.