Coordinating joint activity in avatar-mediated interaction

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) currently represent the most widely used type of social 3D virtual worlds with millions of users worldwide. Although MMOGs take face-to-face conversation as their metaphor for user-to-user interaction, avatars currently give off much less information about what users are doing than real human bodies. Consequently, users routinely encounter slippages in coordination when engaging in joint courses of action. In this study, we analyze screen-capture video of user-to-user interaction in the game, City of Heroes, under two conditions: one with the game's standard awareness cues and the other with enhanced cues. We use conversation analysis to demonstrate interactional slippages caused by the absence of awareness cues, user practices that circumvent such limitations and ways in which enhanced cues can enable tighter coordination.

[1]  Steve Benford,et al.  Virtually Missing the Point: Configuring CVEs for Object-Focused Interaction , 2001, Collaborative Virtual Environments.

[2]  E. Schegloff.  Sequencing in Conversational Openings , 1968 .

[3]  John Bowers,et al.  Talk and embodiment in collaborative virtual environments , 1996, CHI.

[4]  Steve Benford,et al.  Embodiments, avatars, clones and agents for multi-user, multi-sensory virtual worlds , 1997, Multimedia Systems.

[5]  Steve Benford,et al.  Managing mutual awareness in collaborative virtual environments , 1994 .

[6]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[7]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments , 2007, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[8]  Gloria Mark,et al.  Social conventions in computer-mediated communication: a comparison of three online shared virtual environments , 2002 .

[9]  Pavel Curtis,et al.  Mudding: Social phenomena in text-based virtual realities. , 1997 .

[10]  Marek Bell,et al.  CSCW at play: 'there' as a collaborative virtual environment , 2004, CSCW.

[11]  Ralph Schroeder,et al.  The social life of avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments , 2002 .

[12]  Steve Benford,et al.  Fragmented interaction: establishing mutual orientation in virtual environments , 1998, CSCW '98.

[13]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[14]  A. Strauss,et al.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory , 1967 .

[15]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[16]  Steven M. Drucker,et al.  The social life of small graphical chat spaces , 2000, CHI.

[17]  E. Schegloff.  Analyzing Single Episodes of Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation Analysis , 1987 .

[18]  Lili Cheng,et al.  Lessons learned: building and deploying shared virtual environments , 2002 .

[19]  PETER F. PATEL-SCHNEIDER,et al.  World Scientific Publishing Company IMPROVING USER EXPERIENCE THROUGH RULE-BASED SERVICE , 2005 .

[20]  Robert J. Moore,et al.  Doing Virtually Nothing: Awareness and Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds , 2007, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).