Denis Bulygin at the International Conference CHI PLAY 2015 in London

The research of digital and virtual worlds, dubbed social informatics, is an actively developing research area in the Laboratory. Our staff and students have already presented the results of their research at international conferences in Barcelona, Cologne and Helsinki. This year, one of our projects has been presented at a conference in London. Denis Bulygin, an SESL research assistant, has recently returned from the annual international conference CHI PLAY, which took place in London between the 5th-7th of October. CHI PLAY is an international and interdisciplinary conference on “player-computer interaction”, which encompasses all areas of play and games within a broader context of human-computer interaction (HCI).

"Denis, could you please tell us about your presentation at the conference?"

 "Paul Okopnyi and I presented our study on the adaptation of players to online games by way of communication via game chat functions. At the poster session we talked about the questions which players ask within the game, the difference in questions that depend on the player’s experience,  in which cases these questions indicate the adaptation of players to the game rules, and in which cases they indicate adaptation to the social norms within the gaming community. The results of our project have been published in the 'Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI' annual symposium on computer-human interaction in play. (NY: ACM, 2015). Ilya Musabirov, Paul Okopny and I are co-authors of the conference presentation and the published paper “Analyzing Chat Logs in Online Games for Tutorial Improvement."

"In any research, it is very important to get useful suggestions that help to improve and develop your project further. What comments or questions have you received?"

 "The comments concerned the practical application of our findings: for example, in what ways they can help to improve the mechanisms of adaptation within games, or to increase the effectiveness of the educational process. There were a lot of discussions, since our research topic was very relevant to the area of human-computer interaction. For example, a cognitive psychologist called Carlos Mauricio Castano Diaz- from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich- was interested in our methods of analysis. He studies how players make assumptions about the further actions of other players. We agreed to keep in touch and share information on our projects. This may develop into closer cooperation."

"What presentations at the CHI conference did you find particularly interesting?"

"In my eyes, the most interesting presentations concerned solving both scientific and practical, methodical problems. Johannes Harms from the Vienna University of Technology was talking about his PhD project, which was focused on ways to improve the completion of surveys. He suggests that surveys should award achievement badges that indicate the player’s progress through the survey. It has been shown that respondents become motivated to obtain the complete set of badges, which means that they would be more likely to complete the survey.

There were presentations with interesting ideas, which may be useful to us. In the CHI area, the feelings of the person interacting with the computer play a great role. In order to learn about them, people are asked to complete surveys. However, this is not the best way to obtain information, because this distracts the users from the process of interaction. Julian Frommel from the Ulm University has shown that it is possible to survey players during the gameplay. It is a very simple idea: players won’t get distracted from the game if they can answer questions by performing actions within the game. This finding can be applied not only to game development but also to other areas, for example, for educational process."

"Have you found anything useful for yourself at the conference? "

"The conference gave me an opportunity to communicate with people who work in a range of different fields: psychology, computer science, media studies. This helps to look at my research problems from different angles. I’ve learned about research programs in several universities, about research groups and researchers working with the students who were attending the conference. I’ve got a better idea of what I want to do in the future, and what I should do in the nearest future to move my project further."

"What are your best memories of London?"

"We lived in Bloomsbury. There were many  green parks, squares and buildings from the Georgian era. Also, located nearby are two huge universities, London University and University College of London. The conference was taking place in the Knowledge Quarter, and our presentations were made in the Senate House Library, just opposite  the British Museum. Kings Cross railway station is also close, and is well known to all fans of Harry Potter because of the famous platform 9 3/4. Since the conference was taking place in the historical centre of the city, after the presentations we could stroll around Soho, and walk along the embankments and tunnels to the Tower Bridge."