Exploring Enforced Collaborative Agreement in Gaming with Young People

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of Enforced Collaborative Agreement (ECA) whereby players in a digital game must synchronously ‘agree’ on their controller inputs in order to interact. The focus of this paper is on the collaborative strategies young people (aged 14-16 years) adopted to reach decisions and control during gameplay. A two player collocated game supporting three different interaction methods has been studied. Video analysis of gameplay, along with post-gameplay interviews, surveys and gameplay interaction logs were used to gain insights into player behavior. The key contributions of the paper are an understanding of six key strategies players adopted to reach agreement within an ECA game, a set of more general issues related to the ECA gameplay, and an exploration of the impact of different interaction methods on gameplay experience. The work highlights the potential benefits of ECA in alleviating the often solitary nature of children’s computer use.