Psychologists are starting to examine the flipside of the video game violence coin and finding that violent games can actually lead to more trust and cooperation between players given the right circumstances. What's more, game designers might be able to capitalize on it.
One of the topics that's conspicuously absent from my writings on the psychology of video games is that of the relationship between violence and video games. The short version of the reason why is that I think the issue is too polarizing and too much tends to get read into findings on either side.
Something I did recently find worth discussing, however, is a kind of inversion of that topic: does playing cooperative games make you less likely to be aggressive and more likely to cooperate with people outside of the game? A big tip of the hat to Wai Yen Tang over at the blog VG Researcher, who recently wrote about three recent studies that explored this topic.
The earliest of these studies was by Mike Schmierbach (2010), who was interested in how game mode (single player, coop, or competitive) affected aggression. He shoved subjects into rooms to play games of Halo on the Xbox either campaign solo, campaign coop, or Slayer mode. After playing for a while, the researcher gave subjects surveys that measured various cognitions and emotional states. One part of the survey involved a word completion task where perplexed respondents were given two letters --KI, DE, BL, etc.-- and then asked to use them to complete any word they liked. If you wrote KILL, DEATH, and BLUDGEON then you got more points than someone who said KISS, DEAN, and BLOKBUSTER. Also, you're a better speller.
Schmierbach found that, as expected, people who played a coop mode were far more likely to come up with non-violent words, which he took as evidence of less "aggressive cognition." Other self reported measures of frustration and arousal (in the general physiological sense) showed similar results.
This is interesting, but like most people I'm generally more interested in actual behavior than simple internal thoughts or emotional states. Fear not, because this year has seen the publication of two other studies that follow the same basic reasoning as Schmierback's research, but which actually look at whether people engage in more cooperative behavior after setting the controller down.
Both Greitmeyer, Traut-Mattausch, and Osswald (2012) and Ewoldson et al. (2012) had subjects start off by playing games like Far Cry, FlatOut, and Halo 2 in either a competitive or cooperative modes. One unlucky group of people in a control condition got to play Tetris and frown at each other. Both sets of studies then had players set down the controllers and take part in social dilemma type games (of the non video game variety) where they had the chance to either cooperate with other players or screw them over.
 Ewoldsen et al. found that players who had played the coop video game were more likely to engage in "tit-for-tat" strategies where they would open by cooperating and then either reward or punish the other player depending on if they played competitively or cooperatively in turn. Such a gambit is a very common tactic for players looking to cooperate and maximize outcomes for everyone involved.
Greitemeyer and his colleagues took things a bit further and measured perceptions of things like group cohesion (or dyad cohesion if you want to be pedantic about it; I don't) and trust between players. Again, after teaming up to do violence to some common foe, people felt more cohesion and were more trusting in the subsequent task. And it's important to note that these were all violent games --they were just ones that could be played in a helping, cooperative context.
There are some interesting takeaways and ideas from this in terms of crafting your own gaming experiences and for developers looking to capitalize on these findings. One is that timing matters. These effects are typically short lived, so if you want to hit players up for things that require cohesion, trust, and cooperation do it right after they've collaborated or interacted with each other in a cooperative way.
It's the ideal time to ask them to do things like send/accept friends requests, bestow gifts, heal each other, join groups, trade items, and so forth. Just finished a quest in a pickup group or successfully defended a capture point with the help of a new buddy? That may be the perfect time to pop up a prompt to "Rate this player" or to trade crafting materials. Better than after one of you won a dogfight or shootout against each other.
Similarly, if you're a player try not to let the fact that you're competing against someone keep you from cooperating with them next round or accepting their friend request. They may be a pretty cool dude or gal once you're wearing the same colored uniforms.
[Dr. Jamie Madigan is a psychologist and gamer who writes about the intersection of those two topics at www.psychologyofgames.com and for PsychologyToday.com.]
REFERENCES
Ewoldsen, D. R., Eno, C. A., Okdie, B. M., Velez, J. A., Guadagno, R. E., & DeCoster, J. (2012). Effect of playing violent video games cooperatively or competitively on subsequent cooperative behavior. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15 (5), 277-280.
Greitemeyera, T., Traut-Mattauschb, E., Osswaldc, S, (2012). How to ameliorate negative effects of violent video games on cooperation: Play it cooperatively in a team. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 (4), 1465-1470.
Schmierbach, M. (2010). killing spree: Exploring the connection between competitive game play and aggressive cognition. Communication Research, 37 (2), 256-274.
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I believe coop appeals to PvE gamers that want to work with players rather than try to compete against them. That's how I feel anyway, I was less aggressive before I played coop games, they didn't make me so.
Whenever I have played competitive multiplayer games with friends, I tend to play to their skill level, adjusting my own play to match theirs if I am able. Of course if they are thrashing me there isn't much i can do about that, but if I'm thrashing them I'll start to play worse, intentionaly miss and make bad decisions to give them an opportunity to beat me. I don't ever mention this, I'm aware it's patronising and I believe if you're going to do it, you can never tell people you do it, because that defeats the point of doing it.
Why am I doing that? I've asked myself this question and I think it's because I'm aware they need to have fun too, if you constantly get beaten you pretty quickly want to stop playing out of frustration. Where as if you feel you're fighting with an equal opportunity to win you can accept the losses easier.
It appears while I feel happy about winning, the feeling that I'm spoiling the fun for someone else has an effect on me to the point I'd rather not beat them so easily. I definitely don't like losing, that pisses me off no end!
So what coop does, is allow me to play with friends, fight and overcome enemies together and not feel guilty about smashing AI faces in, because everyone is having a good time and sharing in the victory.
As it points out: people were being directed (probably at random) to playing the same game (Halo) in co-op and "versus". And this had effects in their cognition and interaction.
The predisposition evidently affects your choice in games, but that doesn't mean the framework of the game doesn't affect your perception and your behaviour outside the game. And in turn, having a positive experience in either form of game might alsomodify your likelyhood to choose that form of game and have a different behavior in the future.
I don't have access to the journals cited here so I can't confirm this, but I think it is very likely that the researchers randomly assigned players to co-op or non co-op games rather than just letting them choose the one they normally prefer.
We recently played paintball and had much better teamwork than anyone else, cleaning up most of the competition with our '2-man' team.
Note: we don't play FPS games.
In WoW I was primarily the Tank, and she the Healer, so we developed good co-operation.
These findings don't surprise me, but it is nice to see something like this more formally verified. Nice work James!
I believe that the design of the game can help nurture the emergence of social interactions within the game, and it even has a great potential to be seized for meta-game relationship building such as guilds.
In any case it's nice to see some people approaching game research with a little more subtlety and less of an agenda.
That said, it would be great if people realized that focusing on the cooperative in these types of games leads to the best outcomes. Always better when your team will encourage others with you and work together :)
"BLOKBUSTER... better speller."
Wat?
The subject is 'you.' 'You got more points' and 'you're a better speller.'
'Someone' wrote Kiss, Dean, and Blokbuster, but 'you' got more points and are a better speller.
I realize the language turns back on itself but it's really not -that- complicated to work out.