Social Interaction in Game

In games, especially online games that are massively multi-user online games (MMOGs), the element of social interaction is definitely felt, without us knowing when we play online games we will interact online with other people, these forms of interaction can be conversations between players who are in the game, or through the course of the game, interact to complete a certain task in the game.

Game developers make games like this must pay attention to aspects of social interaction, so that the games he makes will provide positive experiences when playing the game, some points of social interaction in the game must be considered and measured when making the game successful in the market, in addition to other factors must be considered in building a game, especially online games.

Besides that, by paying attention to the social interaction in the game, developers can improve the ability to profiling the game players, so that developers can target the game, to specific users or gamers.

To understand the social interactions in the game it is important to know the types of interactions in the game, Voida and his friends, in their paper entitled: The Individual and Group in the Game Console, observing people who play multiplayer games like Guitar Hero,

a) Constructing Shared Awareness
i) Shared Awareness, building awareness of the situation in the game, doing cooperation, giving
hints, and giving awareness to other players about how to do something to solve the problems
that occur:
 You have to take a health package, your health level is low
 Hit the head to defeat the boss.
 Give me his health magic … so I can give in to this boss.
ii) Requesting Information, ask for information about something in the game, what happens in
the game, how to reach the goal. Examples of conversations:
 How to solve this problem?
 Is the boss dead?
 Is the game event over?
b) Sharing History, telling stories or discussing what had happened before, or the previous session,
including how to defeat the boss.
 “Remember when we beat that boss?”
c) Sharing success and failure
i) Sharing success, including group success celebrations, speaks for other successful players:
 Finally it can be resolved, it’s really difficult
 Congratulations you can defeat the hardest boss
ii) Sharing failure, including taking responsibility for failure together, mutually reinforcing,
including also blaming each other for a failure:
 This is not your fault, it is difficult to complete this task
 We lack cooperation in this matter.
 You, don’t use that skill.
d) Engaging in Interdependence and Self-Sacrifice (team optimization), including negotiating
individual contribution to groups, who is the leader in the group, accessing the ability of group
members:
 Let me do it, I am stronger in dealing with this boss
 Raise my level of defense with your magic
e) Talking trash: talking, celebrating, laughing at the failures of other people or groups:
 You suck!
f) Self-Indulgence: not playing the game, giving responsibility to other players, make disruption to
game flow
g) Etc.

References
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134982/playing_to_win_measuring_social_.php