Full length articleHow games induce cooperation? A study on the relationship between game features and we-intentions in an augmented reality game
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Cooperation is an anchor of our society and a key ability of people, who are working, studying, and carrying out most leisure activities together to achieve shared goals. During the past decade, modern information & communication technologies (ICT) that digitally connect people around the globe have birthed completely new forms of cooperation in organizations and beyond. A large variety of collaborative technologies, such as online communities (Hutter, Hautz, Füller, Mueller, & Matzler, 2011), crowdsourcing platforms (Geiger & Schader, 2014), or instant messaging services (Shen, Cheung, & Lee, 2013) have emerged that facilitate working together anytime and across geographical borders. However, many studies report that it is challenging to motivate people to adopt and use such collaborative technologies (Arazy et al., 2016, Hutter et al., 2011, Lin and Bhattacherjee, 2008, Lin and Lu, 2011, Wasko and Faraj, 2005, Zhao and Zhu, 2014). Thus, much work has sought to understand which factors drive people to cooperate (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002, Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006, Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014) and how design features in information systems and services can support and cultivate cooperative behaviors (Jung et al., 2010, Straub et al., 2015, Valacich et al., 1994, Zhang et al., 2011).
Concerning video games, it can be observed that, in many games, cooperation emerges effortlessly; people start to pool individual efforts, cooperate seamlessly even against the most unimaginable odds, and express strong enthusiasm while acting together (Chen et al., 2008, Cole and Griffiths, 2007, Ducheneaut et al., 2006, Scharkow et al., 2015, Teng and Chen, 2014, Yee, 2006). Thus, today, practitioners turn to games for inspiration on how to design information systems, services, and organizational structures more cooperatively (Bui et al., 2015, Morschheuser et al., 2017b, Ribeiro et al., 2014, Schacht and Maedche, 2015, Thom et al., 2012). This trend can be understood as part of the gamification movement, which represents the use of game elements and mechanics outside traditional video game environments (Hamari et al., 2014, Huotari and Hamari, 2017). Initial empirical studies indicate that applying game mechanics and features of cooperative games, such as point systems that reward cooperation (Blohm et al., 2011, Chen and Pu, 2014, Siu et al., 2014, Thom et al., 2012), team competitions (Chen and Pu, 2014, Peng and Hsieh, 2012), or virtual worlds with avatars (Rico, Martínez-Muñoz, Alaman, Camacho, & Pulido, 2011) can positively influence cooperation in various contexts. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how games cultivate cooperation (Liu et al., 2013, Hamari and Keronen, 2017b, Morschheuser et al., 2017b), which keeps us from successful wielding the potential of cooperative games in gamification (Bui et al., 2015, Liu et al., 2017, Morschheuser et al., 2017a).
Recently, the concept of we-intentions has gained attention in information system (IS) research concerning understanding cooperation with collaborative technologies. Compared to typically studied individual intentions, the concept of we-intention relies on the idea that true cooperation requires collective intentions and therefore cannot be analyzed only as the sum of individual intentions (Searle, 1990, Tuomela, 2000). The concept is increasingly gaining attention in IS research, in order to study cooperation and cooperative behaviors in online communities (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002, Cheung and Lee, 2010, Dholakia et al., 2004, Shen et al., 2011, Shen et al., 2013, Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014) and crowdsourcing systems (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006, Shen et al., 2014, Shen et al., 2009). Owing to the strong similarities between such virtual communities and online games, this theoretical framework provides excellent support for investigating cooperation in games.
Therefore, in this paper, we empirically investigate how games cultivate we-intentions of working as a group by drawing on cooperation theory (Tuomela, 2000) and particularly the concept of we-intentions (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002, Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014, Tuomela, 2000). On the basis of survey data, gathered in the context of the augmented reality game Ingress that engages people in generating an interactive map with cultural points of interest, we seek to enhance current understandings of how engagement with cooperative game features induce we-intentions via group dynamics, such as group norms, positive and negative anticipated emotions, social identity, joint commitment, and attitudes toward cooperation. Further, we investigate whether engagement with individualistic game features – such as private badges, points or levels – that are currently often used in the context of collaborative technologies (Hamari et al., 2014, Morschheuser et al., 2016) influence these effects. This paper summarizes this study's findings and discusses theoretical and practical implications.
Section snippets
We-intentions and their antecedents
Researchers have put much effort into theoretically conceptualizing and studying the phenomenon of cooperation from different perspectives, including philosophy (Gilbert, 1989, Tuomela, 2000), game theory (Nash, 1953), and social psychology (Johnson, 2003). Commonly, pure or full-blown cooperation is typically considered to consist of collective social actions, in which more than one person act jointly toward a common goal (e.g. carrying a table jointly) (Gilbert, 1989, Tuomela, 2000).
According
Data
We gathered the data from players of Ingress, a popular game with over 11 million downloads in more than 200 countries (Smith, 2015, Takahashi, 2014). Ingress is an augmented reality game that relies on a map of the real world and extends reality with location-based virtual objects, the so-called portals, at places of public art (Hulsey & Reeves, 2014). Ingress players can use an app on their mobile phones, the so-called scanner, to find the location of such portals and create new virtual
Discussion
In this study, we have investigated how games can induce and cultivate we-intention of working as a group. Specifically, we investigated how engagement with cooperative game features affect different forms of group dynamics and how they further translate into we-intentions. We employed data from Ingress users (N = 206), a popular location-based augmented reality game. The results show that cooperative game features can induce we-intentions (directly explains one-quarter of the variance),
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Robert Bosch GmbH, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES - project numbers 40111/14, 40107/14 and 40009/16) and participating partners, as well as Satakunnan korkeakoulusäätiö and its collaborators. The authors also wish to thank Alina Schmid for her support in conducting the pre-study, as well as the editors, reviewers and proofreaders for their time and effort.
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