Coordinating joint activity in avatar-mediated interaction

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) currently represent the most widely used type of social 3D virtual worlds with millions of users worldwide. Although MMOGs take face-to-face conversation as their metaphor for user-to-user interaction, avatars currently give off much less information about what users are doing than real human bodies. Consequently, users routinely encounter slippages in coordination when engaging in joint courses of action. In this study, we analyze screen-capture video of user-to-user interaction in the game, City of Heroes, under two conditions: one with the game's standard awareness cues and the other with enhanced cues. We use conversation analysis to demonstrate interactional slippages caused by the absence of awareness cues, user practices that circumvent such limitations and ways in which enhanced cues can enable tighter coordination. Author Keywords Avatar-mediated interaction, massively multiplayer online games, conversation analysis. ACM Classif...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Robert J. Moore, E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Eric Nickell
• Keywords: CHI 2007, Enhanced Cues, Human Computer Interaction, Standard Awareness Cues, User-to-user Interaction