Serious Violence:�

The effects of Violent Elements in Serious Games

Nat Sararit & Rainer Malaka

Idea

• serious games... effective teaching tool
• other research: s.games... may be more beneficial for educational than conventional methods, additional real life benefits (health, fitness)
• s.games... stigmatized as dull, boring
• some novel approach could maybe remedy that

Idea

• society: violence in games – harmful?
• entertainment media (games, movies, novels,...) heavily use the motives of violence, crime, murder, war etc. ( – good dramatic element; attracts people)
• many studies into violence in games – mostly focus on negative effects

USA 2011

USA 2018

Idea

• violence not common in serious games
• „Can violent audiovisual elements in serious games make users learn any different than the traditional non-violent counterparts?“
• will explore both positive and negative effects

To look out for

• other studies: violence in media in general... negative effect on short-term memory
• violence... moral disengagement?
• appropriate narrative to lessen player’s guilt (justify his actions, frame it as just an experiment, etc. ) needed
• if not handled well, can distract the player a lot

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Interactive learning of anatomy

• anatomy... exists in 3D space – more pleasant to learn through interactive 3D environment than from 2D sketches etc.
• more potential for including game elements
• e.g. Surgeon Simulator... non-realistic - violence+comedy, realistic enough to teach some very basics

Interactive learning of anatomy

Research approach

• developed an educational serious game
• subject: basic bone anatomy
• talking skeleton – announces bone part that is interacted with
• 3 versions: violent, friendly, neutral
• measurements:
• Player Experience Need Satisfaction (PENS) questionnaire
• anatomy quiz (before&after the game)
• both advantages and disadvantages shall be explored
• can negative effects be remedied by appropriate narrative?

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Research prototype

• game for Android tablet
• talking, full-body skeleton „Skelly“
• 37 bone parts – each can be tapped, seen from any angle (can rotate the scene)
• core mechanic: when tapped, Skelly announces name of the bone
• play modes:
• free play (can tap any bone to learn its name)
• challenge (name prompt – must tap the correct bone to proceed)

Research prototype

Research prototype

• audiovisual...
• neutral...
• just the bone name is written
• Skelly makes neutral mumble sound
• neutral grayscale color palette
• violent...
• tap... hammer smash - destroys the bone, blood everywhere
• Skelly... scream, hurting animation
• black and red
• non-violent (pleasant)...
• rebuilding Skelly from semi-transparent into solid
• burst of hearts on each rebuilt bone
• Skelly... announces bone names enthusiasticly, giggle, nodding animation
• refreshing blue and green

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Research prototype

• narrative... in-game cutscene at the beginning
• neutral...
• nothing
• violent...
• experimental program to create talking skeletons for teaching bone anatomy – defect in this particular model – murders lab puppies (makes him happy) – player tasked to decomission it by destroying its parts
• non-violent (pleasant)...
• experimental program to create talking skeletons for teaching bone anatomy – this model’s parts keep getting stolen by lab puppies (dogs love bones) – player tasked to reconstruct it from parts

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Testing

Audiovisuals experiment

• 30 participants - well-briefed adult volunteers
• international students, various age, gender,...
• avg. age: 24; 12 female, 18 male
• pre- and post-tests...
• both identical
• multichoice quiz on basic anatomy
• includes all the 37 items
• randomly assigned one of the three game variants
• without the narrative cutscene

Narrative experiment

• 38 participants
• international students, various age, gender,...
• avg. age: 20; 15 female, 23 male
• randomly assigned one of the two groups (only Violent and Pleasant (Neutral has no narrative))
• same as Audiovisuals test, except it includes the narrative cutscene

Results

Short-term memorization

Short-term memorization

• improvement...
• lowest of all... 2p
• highest of all... 23p
• 2 scored lower in post- than pre-
• both female with violent version; with low aggression score in the questionaire
• only in 1st test, mitigated by introduction of narrative

Player experience

Interviews

Interviews

• participant’s general opinion...
• everyone... liked the game more than traditional learning methods
• 1/3... highly positive opinion;
• 1/3... game is more like edutainment or e-learning
• 2%... game is boring
• rest... various other unspecified opinions

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Interviews

• participant’s usual memorization methods...
• 25%... writing-down technique
• 23%... visual aids
• 25%... repetition, repeat reading
• rest... various other unspecified methods

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• almost all people with big test improvements (> 60percentile)... preferred visualisation and repetition

Interviews

• most impactful element...
• 26%... audio
• 25%... graphics
• 13%... animations
• rest... combination of two or more

Interviews

• participant’s prefference...
• neutral version...
• preffered by 12 people from 1st and 6 from 2nd experiment
• least distractions
• violent version...
• preffered by 5 people from 1st and 9 from 2nd experiment
• exciting setup, more pressure, potential to grab attention
• pleasant version...
• most preffered (13 people from 1st and 9 from 2nd experiment)
• more exciting than neutral, less disturbing than violent
• many people in 1st exp. complained about lack of narrative

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Summary

• violent audiovisuals can have quite negative effects
• negative effects eliminated by appropriate narrative
• with narrative, violent version performed similar as the non-violent
• cannot recommend use of violent audiovisuals right now
• more research needed (with more complex game mechanics)

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Limitations

• sample...
• small size
• mostly international students with some prior interest in anatomy
• unbalanced gender distribution

Review of the paper

• Pros:
• explores an idea, that I’d say comes naturally, yet is quite novel to its particular field
• comes with open mind – no preplanned intent to either support or reject the idea
• acknowledges some importance of narrative
• Cons:
• sees narrative only as a tool to mitigate negative effects of violent elements
• says many times that more research into the subject is needed, yet it:
• does not provide the game demo
• does not provide the raw test outputs for other researchers to examine, only the aggregate results shown here

• Link to the paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-65736-9_1#rightslink

Presentation by: Jakub Hroník