A Cheating Mood: The Emotional and Psychological Benefits of Cheating in Single-Player Games

Passmore, Cale J.; Miller, Mathew K.; Liu, Jun; Phillips, Cody; Mandryk, Regan L.

doi:10.1145/3410404.3414252

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There is an intriguing role of cheating in ludic-type games (Passmore et al, 2020). Thus, gamifying wellness through extrinsic motivation may encourage cheating, which is not necessarily a completely negative form of engagement in the context of games for mental health.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typologies and Features of Play in Mobile Games for Mental Wellbeing

Reay,

Ma,

Krzywinska

et al. 2023

Simulation & Gaming

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background The smartphone market is saturated with apps and games purporting to promote mental wellness. There has been a significant number of studies assessing the impact of these digital interventions. Motivation The majority of review papers solely focussed on the impact of strict rules and award systems of the apps. There is comparatively little attention paid to other game techniques designed to encourage creativity, a lusory attitude, and playful experiences. Results This gap is addressed in this paper in a consideration and analysis of a purposive selection of six mobile games marketed for wellbeing, our focus is on both external and internal motivations that these games offer. Our specific interest is how these games balance rule-based play with creativity. We find that ludic play is a highly-structured, rule-bound, goal-oriented play, in contrast to paedic play which a freeform, imaginative, and expressive. We argue that while ludic play is purposed towards the promotion of habit formation and generates feelings of accomplishment, it nonetheless relies heavily on extrinsic motivation to incentivise engagement. By contrast, paidic play, specifically role-playing, improvisation, and the imaginative co-creation of fictional game worlds, can be used effectively in these games to facilitate self-regulation, self-distancing, and therefore provides intrinsically-motivated engagement. In the context of games for mental wellbeing, ludic play challenges players to complete therapeutic exercises, while paidic play offers a welcoming refuge from real world pressures and the opportunity to try on alternate selves. Conclusion Our intention is not to value paidic play over ludic play, but to consider how these two play modalities can complement and counterbalance each other to generate more effective engagement.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typologies and Features of Play in Mobile Games for Mental Wellbeing

Reay,

Ma,

Krzywinska

et al. 2023

Simulation & Gaming

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Cheating in one-player games has been examined by others using different techniques. In a pre-Wordle conference proceedings (Passmore et al, 2020), a survey was used assess 188 peoples' level of cheating (aka using "extraneous game advantages") and their feelings about cheating. Many players became "frustrated" at some point in the game and then felt "joy" or "relief" after having surpassed the hurdle with a cheat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cheating Alone and in Teams

Dilger

2021

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Workers can opt-in to these HITs. Prior researchers in different areas ( Depping et al, 2018 ; Johanson et al, 2019 ; Passmore et al, 2020 ; Miller et al, 2021 ) successfully used this platform to collect data online. However, researchers need to carefully examine the data and ensure that bots or negligent workers are removed from the final analysis ( Mason and Suri, 2012 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Explicit and Implicit Game-Based Digital Behavioral Markers for the Assessment of Social Anxiety

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social relationships are essential for humans; neglecting our social needs can reduce wellbeing or even lead to the development of more severe issues such as depression or substance dependency. Although essential, some individuals face major challenges in forming and maintaining social relationships due to the experience of social anxiety. The burden of social anxiety can be reduced through accessible assessment that leads to treatment. However, socially anxious individuals who seek help face many barriers stemming from geography, fear, or disparities in access to systems of care. But recent research suggested digital behavioral markers as a way to deliver cheap and easily accessible digital assessment for social anxiety: As earlier work shows, players with social anxiety show similar behaviors in virtual worlds as in the physical world, including tending to walk farther around other avatars and standing farther away from other avatars. The characteristics of the movement behavior in-game can be harnessed for the development of digital behavioral markers for the assessment of social anxiety. In this paper, we investigate whether implicit as well as explicit digital behavioral markers, proposed by prior work, for social anxiety can be used for predicting the level of social anxiety. We show that both, explicit and implicit digital behavioral markers can be harnessed for the assessment. Our findings provide further insights about how game-based digital behavioral markers can be used for the assessment of social anxiety.

show abstract

A Cheating Mood: The Emotional and Psychological Benefits of Cheating in Single-Player Games

Cited by 15 publications

References 37 publications

Typologies and Features of Play in Mobile Games for Mental Wellbeing

Typologies and Features of Play in Mobile Games for Mental Wellbeing

Cheating Alone and in Teams

The Development of Explicit and Implicit Game-Based Digital Behavioral Markers for the Assessment of Social Anxiety

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About