The Quirks of Being a Wallflower: Towards Defining Lurkers and Loners in Games Through A Systematic Literature Review

Loria, Enrica; Nacke, Lennart E.; Pirker, Johanna

doi:10.1145/3411763.3451830

Cited by 3 publications

References 56 publications

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Social networks for enhanced player churn prediction in mobile free-to-play games

et al. 2022

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Social networks have been shown to enhance player experience in online games and to be important for the players, who often build complex communities. In online and mobile games, the behavior of players is bursty as they tend to play intensively at first for a short time and then quit playing altogether. Such players are known as churners. In the literature, several attempts have been made at predicting player churn in online and mobile games using behavioral features from the games’ player logs as input in supervised machine learning models. Previous research shows that information from social networks provides alternative and significant information when predicting churn, and yet the importance of networks has not been fully researched in mobile gaming. In this research, we study player churn in a mobile free-to-play game with one-versus-one matches. We build two types of networks based on how two players are matched. We train churn prediction models with features extracted from the networks to evaluate their predictive performance in terms of churn. Furthermore, we predict churn using the players’ behavioral features during their first day of game playing. According to our results, the network features greatly increase the predictive performance of the models, indicating that they carry alternative information about intention to churn. In addition, the first-day features are quite predictive, which means that first day activity is sufficient to predict churn of players quite accurately, validating the bursty behavior. Our research gives an indication of which aspects of game playing are associated with churn and allow us to study influence and social factors in mobile games.

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Social networks for enhanced player churn prediction in mobile free-to-play games

et al. 2022

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Improving the Social Connectedness of Older Adults Through Digital Social Gaming - A Pilot Study

Janssen,

van Es,

Châtel

et al. 2023

J. technol. behav. sci.

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Background Digital social interventions for older adults have become increasingly important due to their flexibility and potential to reduce loneliness. Digital games provide easy and fun interaction possibilities but need more exploration. Methods Using a mixed-methods design, we piloted a chat-based mobile application (PhotoSnake) designed to elicit social connectedness. Participants joined two in-person workshops two weeks apart and a focus group afterwards. They filled in a demographics and loneliness questionnaire pre- and post-intervention, and we collected anonymous in-app data. Results At baseline, participants (N = 15) were 74 years old, moderately lonely (Median = 2.0), partnered (40%), retired (93%), and living independently alone (53%) or with others (47%). Loneliness did not change over time. They valued the in-person workshops to get to know each other. Participants enjoyed playing the game for a few days but felt it lacked sufficient variation to persist gameplay. Furthermore, the in-app interaction mainly focused on the game and was perceived as too superficial to be meaningful. Conclusion This study helps design future digital interventions by showing the importance of in-person contact for engagement and meaningfulness. Players do not automatically label in-game interaction as valuable, and game design should focus on aiding players in creating personal interaction moments.

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A Study on Rewarding Mechanisms for Activating Silent Users in Social Media

Katikaridi,

Tsalgatidou,

Koutrouli

2023

2023 14th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems &Amp; Applications (IISA)

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The Quirks of Being a Wallflower: Towards Defining Lurkers and Loners in Games Through A Systematic Literature Review

Cited by 3 publications

References 56 publications

Social networks for enhanced player churn prediction in mobile free-to-play games

Social networks for enhanced player churn prediction in mobile free-to-play games

Improving the Social Connectedness of Older Adults Through Digital Social Gaming - A Pilot Study

A Study on Rewarding Mechanisms for Activating Silent Users in Social Media

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