Conference proceeding
Fast Talking, Fast Shooting: Text Chat in an Online First-Person Game
2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp 1-10
Jan 2009
Abstract
How actively do users chat, with whom, about what, and how coherently, when they are shooting enemies and dodging bullets in a fast-paced virtual gaming environment? This paper reports on a study of public text chat in BZFlag, an open source capture-the-flag game in which user avatars are tanks. Chat data were analyzed using methods of content and discourse analysis, including analyzing the coherence of extended conversations. The findings reveal that public chat is used actively in BZFlag, primarily to react to and negotiate game play, and that extended conversations occur intermittently and are surprisingly coherent. Implications are discussed for multitasking, classifying multiplayer online games, and enhancing the chatability, or chat usability, of first-person shooter game designs.
Metrics
3 Record Views
21 citations in Scopus
Details
- Title
- Fast Talking, Fast Shooting: Text Chat in an Online First-Person Game
- Creators
- S.C. Herring - Indiana University BloomingtonD.O. Kutz - Indiana University BloomingtonJ.C. Paolillo - Indiana University BloomingtonA. Zelenkauskaite - Indiana University Bloomington
- Publication Details
- 2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp 1-10
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-78650760775
- Other Identifier
- 991021866910904721