CHI2013 - Playing with Leadership & Expertise: Military tropes & teamwork in an ARG
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Ad-hoc virtual teams often lack tools to formalize leadership and structure collaboration, yet they are often successful. How does this happen? We argue that the emergence of leadership and the development of expertise occurs in the process of taking action and in direct response to a lack of structure. Using a twinned set of eight modality sliders, we examine the interactions of fourteen players in an alternate reality game. We find that players adopted military language and culture to structure and arrange their play. We determine that it is critical to account for the context of play across these modalities in order to design appropriately for effective in-game virtual organizing.
![(In)Formal Communication
War stories from
the field
Tactical reporting
Strategic planning
Meta game
speculation and
feedback
No dice at Caesars
(really hard to canvas
an entire casino the
size of Caesars by
yourself Anybody
else have any luck?)
[] ah well the
quest continues
(C9).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/chi2013-playingwithle-presentation-130430165219-phpapp02/85/CHI2013-Playing-with-Leadership-Expertise-Military-tropes-teamwork-in-an-ARG-10-320.jpg)
CHI2013 - Playing with Leadership & Expertise: Military tropes & teamwork in an ARG
- 1. Playing with Leadership & Expertise: Military Tropes and Teamwork in an ARG Tamara Peyton College of Information Sciences & Technologies Penn State University @ p s t a m a r a Alyson Leigh Young Information Systems University of Maryland Baltimore County @ a y o u n g 3 0 Wayne Lutters Information Systems University of Maryland Baltimore County @ w g l
- 2. AGENDA Project Scope ARG overview Discoveries Dataset & Methods Leadership & Expertise modalities Results Implications for teamwork & design
- 3. Project scope Larger project: Investigate the way sociality and digital collaboration is an emergent property of interaction in Voluntary Virtual Organizations (VVOs) This project: Understand how play as an activity leads to the development of collaborative approaches to problem solving (expertise) and to the development and design of teamwork and teams (leadership)
- 4. Alternate Reality Games Fictional narrated environment that is presented as being integrated into the actual world. Characterized by collective storytelling and group sensemaking activities
- 5. I Love Bees Team development & management Axon tracking and hunting Narrative creation
- 6. Dataset of 57,000 forum posts by 2,700 players 14 key player Case studies Play analysis based on a grounded theory analysis Leadership & Expertise modality slider system Dataset & Methods
- 7. Research questions 1. Can discursive streams from ILB forums provide sufficient detail to be read as war stories that illustrate the action of the game? 2. What do ARG play tell us about ad-hoc teamwork, community leadership and group expertise? 3. What design recommendations can be derived from the loosely knit ludological culture of ILB?
- 8. Findings Ad-hoc virtual teams often lack tools to formalize leadership and structure collaboration, yet are often successful Emergence of leadership and the development of expertise in ludological environment occurs in the process of taking action and in direct response to a lack of structure
- 9. Militarization of teamwork Players spoke of organizing their groups into armies, platoonsand companies. C5 exclaimed that it would be totally cool if they could name their main group a company with subgroups called squads or armies. C2 spoke of naming their group the army of their city C4 educated his team on the proper use of military jargon, and provided links to a webpage on American military language.
- 10. (In)Formal Communication War stories from the field Tactical reporting Strategic planning Meta game speculation and feedback No dice at Caesars (really hard to canvas an entire casino the size of Caesars by yourself Anybody else have any luck?) [] ah well the quest continues (C9).
- 11. Playful disjuncture I tried the Media City Center axon (i_hate_you) three times last week. I can verify that the group of three pay phones on the third floor at the far back end of the mall -- that is, not directly adjacent to the Magnolia entrance -- are not the ones we want. Other than that, I kept running into people who wouldn't get off the phones, so I have no idea whether we want the ones on the first floor or the ones on the third floor (C13).
- 12. Leadership modalities in situ Modality as patterns of behaviour within sets of practices Multiple, overlapping, fluid, emergent Leadership as a contingent outcome of a play style
- 13. Leadership & Expertise Modalities
- 14. Profile of a General The Marine Corps Marathon and a couple disease marches take place Sunday so traffic, esp. around the Mall, will be disastrous. Whatever you plan to do, LEAVE EARLY, because if traffic is screwed up by the marathon it will all default to other access points to DC and THOSE will be very busy too.
- 15. Profile of a Lieutenant Do you mean you'll be backing up C3, downtown? I'll add you to the list. Thanks! Edit: Err, what I meant to ask was, once you've gotten the 4th and Stark phone (thank you thank you) are you going to take the rest of the downtown phones along with C3, or are you going up to 23rd to take those phones with C1? Either way, it's great, I just want to know so I can update the list accordingly (C2)
- 16. Profile of a Private Just wanted to give a heads up for the SW 107th & Allen axon it doesnt exist. At least, theres no phone out in the open that I can spot. On the one side of allen theres a hotel called the Greenwood Inn (or something to that effect), and on the other side is some trucking company, neither of which I could see a phone, especially near the road. (C1)
- 17. Results Self-organization came about through a militarization of play Teams=emergent property of playful communication Leadership in situ Disjuncture is as important as flow
- 18. Implications for ludic teamwork Teamwork & tool choice contingent on leadership modalities Privates: Task completion; tactical reporting Lieutenants: Tactical task management; tool use General: Task direction; tool development; group identity; strategic communication This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (OCI# 0943184).
- 19. Implications for design Balance tension between designing for teamwork & task tools and designing for emergent properties of play Consider the use of leadership and expertise modalities around modelled potential players when crafting system elements to support teamwork, collaboration and playful environmentsl This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (OCI# 0943184).
- 20. Playing with Leadership and Expertise: Military Tropes and Teamwork in an ARG This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (OCI# 0943184). Tamara Peyton, Penn State University tpeyton@psu.edu @pstamara Alyson Leigh Young, University of Maryland Baltimore County alyson1@umbc.edu @ayoung30 Wayne Lutters, University of Maryland Baltimore County lutters@umbc.edu @wgl