Following Basic Directions in the Land of Destructible Delights: Learning and Exploration Patterns in the Virtual World

Edd Schneider · Anthony Betrus · Andrew Burgess

Wed., June 10, 3:30–4:30, Browsing Library (2nd floor, West Central)

Both designers of virtual worlds and researchers who investigate these worlds have to make accommodations for a range of user behavior. Predicting how people will react to a new virtual world is becoming a more and more common task for an instructional designer. This study was conducted to provide basic information for designers and researchers to predict how people prefer to learn and adapt to virtual worlds. The data collected also provides information on subjects’ relative dedication to given virtual roles.

This study is a follow-up to a study presented at the GLS Conference 2008 that investigated subject behavior under very basic circumstances. While the previous study tested the research subjects’ dedication to a difficult task in a difficult role, this study investigated subject dedication to an easy-but-lengthy task in a similar environment. There are an infinite number of ways a person can act even in a basic virtual world. We will present summaries of subject behavior in three different scenarios in the same world. People who want to teach using virtual worlds can use the data gathered as a point of reference on how people react and learn to adapt to a new, very open-ended environment and on the influence role and direction has on their behavior.

The previous study asked subjects who were unfamiliar with the crime game Grand Theft Auto 3 to play a modified version of the game. In that study, subjects were asked to play the game as a fireman, essentially asked to heroically fight fires in a virtual world designed for criminal behavior. Subjects had no idea they were playing Grand Theft Auto 3. The core research question is how long would they stay in the fireman role, especially in an environment designed to encourage bad behavior.

That study’s findings will serve as a point of comparison to this study, which had subjects participate in one of two scenarios. With each person playing the game for 20 minutes, one group of subjects were asked to play the game normally from the beginning and were told they would be asked of their opinion of the game in general. The second group was told they were playing Grand Theft Auto 4 and was asked to use the in-game GPS to drive from their current in-game location to a point located about a 20-minute drive away.

The focus of observation was how long each of the two groups stayed in their role. A clear set of indicators was developed for each group of subjects to help quantify their behavior. For instance, the amount of time spent watching cutscenes was used as an indicator for the "normal" play group, while the first instance of violent behavior was used as an indicator for the experimenter-directed group. Multiple visualizations of data will be presented. The data will illustrate how different age groups and genders approached learning and exploring in the virtual world and will explore similarities and differences in behavior between scenarios.