"A game without competition is hardly a game": The impact of competitions on player activity in a human computation game
"A game without competition is hardly a game": The impact of competitions on player activity in a human computation game
Virtual citizen science (VCS) projects enable new forms of scientific research using crowdsourcing and human computation to gather and analyse large-scale datasets. To attract and sustain the number of participants and levels of participation necessary to achieve research aims, some VCS projects have introduced game elements such as competitions to tasks. However, we still know very little about how some game elements, particularly competitions, influence participation rates. To investigate the impact of game elements on player engagement, we conducted a two-part mixed-methods study of EyeWire, a VCS game. First, we interviewed EyeWire designers to understand their rationale for introducing competitions. Guided by their answers, we analysed two datasets of EyeWire user task contributions and chat logs to assess the effectiveness of competitions in achieving designers' goals. Our findings contribute to the growing understanding of how competitions influence participant activity in human computation initiatives and socio-technical systems such as VCS.
Citizen Science, Gamification, Online Communities, Interview
Reeves, Neal
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West, Peter
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Simperl, Elena
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Reeves, Neal
80e12072-7fc9-47ab-850e-649b7c0a7271
West, Peter
f9799b52-f299-41c7-bc6e-bcf15fdc9638
Simperl, Elena
40261ae4-c58c-48e4-b78b-5187b10e4f67
Reeves, Neal, West, Peter and Simperl, Elena
(2018)
"A game without competition is hardly a game": The impact of competitions on player activity in a human computation game.
In Proceedings of the Sixth AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP-18).
AAAI Press..
(In Press)
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Virtual citizen science (VCS) projects enable new forms of scientific research using crowdsourcing and human computation to gather and analyse large-scale datasets. To attract and sustain the number of participants and levels of participation necessary to achieve research aims, some VCS projects have introduced game elements such as competitions to tasks. However, we still know very little about how some game elements, particularly competitions, influence participation rates. To investigate the impact of game elements on player engagement, we conducted a two-part mixed-methods study of EyeWire, a VCS game. First, we interviewed EyeWire designers to understand their rationale for introducing competitions. Guided by their answers, we analysed two datasets of EyeWire user task contributions and chat logs to assess the effectiveness of competitions in achieving designers' goals. Our findings contribute to the growing understanding of how competitions influence participant activity in human computation initiatives and socio-technical systems such as VCS.
Text
ReevesWestSimperlHComp18
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 29 March 2018
Keywords:
Citizen Science, Gamification, Online Communities, Interview
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Local EPrints ID: 419303
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/419303
PURE UUID: 5cd4de50-d8e6-435d-85e2-8cd433c2413b
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Date deposited: 10 Apr 2018 16:30
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 19:11
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Contributors
Author:
Neal Reeves
Author:
Peter West
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