Social Interfaces - Observations

Overview

For our initial research, we visited the video arcade on Mott Street in Chinatown on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. We noted several differences between the two times in terms of the type of people who came as well as the interactions they had.

Friday Night
In general, the people who came on Friday were more hardcore gamers. The arcade was fairly crowded and different groups tended to congregate around different game genres.


These pictures shows a group of young males gathering around two Tekken 5 machines. Many of them had brought their own PS2 controllers.


This video shows the game in action.



These two players discussed strategy between games. The player on the right had just lost in Marvel vs. Capcom 2.


The other big genre that drew a lot of people was the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) crowd. There were many players and specatators.


Saturday Afternoon
The feel of the arcade was much different on Saturday afternoon. There were many more young children, some with chaperons and some without, as well as a few more older people.



Some of the games, such as Time Crisis 4 and Super GT, that were not played at all on Friday night were played on Saturday. Some of the children who played Super GT were suprivised by their chaperone.

General Thoughts

• Friday night tended to have more group dynamics around the machines but also away from the machines
  • inside, groups talked about games and strategy, as well as what was going on in their lives
  • outside, people smoked and talked about a variety of topics as well as horsed-around
  • rivalries, such a group labeling themselves "Asian Killers"
  • Your skill level determines where you can and cannot play (Marvel vs Capcom 2, has two machines but the good players play on the big screen one, the not so good players on a smaller screen machine off in a corner.
    
  
  
• placing a quarter on the edge of a screen is a simple mechanic to show who has the next game
• in the "fighting" games, where the winner stays to take on the next challenger, different dynamics occur at the end of the game, depending on the crowd and personality of the players
  • quiet congratualations or "good game"
  • embarassment and shame where the loser walks away in silence
  • trash-talking, often accompanied by reenactment of the finishing move
  • mutual respect where some strategy may be exchanged
  • related to social hierachy and pecking order based on ability
• people bump you or stand in front of you while you are watching a game if they do not know you.
• players bring their psp or ds lites (handheld systems) and play each other online or play by themselves.
  
• the older gamers tending to stick to classic games, like Centipede and Ms. Pacman
  
• on Saturday, one older player on Tekken 5 could not draw any challengers as all the kids played on the other machine and challenged each other while he played by himself
• players with mastery and skill would draw crowds and comments from spectators (ddr)
• feeling of desperation when a player is out of quarters often causes them to ask strangers and friends for money, "got a dollar?"
  

posted by adang @ 11:02 AM