Qualitative results: Mutual Location-Awareness interpretations

We did not perform a quantitative content analysis of pairs’ communication. Nevertheless, in order to gain more insights about how MLA has been used by players in the MLA condition, we employed ethnographic methods. Collecting two sorts of qualitative data in the experiments also allowed us to deepen our understanding of the importance of a coordination device such as MLA. Players in the MLA condition were asked in the post-game questionnaire how knowing the partners’ location was useful in this game and how they were guessing their partners’ intents. Additionally, using dialogues and Interaction analysis (Jordan and Henderson, 1995) enabled us to find and describe occurrences of MLA usage.

Data has been analyzed to look for “critical moments” in which players’ location was meaningful for them. These moments, as well as the answers to the questionnaire were then transcribed. Then we listed all the topics and potential uses that had been quoted by all the participants. The next step consisted in clustering together similar topics that we used to get back to all transcribed data so that we could find out whether it fitted or whether new topics emerged. In the end, after this analysis, we found 3 broad categories of MLA interpretations and usage has emerged. These descriptions show how a coordination device can be interpreted and employed as a way to perform mutual modeling acts in order to draw relevant inferences for coordinating. In the categories description below, we have translated excerpts from French to English.

Implicit awareness of partners’ activity

The simplest form of usage for MLA was that it provided pairs with an implicit indication of the partner’s activity in real time, in terms of actions and intentions the partner was ready to carry out. This was particularly important in the beginning of each level as attested by numerous answers in the questionnaire: “I could guess his intentions when seeing his scout”, “I thought he was exploring the level” or when a player was thinking about performing a certain action: “he was quiet for sometimes, I thought he was trying some shootings”, “it helped me to know where my partners went and dropped his tools”, “I saw him close to the asteroids, I inferred he wanted to drop a blackhole and I had to help him”.

This last example also shows that MLA was a coordination device used as a resource for the player’s own actions. Knowing the position of the partner in space could have two consequences: performing a different action (“he was close to the first planet so I

went exploring the other one”, “he already dropped a blackhole here, so mine should have been positioned somewhere else”) or joining him to give help as in Excerpt 1. Excerpt 1 (the square brackets shows overlapping communication):

J: I see you under the first asteroid, do you need a hand? M: ah I am trying to drop the gate here,

M: [hmmmm

B: can you tell me if I am correct? M: sure, wait I’ll stop moving B: OK

In different cases, players underlined the importance of using this tool instead of communicating (“it allowed me to observe what he was doing without talking about it”, “while exploring space, we did not lose time talking”). A passive monitoring of the partner’s movement in space was then perceived as a communication economy.

Understanding of the situation

What is also important is that the MLA is not just an implicit cue but also a resource for communication. On one hand, we have just seen that MLA enabled players to talk less about certain issues. On the other hand, this coordination device has been used in dialogues as a resource to clarify the situation, what we described as “referential communication” in Chapter 1.

The discussion between the two players indeed mobilized both elements from what they see of the virtual world and MLA information. The combination of dialogues and MLA then allowed the players to have a shared understanding of the situation and an understanding of each other’s perspective as can be seen in excerpt 2. This extract shows how a pair explored the world, using the MLA to understand the perspective they each have. Location awareness of each other provided them with a way to understand what their partner was looking at.

Excerpt 2:

R: I don’t get where is the last asteroid D: ah, can you see me?

R: hmmmmm

D: [look at my scout

R: yes, under the planet but can you stop moving?

D: ok, so there’s a planet above me and the asteroid is right after, on the left

R: Aah there, sure, I got it, but can you see the asteroid close to me?

D: no I cannot, I am too low

In addition, the combination of MLA and dialogues enabled them to keep a trace of what had been done in the past (3): “I knew he left a tool here because I saw him going here”.

A powerful coordination device used with communication

Even though we saw that MLA was useful for communication economy, this does not imply that players did not talk about their own locations. The position of partners is often employed to update their shared knowledge about the state of the environment, as a support to solve coordination problems, such as adjusting a shot or helping a player to drop an object in space. In this context, a number of participants expressed the view that MLA was used for referential communication to meet this end: “at some point, he wanted to drop a blackhole, so I helped him, monitoring how close he was from the planet and told him when the blackhole was well-positioned”, “seeing his scout’s position was helpful to agree on tools positioning”, “looking at his scout’s position, I confirmed his that the position of his tool was wrong”

The MLA tool provided a continuous feedback to the partner who could see where was his teammate. This was extremely useful in tasks like object positioning. In such tasks, player A guided player B’s movement by giving him instructions about where to drop the object. The team was thus more effective because player A did not need to verbally describe where he was and player B did not need to interpret this description. More precisely, players took different roles that changed over time: one dropped certain tools and the other helped him to position them in space. As can be seen in Interaction analysis excerpt 1, the difference of viewpoints might account for this. In this part of the game, players took advantage of not seeing the same part of the virtual world to help each other. Player G went above player R and guided him to position himself properly to drop a blackhole.

Interaction analysis transcript 1. (Transcript done using the interaction analysis convention of Jordan, see Appendix J in Jordan and Henderson, 1995)

Time Activity Talk

14:56:34 R arrived close to the first asteroid R: there is the first asteroid, I can’t see the second because of the planet

14:56:42 G moves his scout above the first asteroid

G: wait, I come over 14:57:05 R: can you see me?

G: hmmm, yes I see you between both asteroids

R: OK, I want to drop a backhole between them

G: hmmm are you sure, you’re too close to the asteroid, go on the left

14:57:30 R moves his scout on the left G: OK, that’s better, let me see

14:58:03 G moves his scout higher G: again

R: huh, again what?

G: a bit on the left, I went up and I saw you were still too close

14:58:40 R moves his scout on the left R: and now?

G: it’s fine! Drop it 14.59:11 R drops a blackhole R: here we go!

It is important to keep in mind that what allowed the joint action here was the explicit agreement between the two players: the use of MLA as a coordination device was only

a resource for action through referential communication. This broader perspective on coordination devices is developed in our next experiments.