Do You Want To Play?
How making sense of innovations in
media products relates to perceived
entertainment value
CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
Virtual Worlds Research Group
Roskilde University, Roskilde
http://worlds.ruc.dk
My Research Interest, Questions
• Theoretical perspective on nature of entertainment
– Entertainment emerges from process of individual sense-makings
while engaging with media products
– Media products contain structural features, intended or not to be
entertaining
– Engaging occurs within situational and larger sociocultural contexts
– In understanding situated, intertwining sense-makings can we
understand the evaluation of entertainment and related outcomes
• Media products can be seen as innovating structural features
to change methods for delivery of potential entertainment
• Research question: How do people making sense of these
innovations in attempts to deliver entertainment as actually
providing them with entertainment?
Overview of Study
• Compare across & go in-depth experiences:
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Movie: Superhero film of their choice
Video game: Nintendo Wii “Spider-Man: Friend or Foe”
MMOG: Online role-playing game “City of Heroes”
SVW: Constructed island in Second Life “Metrotopia”
• Experimental framework with quantitative and
qualitative methods of data collection
– Surveys before and after sessions
– Observations during sessions
– Interviews during and after sessions
• Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology for interviews
SMM Situation Analysis Template
Situation: EMP#
Situation Movement(s)
Experience(s)
Expectation(s)
Ideas, Thoughts
Emotions,
Feelings
Sources of Info
Question(s)
Confusion(s)
Frustration(s)
Help(s)
Hinder(s)
How Entertaining
How Desire Engage
Nicolaj with The Incredible Hulk
SMM Metaphor and M. Squiggly, copyright, 2009, Brenda Dervin; adapted here with permission by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, 2009.
Nicolaj in Second Life
SMM Metaphor and M. Squiggly, copyright,
2009, Brenda Dervin; adapted here with
permission by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, 2009.
Flemming in Second Life
SMM Metaphor and M. Squiggly, copyright, 2009, Brenda Dervin; adapted here with permission by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, 2009.
Comparing the Experiences
The Need to Know the Whole Story
• These were 3 stories out of 56 experiences.
• In analyzing and writing up all these experiences, will hopefully
uncover and (re)present more stories:
– About gaps, what caused them, and where and why bridging or not bridging
impacts outcome
– About expectations, types and amount, and how they impact outcomes
– About what helps, and how they relate to what outcomes, and perhaps why
• Study indicates utility of interpretivist approach
– Working to remove dichotomization of ”old” vs ”new” by focusing on
situated sense-maker’s interpretive and physical interactivities
– Structure(s) part of process, but not primary focus before, during, after
– Moves from asking ”what it can do” to ”what it can do for me”
– Attempting to understand conditionality of when structure(s) matter
Thank You
• For more stories, visit http://worlds.ruc.dk.
• CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, [email protected]