OMGZ BLOCKS: The Use of Unlocking Features in Video
Games and How It Affects User Behavior
Brian Murphy
Clemson University
[email protected]
4/27/06
Revolution is a video game where the player uses his feet
on a mat with arrows in the cardinal directions. Arrows fly
up the screen in sync with the beat of a song that is playing.
The player "dances" and attempts to his the corresponding
arrows on the mat when the arrows on the screen hits a
certain point. Players are scored based on how accurately
they could match the arrows. By doing well on songs, the
player can unlock other, usually more challenging,
songs(7). John could be described as large and adverse to
physical activity. However, when exercise was presented in
the form of a video game, John played the game regularly.
However, John eventually unlocked all the possible songs
for the game, and his use of the game dwindled. Could this
carrot-on-a-stick like feature of unlocking games be what
appealed to John about the game?
ABSTRACT
Video games have been wildly acknowledged as addicting.
There are many anecdotal stories of lives and ruined and
marriages shattered because of an addiction to video games.
Unlike other addictions, video games addiction may be
used as a positive force. We developed OMGZ BLOCKS,
a video game with unlockable features, in order to
determine what kind of addictive affects having unlockable
elements in games has.
Author Keywords
Video games, addiction, unlocking, games
INTRODUCTION
Video games, like almost any leisure activity, can
become addictive. However, there has not been much study
on video game addictiveness. This is disturbing, as some
studies suggested that 93% of adolescence have played
video games, and 57% percent do so at least once a
week.(6) There are piles of anecdotal evidence that video
game addiction can be as destructive as alcohol or drug
addiction. There are communities of "widows" who have
lost spouses to the video game Everquest, sometimes
referred to jokingly as Ever-Crack(2). The first video game
addiction fatality happened in South Korea. A man there
played 50 consecutive hours of the video game Starcraft by
Blizzard, eating and drinking very little, until he collapsed,
and died three days later. China has enacted laws limiting
the amount of time that their citizens can play video games
every day. Not all addiction is so extreme, as typically the
addict suffers socially, or academically(8).
OMGZ BLOCK
We developed a game called OMGZ BLOCK to test
this. OMGZ BLOCK is a simple game, written in C++,
with sprite based graphics. Players use the mouse to click
on blocks that can have one of five colors, red, blue, green,
yellow, and purple. If blocks are of the same color are
touching when one of them is clicked, they all disappear.
The greater the number of blocks touching, the greater the
points awarded when clicked. The score is tracked for the
lifetime of the game and for each individual game. The
player will score around 200 points per game. Points are
not lost when the game is closed, and the point totals are
cumulative per session. There are two versions of OMGZ
BLOCK. One version just contains the game. The other
contains ten unlockable features. Features can be unlocked
by spending points earned in the game. Once a feature is
unlocked, this information is saved, so if the user closes the
game, and then later reopens it, they will find that the
feature is still unlocked. Unlocking a feature requires a
certain amount of points. Once "spent" these points are
gone, and are subtracted from the point total. The identities
of the features are not known to the player until they are
unlocked. There are three types of features. "Blocks"
change how the colored blocks look. "Backgrounds"
change the background behind the blocks as the player
plays the game. Thirdly, a feature that when the player hits
the "R" key, the colors of the blocks randomize. The
motivation behind this is that the player might be able to
score more points if the number of touching same color
Not all affects of video games are harmful though.
Children who played Squire Quest, a game where they took
the role of squire who prepared food, mostly vegetables and
fruit, for there knights, showed an increase in the amount of
fruits and vegetables in there diet(4). Video games can
clearly be used to bring about positive change.
MOTIVATION
Since video games are more than likely addictive, how
can this be used in a positive way? We observed a friend,
whom we will refer to as John, who was seemly addicted to
the game Dance Revolution by Konami. Dance Dance
1
blocks is low, randomization might increase the number of
same color blocks touching. Other than the unlocking
feature, this version is the same as the first. Both version
kept track of the amount of time that the game is played,
how many games individual games the game is played
before it is closed, how many points are scored that session,
and what features are unlocked in a session. Both versions
are available for download online. The non unlocking
version is at http://people.clemson.edu/~bjmurph/blocks.zip
. The version with the unlocking feature is downloadable at
http://people.clemson.edu/~bjmurph/omgzblocks.zip.
Feature unlocked
Cost
"Textured" blocks
100
"Ya Rly" owl background
500
"Runed" blocks
1000
Randomize block color
2000
"O Rly" owl background
4000
"Center missing" blocks
8000
"Invisible" blocks
15000
"Metal" background
20000
"Trees" background
30000
Winning message
50000
Table 1: Unlockable features and there point cost
EXPERIMENT
The experiment consists of seven subjects. Three of the
subjects were taken from a computer science class "3-D
Game Design". The other four were recruited from various
message boards. All were undergrad or graduate students
between the ages of 18 and 30. Six of the subjects were
male and one was female. All had had previous experience
with video games and computer use. At least four were
computer science majors, and one was and English major.
The remaining majors are unknown. Three were give the
"control" version of the game, that contained no unlocking
features. The other four were give the version with the
unlocking feature. Subjects were not told which version
they were given and were instructed to not talk among
themselves. Subjects were also instructed to not look at the
files that the game produced. Each subject was given a
piece of paper or and email that contained directions and
the link to their version of the game. Subjects were not told
that this was a study on addiction, only that it was a "human
computer
interaction
study".
Subjects were told to play the game at least once, and were
encouraged to play it more than once. The subjects were
given the game for a total of four days. The data that the
game recorded was then collected. Each time the game
program was executed, called a session, the number of
games per session, referred to as a game, the number of
points scored per session, and what was unlocked in each
session was recorded. Afterward the subjects were asked to
complete a 3 question survey consisting of "Do you play
video games at least once a week", "On a scale of 1 to 10, 1
being the lowest and 10 being the highest, how much did
you enjoy the game", and "Were there other factors, school,
work, etc, that kept you from playing the game".
Fig 1: The opening menu for the unlocking version
Fig 2: A typical game
RESULTS
Two of the subjects, one from each group, did not
respond, narrowing an already slim subject pool. Also, all
but one subject claimed in a post experiment interview that
Fig 3: The unlock menu
2
the fact that this was "exam week" and it affected the
amount of time that they had to play the game. Subject 1
also claimed that he "kinda forgot", which might explains
his low number of games played and sessions.
Number
of
Sessions
Subject
Number
of
Games
S4: Did not complete post experiment interview
S5: Yes
Total
Session
Time
Average
Games
Per
Session
(seconds)
(seconds)
"On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the
highest, how much did you enjoy the game"
S1: "3 - Played games of the same style before and have
enjoyed them at times, but at this point I have played this
average
average
type of game way too much. This means I didn't play this
time per time per total
instance that much. Did not experiment with the game
session
game
unlocks
much. The opening graphics are nice. The block graphics
aren't great and distract from the gameplay. I did not play
around with the buying option (don't really remember what
this was)"
76
43
1
S2: "6, only because of the damn owl"
281.75 41.7401
4
S3: "I'd rank the game a 7 for the genre."
233.667
25.035
3
S5: "4, definitly not like a console game"
Unlocking
group
1
1
2
76
2
2
4
27
1122
6.75
3
3
28
701
9.334
Control
group
4
6
38
1621
6.334
5
1
29
215
29
Subject
Average
time per
session
Average
Time per
game
(seconds)
(seconds)
Total
Points
"Were there other factors, school, work, etc, that kept you
from playing the game"
270.1667
42.657
S1: "Unfortunately, didn't have much time to really try the
215
7.413
game out (kinda forgot), which means I don't remember
much about it and didn't play around with it much, which
might have lead to more fun"
S2: "Its exam week"
Average
points
per game
S3: "It's exam week, so I didn't get to play a lot"
S5: "No"
Unlocking
group
Fig 4: Responses to the post experiment interview
1
76
43
324
162
2
281.75
41.7401
3958
146.59
3
233.667
25.035
3903
139.39
4
270.1667
42.657
5024
132.21
5
215
7.413
4206
145.03
SOURCES OF ERROR
The experiment was conducted around finals week, so
subjects may not have had as much time as they wanted to
play the game. Subjects were not instructed to not play
other video games, which might satisfy any addictive needs
that the subjects might have. The amount of free time each
subject had to play the game was not uniform. Finally, the
subject pool was initially small, was made even smaller by
non-responsive subjects.
Control
group
CONCLUSION
Because of the limited size of the pool of subjects, it is
hard to draw definite conclusion, however, excluding
subject 1, the the difference between the max total points
scored and the minimum total points scored is 1121 points,
which can be scored in roughly 5 or 6 games. Since most
games lasted less than a minute, and most gaming sessions
lasted several minutes, this value is not very large at all.
Most values of the two groups are very similar. We also
note that the largest number of unlocked features was 4,
less than half the total number of available unlocks. No
subject in the unlocking group scored enough points to
unlock the 5th feature, the "O rly" owl background.
Unlocking features might not be as large of a factor in the
addictiveness of video games as we hypothesized. This is
Subject
Total
Unlocks
1
1
2
4
3
3
Table 2: Results
"Do you play video games at least once a week"
S1: Yes
S2: No
S3: Yes
3
not conclusive due to the large amount of possible error in
this study.
Volume 106, Issue 2 , February 2006, Pages 188-189,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_
udi=B758G-4J4HD073&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2006&_alid=395791618&_r
doc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=12926&_sort=
d&view=c&_acct=C000030198&_version=1&_urlVersion
=0&_userid=590719&md5=21a7ace425950a271ab71715bf
0298cc
FUTURE WORK
Repeating this experiment with a larger subject pool
might lead to more conclusive results. Also another group
might be introduced, where all features are already
unlocked. This would help measure how much the actual
features add to the addictiveness of the video game. Also a
more complicated game might be useful
5. Nicholas L. Carnagey1, and Craig A. Anderson, The
Effects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games
on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior,
Psychological Science Volume 16 Page 882 - November
2005 doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01632.x, Volume 16
Issue
11
http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Dr. D for letting me do this a bit late, Jes for
explaining math to me, and Dr. Malloy for letting me use
his class as guinea pigs.
REFERENCES
1. Game Addiction- Pre Teen Kids Culture Article
http://www.theparentreport.com/resources/ages/preteen/kid
s_culture/130.html
9280.2005.01632.x?cookieSet=1
6 . Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero1 & Rosa M. Bersabé Morán
Measuring problem video game playing in adolescents,
Addiction
Volume
97 Page
1601
December
2002
doi:10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00218.x Volume 97 Issue
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.13600443.2002.00218.x
2. BBC- News, Video Games: Cause for Concern?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1036088.stm
3 Julia Scheeres Julia Scheeres The Quest to End Video
Game
Addiction,
Wired
News
http://www.wired.com/news/holidays/0,484791.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
7.
Dance
Dance
Revolution,
http://www.konami.com/gs/gameinfo.php?id=28
4. Damon Brown, Playing to Win: Video Games and the
Fight against Obesity, Journal of the American Dietetic
1. 8.
Association
8. John Anderson Spot On: Korea reacts to video game addiction, Gamespot
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/09/12/news_6132357.html
4