Audience participation fighting game: Exploring social facilitation for an enhanced APG experience

Abstract

This paper discusses the popularity of live streaming video games and its potential to address psychological challenges, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. An audience participation game (APG) that involve massive audiences in gameplay, blurring the lines between viewers and players, is introduced. The game highlights the dynamic adjustment of AI character strengths based on audience inputs, specifically cheering and jeering. The study examines factors that influence user experience (UX) and activeness in APG. System evaluation includes comprehensive AI testing, consisting of 500,000 one-minute game rounds, and a user experiment involving 82 participants. UX assessment is conducted using a pairwise preference, four-alternative forced choice (4-AFC), version of the Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS). Finally, the paper concludes by offering guidelines and hypotheses for future research in the field of APGs.

Keywords

• Audience participation games
• Game live streaming
• Game AI
• HCI