Noctua Archives - Gamers Decrypted

Voices, voices, voices…

by Noctua on July 27, 2015·Discuss!, Noctua, Theories

I don’t know about you guys but I am an avid reader of body language, an ability I’ve wasted much time attempting to perfect. I say wasted, because in the world of gaming it certainly feels sort of useless. That said I find it very useful IRL. It is such a crucial part of how I figure a person out that I feel quite crippled trying to understand people online. In this environment the tools we have to figure a person out are very limited. This makes me wonder if we as gamers tend to read even more into a persons voice than others in order to compensate for the lack of other things. So tonight when I couldn’t sleep I decided to look for some research on how a voice impact how we see a person.

Fun facts about voices:
According to research into leadership it is clear that people are more willing to follow or trust someone in charge (male or female) if they have a deeper, darker, more masculine voice.

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Between men and women…

by Noctua on July 22, 2015·Controversy, Discuss!, Noctua

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible.There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
-Oscar Wilde

Is this statement true or false?

Oscar Wilde is one of my favourite authors of all time. That kind of intelligence and wit together with the power to express it in words is nothing but attractive. It’s a shame for women everywhere that he is gay… and dead of course, that’s another complication.

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Identity Crisis!

by Noctua on July 20, 2015·Noctua, Philosophy, Psychology, Theories

As gamers we are used to adopting new identities. We then discard them the same way a snake sheds it’s skins. We change between personalities as often as a girl changes her clothes. Want a make-over? Start playing a new game or create a new character. You can be the hero of Gotham City, you can be Ronaldo, you can be Lara Croft. Or maybe you just want to be a more ideal version of yourself. The possibilities are endless. This begs the question – As gamers, are we all suffering from some strange form of multiple-personality disorder?

For myself, I’ve never felt all my (sometimes wildly opposing) personality traits fit very well into just one person. As a result of this, as well as being a very playful person in general, I have gone by many different names – both in games and in real life.

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Leadership – Interview with RC’s Rummel and Anthis

by Noctua on July 17, 2015·Gamer Culture, Interviews, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

After a Skype chat with Ravs about gaming and blogging we decided to write a twin piece about in-game leadership – specifically that required when leading a guild in SWTOR. She would focus on PvE guilds and me PvP. My very first thought was that I would love to get an interview with the GM of old Reality Check; a guild which gained it’s reputation on the server for putting up a fight against Nostrum Dolus. By going from occasionally queuing with unfavourable compositions Autumn 2012 to being a force to be reckoned with on TOFN by mid 2013 RC managed to establish themselves in the top tier bracket. With 60+ members, a lot of which were extremely strong minded, stubborn individuals, how does one manage the guild and keep it together?

Since the removal of 8v8 warzones the guild has unfortunately been mostly inactive. Being new to the game this interview would be especially interesting to me since I was not around at the time of ranked 8v8. Getting it however was not easy, I had to use all my powers of persuasion, but luckily for me I somehow tend to get what I want in the end. Rummel, GM of RC, finally agreed to conduct the interview with me under the condition that his friend, confidant and Co-GM Anthis could join – a condition I was happy to agree to.

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Gaming and Self-esteem – Part 2

by Noctua on June 26, 2015·Gamer Culture, Noctua, Psychology

A lot of research done on gaming is focused on its harmful effects. Our self-esteem and social life is known to suffer especially from MMOs. So why do people want to game? Are we simply satisfying our human, self-destructive nature by doing so? Or is it just maybe possible that gaming can have positive effects on its “victims”? Could it help us better our image of ourselves?

Last week I wrote an article regarding some research done by Barmy on the connection between online gaming, self-esteem and escapism. If you haven’t read it yet, you can do so here. After looking closer at this subject and discussing it further with Barmy a lot of thoughts came to me. In this part two of the article I will explore these questions and reflect deeper on my own ideas about gaming and how it relates to self-esteem.

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Why we develop feelings for people we meet in games

by Noctua on June 24, 2015·Noctua, Psychology, Theories

After reading the comments to Pyxis piece “Red’s Lesson” my head was buzzing with thoughts. Hearing these stories of people falling for someone they meet online in a game is very interesting and it’s a story I’ve heard many times before. The number of people this seems to happen to surprised me greatly when I first started playing an MMO.

Seeing the comments in Pyxis post reminded me of what I read about “The Online Disinhibition Effect” when I was guest writing for Rav about why we ‘troll’. This study by John Suler presents six features of online society which can elicit us to act differently than in the real world.

“Everyday users on the Internet—as well as clinicians and researchers1–7—have noted how people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel less restrained, and express themselves more openly. So pervasive is the phenomenon that a term has surfaced for it: the online disinhibition effect.”
–The Online Disinhibition Effect, John Suler 2004

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Gaming and Self-esteem

by Noctua on June 19, 2015·Gamer Culture, Interviews, Noctua, Psychology

In this two part article I will be looking at the effects of gaming on self esteem. We’ll start by looking closer at some research into the subject. How does self-esteem tie in with escapism? How are these two effected by our motivations (achievement, social and immersion) to play? How does self esteem differ between healers, tanks and DPS? Let’s explore these questions.

I recently came across the results of a study made by a fellow gamer. I was instantly intrigued by what I read and a friend of mine was kind enough to get me into contact with the researcher himself. If you, like me, are a SWTOR player, you might know him as “Barmy” from The Red Eclipse. Barmy studied psychology at the University of Derby where he wrote his dissertation “Escaping Reality into Fantasy: Online Survey Design Examining Self-esteem and Escapism In Relation To Internet Gaming Disorder and Motivation to Play.” The study utilised an online survey design that investigated multiple variables: general demographics, gamer demographics, motivation for playing, Internet gaming disorder test (Pontes & Griffiths, 2014), escapism scale (Stenseng, 2009) and a self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965).

Demographic:
Amongst the gamers who partook in the survey the…

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Will The Fallen Empire ‘Res’ SWTOR?

by Noctua on June 16, 2015·MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

“Knights of the Fallen Empire”, the new SWTOR expansion, was announced at this years EA’s E3 press conference. This was done through stunning CG story telling. The expansion is due this October but has already created a stir within the SWTOR community. Holding our breaths, we are all waiting to find out if this is what will bring Star Wars: The Old Republic back up on its feet.

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Social Identity and Guilds in MMORPGs

by Noctua on June 13, 2015·Gamer Culture, MMOs, Noctua, Philosophy, Psychology, Theories

As you might have noticed by now I am always keen to know the reasons why people choose to game, especially in MMOs. The answer to this can reveal so much. So please, humour me for a second and answer me this:

Which of the following reasons describes your motivation for gaming most accurately?

I like competition and enjoy pushing myself to be better.
As well as meeting new interesting people, I play to spend time and maintain contact with the friends I have made in game.
I log in order to sometimes get a break from RL by exploring virtual worlds, characters and story lines.

Of course we are most likely effected by more than one of these motivations but it is possible that one of them is more dominant than the rest. Are you an achievement, social or immersion focused gamer? What is interesting in thinking about this question is that it can effect how important your “Online Social Identity” is to you.

How we are seen by others is extremely important to us in real life but it clearly also transcends to online gaming. Let me explain myself.

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Why do we ‘troll’? – Guest writing for Rav!

by Noctua on June 10, 2015·Gamer Culture, MMOs, Noctua, Psychology, Theories

Good morning fellow gamers! The other day my friend Ravanel kindly asked me if I wanted to guest write on her blog today. Of course I said yes. So since my sleeping routines are getting no better and my addiction for writing you guys new blog posts is getting worse (!!!) I’ve been typing away on a new article exploring answers to the question “Why do we troll?”.

This is the subject examined in my latest blog post. To read it, jump over to the Ravalation blog and check it out here. Happy trolling everyone!

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