1. A framework of Awareness
A descriptive theory of awareness has been clearly developed by Gutwin and Greenberg (1999). A brief summary of their work is presented below to introduce the concept of awareness.1.1 Awareness of others
When people work together in a shared environment (virtual or not), they need information about the action and the intentions of their team-mates. This knowledge of other, result of the interaction of the participants and their environment, is named "awareness". Gutwin and Greenberg (1999) state that awareness :- is knowledge about a state of the work environment in a limited portion of time and space.
- provides knowledge about changes in that environment.
- is maintained by all the interaction between the team-mates and the environment.
- is a part of an activity (completing a task, working on something, etc.).
1.2 Workspace Awareness
Gutwin and Greenberg (1999) make the distinction between informal awareness and workspace awareness. The first involves knowing who is where, whether people is busy and what kind of activity they're engaged in. Workspace Awareness is one kind of awareness that people maintain when they work in a group (Greenberg, Gutwin, and Cockburn, 1996). It can be defined as : "the up-to-the-moment understanding of another person's interaction with the shared workspace [...] It is awareness of people and how they interact with the workspace, rather than awareness of the workspace itself" (Gutwin and Greenberg, 1999). The shared workspace (virtual or not) is a place where people work together to complete a task. Thus, awareness knowledge is made up of all the elements (perceptual : sound, motion, etc.) that are generated by the interaction of the participants in this workspace. Elements of workspace awareness can be divided into two parts : those related to the present (cf. Table 1) and those related to the past (cf. Table 2).Category |
Element |
Specific questions |
Who |
Presence |
Is anyone in the workspace ? |
Identity |
Who is participating ? Who is that ? |
|
Authorship |
Who is doing that ? |
|
What |
Action |
What are they doing ? |
Intention |
What goal is that action part of ? |
|
Artefact |
What object are they working on ? |
|
Where |
Location |
Where are they working ? |
Gaze |
Where are they looking ? |
|
View |
Where can they see ? |
|
Reach |
Where can they reach ? |
Category |
Element |
Specific question |
How |
Action history |
How did that action happen ? |
Artefact history |
How did this artefact come to be in this state ? |
|
When |
Event History |
When did that event happen ? |
Where (past) |
Location History |
Who was here, and when ? |
What (past) |
Action history |
Where has a person been ? |
Who (past) |
Presence history |
What has a person been doing ? |
- Visible activity appears to be an essential flow of information. Auditory sign may also be useful. It can be the posture of the other person's body in the workspace, the movement of a limb, the sounds in the environment, etc.
- The manipulation of the workspace artefacts provide visual or acoustic information. This mechanism is named feedthrough.
- The conversation and the intentional communication are also significant (hearing someone's conversation or asking a question like "what are you doing ?").
1.3 Awareness in real-time virtual multi-user environment
Real-time distributed groupware like shared editors, group drawing programs or multiplayer games allow people who are not in the same place to work together at the same time. These programs provide a shared workspace : a closed environment where the participants can see each other, communicate or manipulate artefacts. In this area, people perform tasks like constructing new artefacts (e.g., architects may draw or design), exploring (finding items), manipulating artefacts, writing texts, etc. In this kind of environment, there is a lack of awareness information. Workspace Awareness is much more difficult to support in virtual environments : "In face to face interaction, people can generally see the entire physical workspace and all the people in it; in groupware, they have only a small window into the virtual space" (Greenberg, Gutwin and Cockburn, 1996). The interaction between the participants and the virtual workspace generates also less information than in a physical one. The input and the output of a computer provides indeed much less information than the action in the physical world. That's why groupware provides AT to overcome these limitations. AT are much more used to "recreate the conditions and clues that allow people to keep up a sense of a workspace awareness" (Greenberg, Gutwin, and Cockburn, 1996). The few information that are left by the participants is gathered, arranged and distributed to the group. Thanks to AT, participants can receive information that can answer to the question presented in Table 1 and 2. An example of AT is the radar view : a miniature overview of the workspace that locates the team-mates in the virtual environment. Now, this study will focus on one category of multi-user virtual environment.2. First-Person-Shooter
In quake-like games, the action takes place in a shared area, namely the "Arena". This arena may be closed (Quake, Unreal...) or very wide and outdoor (Delta Force II). This arena may also be reactive (if somebody shoot in a wall, an impact will appear) and contain lots of items like ammunitions, weapons, life supplies, armours and bonus (like the "quad" in quake III, a time-limited bonus that increases the weapon damages). Bumpers and teleporters exists only in science-fiction games like Quake or Unreal Tournament. The players perform their action in real time. It also has to be mentioned that bots (characters of the game played by an AI) can compete with other players. The background of these games are mostly military on the one hand (Delta Force) and science-fiction (or fantasy) on the other hand (Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, etc.). There are mainly seven tasks to be performed :- Deathmatch : each player has to kill the highest number of others in a defined amount of time. There is no team-play.
- Team deathmatch : teams fight each other. The winner is the team who has killed the highest number of opponents.
- Capture the Flag : two teams are opposed, the purpose is to capture the flag of the opponent team.
- Domination : a team has to defend a defined area.
- Rescue hostages.
- Assassination.
- Bomb defuse : a team has to defuse a bomb in the opponent zone.
- Sometimes, few games (like DeltaForce) propose campaigns or more complex missions.
Screenshot 1 : : A - Weapon Slots 1=Main Gun, 2= Pistol, 3=knife, 4=Grenades 5=Bomb. B - A running commentary on who is killing who and with what. C - Zone Icon Area (is this case, the buy weapons zone). D - Text Message Area. E - Your Health 100=Full Health 0=Death. F - Your Kevlar Body Armour 100=Excl. Condition 0=No Armour. G - Mission Timer, minutes : seconds until round ends. H - Rounds of Ammo in the magazine of your currently held weapon. I - Total Rounds of Ammo carried for your currently held weapon. J - Your current Money Balance (from Counterstrike, taken at the url : http://www.ss-clan.com/cs/index.html). | |
Screenshot 2 : Quake III Team Arena HUD. 1 : Your team. Depending on what you have it set on, it can show an individual teammate and his health, ammo, armor, and combat orders status, or it can list all the members of the team and what their orders are. The small icon to the left below the teammate's picture is his or her orders status. The heart and armor icons show pictorially the status of his health and armor by cycling through colors. The number next to the ammo icon shows how much ammo that teammate has for that weapon, which he's currently using. 2 : Your capture status. This shows what powerups and items you're carrying, if any, as well as if you're carrying a flag or any skulls (and how many). 3-5 : Ammo, Health, and Armor. These are the standard HUD components found in Q3A, but in the sylish Team Arena look. 6 : Game Status. This bar shows the capture limit (white number to the left), Blue's captures, Red's captures, your score in the game so far (white number at the bottom), and the flags' status. 7 : Attack status. This bar shows your current team orders (the icon) as well as your location on the map. (taken from PlaneQuake, 2001). |
3. Methodology
This study used observation and interview techniques to gather information about the AT. This section describes the participants, the methodology and the sources used.3.1 Interview/Observation
Ten "hardcore gamers" participated. All were very familiar with computer science and video games (4 programmers, a game designer and 5 computer-science students). Most were familiar with the idea of groupware/CSCW but none have ever used one. Participants were introduced to the study. The study was divided into two parts : a semi-structured interview and observation. First, they were asked about all the AT that can support team play/collaboration in "first-person-shooter" they have used. The experimenter let the participants discuss about this and asked questions about other functionalities they forgot to talk about. A list of guidelines was done in order to control this enquiry. These guidelines sum up all the use of the AT : location, presence, action, identity, intention...Afterwards, the participants had to play and were observed. When they had to collaborate with their team, they were asked to show the tool used and its functionality.
3.2 Other sources used
This study has focused on first-person-shooter games. These pc-based games are distributed-display whereas console games are single-display games. The observation of several games was made. The games observed are : Counterstrike (Westwood Studios), DeltaForce II (Novalogic), Duke Nukem 3D (GT Interactive), Half-Life (Sierra), Gunman Chronicles (Sierra), Doom (id Software), Quake II/III (id Software), Rainbow 6 (Red Storm Entertainment), Unreal Tournament (GT Interactive). Moreover, another source of information of AT was the above games guides found on the web.3.3 Criteria to describe AT
A list of criteria will be used to make the content analysis and thus to classify the AT used in games. Direct AT (like radars, chat, etc.) may be separated from indirect ones. The so-called indirect AT include sounds, skins... that can help the team play but are not tools strictly speaking. Moreover, communication tools can be separated from the others. In order to discriminate the direct AT, there are six criteria :- Content : which information is displayed (presence, location, intention, etc.). It answers to the question shown in table 1 and 2. It can also be the health level, the player's role, etc.
- Time Span : there are two possibilities : acquiring the information about the team-mates or maintaining that information. That leads to the following types :
- Synchronous awareness : to obtain information about the present.
- Asynchronous/Longitudinal awareness : to obtain an historical perspective of the information. It can be a sum up of the whole information (collected after a period of time) or a differentiation between recent information and past ones.
- Mode : how the user obtains the information. There are three modes :
- Passive : the information from player A (or from every team-mates) is permanently displayed to player B (or to every one).
- Active : player A has to activate the AT to obtain information about player B (or the whole team). This information remains displayed until player A deactivates this tools (e.g. with a click).
- Reactive : player A activates something and information is provided to player B (or to the whole team, or to everybody).
- Perceptual output : the information can be visual, a sound, etc.
- Recipient of the information (a team-mate, the team or everybody).
4. Results and discussion
This part presents the results of the qualitative analysis. Since the purpose of this study was to review the AT used, no quantitative analysis was applied. Below, there is a presentation of collaboration in quake-like games. Afterwards, the criteria that can describe the AT discovered are presented. A review of these tools follow. Finally, the possible use of such tools to CSCW/CSCL is discussed.4.1 Collaboration in First-Person-Shooter
The analysis of the gamers' interview allow to present their vision of collaboration in Quake-Like Games. According to what the gamers said, collaboration is a key factor to win. A majority of players finds that collaboration isn't enough developed between participants, and that there are not enough AT (most regret that only few games support direct communication with a microphone and a headphone). It is also to be noticed that mostly team-mates who know each other win more than those who don't. It is a problem for on-line games when lots of players don't know each other. In fact, quake-like competition sets up in huge rooms and the teams are gathered in order to allow direct communication; the use of AT is thus decreased. Nonetheless, non-gathered teams exist, mainly on the Internet, and they are obliged to use AT. In the games observed, the equivalent to collaboration is "team play". It can be defined as "Two or more players acting together against another team [...] Team play is fun whether or not there is any coordination between team members. Usually a well-organized team will trap an opposing member between them [...] Keeping track of each other on a team is the absolute best way to kill effficiently." (Zdoom, 2001). Thus, collaboration between the team mates allow an efficient confrontation against the other team. The tasks may be divided in a team : there can be a sniper, a scout, a flag defender and so forth. And in order to do that, AT are crucial tools to increase the team synergy.4.2 The AT
This part presents the AT classified thanks to the above criteria after a content analysis : direct AT, indirect AT, communication tools and "team gathering" tools.4.3.1 Direct AT
Direct AT are no tools, strictly speaking. They are just visual and sound information that bring clues to the players. All these information enforce the immersion in the game environment. Table 3 shows a list of direct AT found thanks to the qualitative analysis.Name |
Output |
Content |
Avatar's skin |
Visual |
The team (skin colour), the weapon currently used,
it is also possible to configure the skin according to the player's
role (scout, sniper...). |
Alarm |
Audio |
An alarm may be triggered when an explosion is imminent
(bomb) or when a player enters a specific area. |
A player's injury |
Audio |
A wounded player screams. It may be an indication
of location and action since sound is spatialized. |
Weapon's noise |
Audio |
Each weapon has a different sound. It can convey information
about which weapon (artefact) is currently used in the Arena. |
Footsteps' noise |
Audio |
Footsteps' noise is a crucial indication of
presence, when a player is near cannot be seen him. |
Jump noise |
Audio |
Jump noise is a crucial indication of presence, when
a player is near and cannot be seen. |
Picked up items' noise |
Audio |
Picked up items' noise is a crucial indication
of presence and action, when a player is near you and cannot be seen . |
A running player |
Visual |
It may mean that the player carries the knife (if
he was using a heavier weapon he could not run so fast). |
Running noise |
Audio |
It enables players to give away their location and
your direction of travel. |
Modified artefact |
Visual |
Hole in the ground, in the wall, blood marks, dead
bodies are clues of action and location history. |
Missing items |
Visual |
Location history, a player has been there few seconds
ago. |
Artefact movement |
Visual |
Movement of platform or elevator, opening doors are
a clue that someone is nearby. |
Artefact movement |
Audio |
Movement of platform or elevator, opening doors are
a clue that someone is nearby. |
5.3.2 Indirect AT
Table 4 shows a list of indirect AT.Name |
Content |
Time-Span | Mode | Recipient |
Perceptual output |
Remarks |
Map |
Presence/Identity/Artefact/Location/Gaze |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual |
Thanks to the map, the player can see his team-mate
(a different sign forthose who are dead and those who are still alive) and
sometimes (it depends on the game played, or if the option has been chosen),
the opponents . He can also see a compass and the orientation of the player's
weapons. A zoom is possible. |
Radar |
Presence/Identity/Artefact/Location/Gaze |
Sy |
P |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
That radar map is the same as the above, it is only
smaller, and shown at a corner of the HUD. |
List |
Presence/Identity |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
A table show who is playing, the score and the ping. |
Number of player |
Presence |
Sy |
P |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
The number of players is permanently shown in a corner
of the HUD. |
Tag |
Identity (name)/Health Level/Status (friend or foe)/Location. |
Sy |
P or A (optional) |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
By pointing a team-mate (or an opponent) a player
can have information about him. The supposed location can also be shown (direction
and distance). |
List |
Action history |
Asy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
This list shows information about the events (death,
flag capture). |
CPU message |
Action |
Sy |
R |
The player's HUD and his speakers |
Visual (transparent overlay) and sound |
The computer send message about the events (who has
killed who, etc.). |
CPU message |
Artefact |
Sy |
R |
The player's HUD and his speakers |
Visual (transparent overlay) and sound |
The computer send message about the events that involve
an artefact (like who has captured the flag or defused the bomb). |
Thermic vision |
Location |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
Thanks to this tool, the player can see who is behind
a wall for instance. |
Infrared Binoculars |
Location |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) |
Thanks to this tool, the player can see when the light
is at low level. |
Log, console |
Event history/Communication log/Artefact history |
Asy |
A |
The player's HUD |
Visual (overlay) |
The console sums up all the messages that were send,
the event (death, artefact modification, etc.). |
- |
Authorship |
Sy |
P |
The player's HUD |
Visual (overlay) |
The HUD can show to the player the skin of the avatar
who wounded the player with the name of his weapon. |
Script |
It depends on the configuration. |
Sy and Asy |
A |
It depends |
It depends |
Scripts allow players to configure their own AT that
display the informationthey want. Scripts can be triggered by clicking on
a key configured for that. |
4.3.3 Communication Tools
Communication Tools are the kind of tools that can support awareness. Other functionalities may also exist (fun, discussion, etc.). Table 5 shows a short review of the communication tools.Name |
Content |
Time Span |
Mode |
Recipient |
Perceptual Output |
Remarks |
Team Chat/Talk |
Communication tool : any information that can be verbalised |
Sy |
A |
The team-mates'; HUD |
Visual (transparent overlay) : one colour |
The team chat allow the players to chat ONLY with
their team-mates |
Chat |
Communication tool : any information that can be verbalised |
Sy |
A |
Every player';s HUD | Visual (transparent overlay) : another colour |
This chat allows every player (friend or foe) to talk
to each other. |
Player Chat |
Communication tool : any information that can be verbalised |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD and the one who is listening | Visual (transparent overlay) : a third colour |
This chat allows players to talk to each other (team-mates
only). A semi-structured interface enables a player to choose the team-mate
he wants to talk with. |
Voice-over-Net |
Communication tool : any information that can be verbalised |
Sy |
A |
Another player | Audio (speaker) |
It allow a player to talk directly to another player
(with a microphone and speakers). |
- |
Who is listening, who is talking to who |
Sy |
A |
The player's HUD. |
Visual (overlay) |
This table can display information about the sound
interaction between team-mates. |
Bond |
Communication tool |
Sy |
A |
The team-mates' HUD | Visual (transparent overlay) | Binds allow a player to send messages to his team
by pressing only one key. It can be configured (for example : pressing F1
can trigger the display of "cover me"). |
4.3.4 Gathering a team
Before entering the Arena, a crucial problem is to gather a team (Calica, 1998). It is very easy if the participants are in the same place and if they know each other but that's not always possible. Internet offers a new opportunity to gather team-mates from all over the world. Calica describes three ways to gather a team (Calica, 1998) :- "Next on the Bus" : the arena is filled by people in order of appearance.
- "Pick-Me Style" : participants are waiting to be picked by pre-constituted groups (friends gather themselves in a group and wait).
- "Wander and Team" : it means start playing and if the player finds someone he likes, he plays along with him. Meetings can lead to a team.
4.4 From Quake-Like to CSCW/CSCL
4.4.1 Awareness categories supported in games
All the categories of awareness shown in Tables 1 and 2 are not supported by the video games observed. There are true signs of Presence, identity, action, artefact, location, event history. However, the only possibility to obtain information concerning intention, gaze, view, etc. is to ask another player by using a communication tool. This may be explained by the fact that gameplay (e.g. strategy and tactics for accomplishing the goals of the game) may suffer if too much information is provided to the players or if there are tools that gathered useless information. For instance, when somebody connects himself to a quake arena, he's a spectator and can display the view of all the players to see what they're currently looking. A participant, in the arena, cannot do that. "What You See is What I See" is not supported, it is more "What You See Is What I Do". AT may be used only if they can be useful for the task. That's why several game provides a radar that show only the team-mates and not the opponents.4.4.2 AT learning in games and groupware
Unlike groupware, video games are easy to pick up and allow people to do complex things effortlessly. The use of AT seems very natural and intuitive for players. As it follows the same logic and the same rules as the real world, there's no constraint, performing the task is not frustrating. Groupware lacks of fun, the key factor of a successful game (Holmquist, 1997). In quake-like games, a military metaphor is applied. The user interface is based on the military aircraft helmet. The HUD appears very intuitive for gamers who are immersed in the video-games culture (games, movies, wearable technology, sci-fi stories, etc.). Thus, groupware need fun, a right paradigm to be efficient and they need to be "user-friendly" like video games. It is more difficult as there is no "associated culture" like in video-games.4.4.3 Lessons from Quake-Like's AT
Video-games' AT have already been transferred to groupware. The most common is Radar Views. It enables users to provide information about where and how others are interacting with a document or the workspace (Gutwin, Greenberg and Roseman, 1996). These radar views are passive and synchronous AT. For example, they can show where users are in a limited portion of the virtual environment or which part of a shared whiteboard participants are looking. Transparent Layers also provide miniaturized overview of the entire workspace (Cox, Chugh, Gutwin and Greenberg, 1998) as in Duke Nukem 3D. A transparent overview layer can show where are artefacts and people. These layers are different from radar views because it shows the whole environment (whereas radar shows only a limited portion) and are mainly active. Although there are already these above examples, several new ideas have emerged thanks to this study.First this part focus on the means used to provide information. A tool for gathering a "task-team" : as video games provides tools to gather a team to play (as seen in 4.3.4), one can imagine a similar device for people who wants to work on a same task. It can be useful to improve the "knowledge management" in a firm. For instance, a such tool can allow employee to be gathered to solve a problem. Each participant stores his profile (name, e-mail, skills, interests, previous work, completed project, etc.). And when somebody wants to work on a specific task, he can use this tool to find people to team up with. The research of the accurate team-mates could be made on the basis of their profile. Like in video-games a list of "favourite" team-mates could be useful. This tools may also be interesting in project-based learning to improve collaboration between students and mainly in distance learning. In project that involved peers, it can be a mean to find an accurate partner according to his skills and what he likes.
Furthermore, this kind of tool might also support just-in-time learning : contacting the accurate person increases the chance to find the right answer to a question.
In all this cases, the designer should keep in mind that he has to build a profile adapted to each application. Gathering students on a project does not require the same information matching as gathering a team of musician for a web jam-session. Scripting : Quake enables players to write scripts in order to trigger events by pressing only one key. A such functionality might be useful in groupware to let the users configure their own AT and triggering the display of the information they want. However, the system must provide an accurate user interface to enable an easy configuration. In Quake, this configuration is really difficult for beginners as they have to find variables, which script to modify, etc. A semi-structured interface with a list of information to be displayed might allow user to construct their own AT. The use of transparency can also be very interesting to display these information with the user-configured AT. The use of transparent overlay is also a great video-games ergonomic contribution, like quake-like's chat or Duke Nukem 3D transparent map. Auditory cues (non-speech audio) : footsteps, jump noise, weapon noise convey information about action and location. It can be useful to use non-speech audio to increase awareness. The fact that this audio cues are less distracting and require few attention (McGrenere, 1996). A match between a sound and an artefact is an example. When a participants use a artefacts, a specific sound could be activated. If the environment is made up of virtual rooms, footsteps noise can be used to warn the user that somebody is coming. However, there must be a control or a limitation otherwise participants will be overwhelmed by very annoying noises. Perhaps, the system should limit that sound to a close area of the workspace (if there are virtual rooms for instance). One may pay attention to the cognitive overload that can occur in such situation : too much perceptual signal can bother the performing of the task. Direct communication (with headphone and microphone) can also be a useful widget only if it is really needed in the task. Otherwise, like non-speech audio cues, it can be very annoying. There is also a problem of user-interface like in video games : the user have to choose the player he wants to talk with. This can be done with a semi-structured interface. If the system allow a direct communication with all the participants, it will be a tremendous cacophony. The number of person who wants to discuss must be limited. The sound may also be spatialized : the volume may depend on the distance between the participants in the virtual workspace. Moreover, video-games provide idea about what kind of information can be shown. Accurate Information : video games AT show only the useful information that can help participants to perform the task. There is no sense to show cues of location history : a log of the player's location is utterly useless in such games. But it can be useful in CSCL to see if a peer has already visited a virtual room (i.e. if the task involve a trail in virtual place like libraries, simulation rooms, etc.). In this way, virtual multi-user environment (games or not) may also have to minimize the overhead encountered when showing information. That's why video games are showing only useful information and let participants triggering the display of further ones. Quake-like games are very fast, players cannot afford to pay attention to useless cues. Reactive information : participants have to be explicitly aware of an action undertaken by another one thanks to the cues left in the environment. It is the role of the system to gather information left by the users and to transform it in useful information. For example, a modification of an artefact may convey indications about the user's location. In this case, participants need not to specify where they are in the virtual environment. That's why reactive AT are crucial : it minimizes the player's duty since he has not to give this information to the others. Workflow progress : as there is an AT that shows the gameflow progression (the score, the number of captured flags, the number of defused bombs), groupware can use an equivalent indicator of the workflow progress. In CSCL, this kind of information may be very important for students tracking. A visualization tool which shows the work progress is useful. This kind of tool can calculate this progression : for example, if the students have to write a 10 page paper, if they have written 8 pages, the system can show a progress of 80%. The interpretation is left to the user of the tool (they have to be warned that this percentage is calculated on the basis of the page already written).