Evaluating Team Metrics in Cooperative Video Games

Abstract

This research aims to understand how cooperative game features lead to teamwork behaviors as a step in developing gamified testbeds where human-human and human-autonomy teaming can be evaluated. Multiplayer video games incorporate features that encourage cooperation and interdependency, making them potential task environments for evaluating team metrics. This study analyzed three cooperative video games through annotating play sessions by tracking cooperative features and teamwork behavioral markers. The results show how cooperative features lead to a high frequency of teamwork behaviors, including coordination, planning, backup behavior, and mutual monitoring. Additionally, game features such as complementary and shared obstacles and puzzles, community survival, and team spirit led to the highest frequencies of behavioral markers. This study can serve as an initial assessment to develop a list of requirements for the gamification of teaming testbeds that can support objective quantification of team measurement.