A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Team Adaptation in Cooperative Games Through Ludic Knowledge

Abstract

With the increasing importance of teamwork skills for modern workplaces, development of teamwork training programs has received substantial attention. Game-based teamwork training is one promising approach that is engaging, cost-effective, and well-suited to increasingly decentralized workplaces. However, design of effective game-based teamwork training requires understanding how a game elicits specific desired teamwork behaviors. Significant progress has been made in characterizing these relationships. However, despite its critical importance, little work has examined how a game's design influences team adaptability behaviors. This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing adaptability in cooperative games by conceptualizing adaptive stimuli as retrieval or disruption of players'ludic knowledge. We illustrate this framework through a qualitative case study that applies interaction analysis methods to gameplay videos of a Overcooked!, a cooperative cooking game. We examined instances where game events led to players altering their behavior and connected the game's design features that resulted in each event with three adaptive stimulus cue categories. Although exploratory and limited to a small case study of a single game, the proposed framework is grounded in established theories across teamwork research and game studies, and it offers an initial vocabulary for describing how cooperative games can be designed to create demands for team adaptation. With this continued development, the framework may provide an analytic tool to help inform the design and evaluation of purpose-built game-based teamwork training environments.