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International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
24
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
ISSN: 2455-2070; Impact Factor: RJIF 5.22
www.socialresearchjournals.com
Volume 2; Issue 12; December 2016; Page No. 24-28
The effects of playing cooperative and competitive video games on teamwork and team performance
1 Ankit Badatala, 2 John Leddo, 3 Atif Islam, 4 Kush Patel, 5 Pavani Surapaneni
1, 3, 4, 5 Research Associate at MyEdMaster, LLC, Herndon, Virginia 20171, United States of America
2 Director of Research at MyEdMaster, LLC, 13750 Sunrise Valley Drive, Herndon, VA 20171, United States of America
Abstract
Playing video games is a pervasive activity among middle school students. Researchers are now investigating whether such play
carries any educational benefits. One aspect of many video games is teamwork. The goal of the present research was to
investigate whether playing video games cooperatively with or competitively against others affects later teamwork behavior and
team performance. 60 middle school students, all without previous video game playing experience, participated in the present
study. They were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: no video game playing, cooperative video game
playing, and competitive video game playing. Those in the video game conditions then were taught how to play Modern Warfare
3 and played for two hours. They were randomly paired with another subject from the same condition and either played with or
against that person. Two weeks later, all participants were randomly paired with new partners from the same experimental
condition and played a Prisoner’s Dilemma game where points are awarded to players based on whether they play cooperatively
or competitively with each other. Total team scores were tallied after 20 trials. Results showed that those who played Modern
Warfare 3 cooperatively scored the highest, while those who played it competitively scored the lowest. Results suggest that video
game playing can bolster teamwork and team performance when played cooperatively and impair teamwork and team
performance when played competitively.
Keywords: video games, cooperative, competitive, team work, team performance
1. Introduction
Statistics show that ninety-seven percent of the American
adolescent population plays video games (Lenhart, Kahne, et
al., 2008) [19], and the playing time averages about thirteen
hours per week (Gentile, 2009) [15]. While video games come
in all sorts of varieties, the genre of violent and first person
shooter (FPS) games have clouded the worldwide view of
video games. Rumored to be the instigator of school shootings
and public massacres, violent video games have held a
negative stereotype for decades. Blamed for physical
aggression and psychological distress, they make parents think
twice before letting their kids engage with them. After the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, President Obama
demanded that Congress spend $10 million for the research of
violent media, particularly video games (Obama & Biden,
2013) [21]. This has caused researchers to look at and analyze
the impact of the negative along with the positive aspects of
this media.
1.1 Video Game’s Cognitive Impacts
While the common belief is that video games, in the long run,
cause depression and other mental disorders, they actually
have some cognitive benefits. Previous research also suggests
that these cognitive advantages increases neural processing
and efficiency. Bavelier et al. (2012) [4] conducted an fMRI
study and found that gamers use their control attention
network less than non-gamers. The researchers then concluded
that the FPS gamers designate their attentional energy less
than non-gamers, meaning that they sift out insignificant
information from significant information efficiently. Spatial
skills can be easily strengthened by playing FPS games (Uttal
et al. 2013) [29]. The spatial awareness acquired from these
games can be correlated with the same skills that can be
attained at college level courses aimed sharpening these very
skills. Uttal et al. (2013) [29] also shows that the skills can be
acquired from the games more quickly than they can be
acquired from the classes. In addition, the spatial skills from
the games last longer than the skills from the courses.
Problem solving skills are the basis of all video games, and
they can also be refined via video games (Prensky, 2012) [22].
Problem can range from “find the item” to “figure out how to
kill the monster.” In short, they come in all shapes and sizes. It
is up to the player to evaluate the current situation, pull
strategies from past experiences, and then develop a solution
to the problem and put it into execution. Prensky states that
introduction to these types of unrestricted situations will give
rise to a generation called the “digital natives”, who will have
a mindset capable of solving real life situation with “outside of
the box” thinking. While classrooms teach students “by the
book”, the digital natives learn by trial and error.
Cooper’s study shows how these digital natives can help in
real life situations. University of Washington created a game
called Foldit, which allowed gamers to model the makeup of
proteins genetically. After the playing period had ended, the
players were able to help researchers pinpoint the structure
that they had been trying to get for the past ten years. In this
way, the revolutionary thinking process developed by the
digital natives was implemented into a real life situation and
produced stellar results (Cooper et al. 2010) [7].
Even though video gameplay consists of a remote controller,
video games can improve hand eye coordination. These skills
can not only be helpful in sports, but also careers that require
this skill (McKinley et al. 2011) [20]. McKinley found that
video game players were successfully able to fly and operate
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
25
drones, and were able to complete this task with similar
competency as trained pilots. Another example of such career
related benefits via video games is an experiment that
investigated surgical skills (Rosser et al., 2007; Schlickum et
al., 2009) [23, 25]. Inexperienced surgeons who were also ardent
gamers outclassed the most accomplished surgeons. The
gaming surgeons demonstrated stellar hand-eye coordination,
attention, and quick decision-making skills, which they refined
through the participation of video games. In essence, video
games should not be viewed negatively as they provide an
assortment of cognitive benefits.
1.2 Video Game’s Impacts on Aggressive Behavior
Scientists have questioned the connections between video
games and aggressive behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000;
Sherry 2001) [3, 28]. Research suggests that violent games
trigger the aggression scripts in the mind (Anderson &
Bushman, 2002) [2]. Also, ingrained pathways arouse related
networks when prepped with aggression (Eastin, 2006) [10].
FPS and violent games can be held accountable for invoking
these actions. An analysis conducted in 2001 states that 89%
of video games on the market contain some violence (Children
Now, 2001) [6]. That number is slowly rising as violent games
gain increased popularity. The effects of these games can spill
onto the behaviors of the players in real life. Playing violent
games leads to more “harming” behavior in real life (Bavelier
et al., 2011) [5]. Anderson and Bushman (2001) [1] conducted
54 independent tests to discover the relationship between
violent behavior and video games. They used over 4000
participants and discovered robust results. The violent effects
discovered were aggressive behaviors, aggressive cognitions,
physiological arousal. The effects were found in all sorts of
participants, including children, adults, males, and females.
Zhang et al. (2010) [31] found that competition along with
violent content, increased aggressive cognition and aggressive
behavior. This leads to the conclusion that it is not just the
violence of the video game that is causing aggression but also
the competitive aspect of the game. Fleming and Rickwood
(2001) [13] studied the result of violent gaming by children.
They discovered that arousal was definitely greater after
gameplay, but saw no correlation between gameplay and
aggressive characteristics. Anderson and Dill (2000) [3]
conducted a similar experiment, but instead of children, he
used college students as test participants. They detected that
college students who played violent games tended to act more
violently towards their opponents than those that played non-
violent games. In addition, they found that the women
participants were more hostile afterwards than the men that
participated. One can assume that the context of gameplay can
play a factor in the violence behavior, since the results of
Anderson and Fleming varied while they put their participants
in similar situations.
Since the scope of this study is related to both the pro-social
benefits and the anti-social drawbacks of cooperative and
competitive video games, we must look at the other side of the
spectrum as well. In a cooperative circumstance, one only
achieves one’s objective when others also achieve their
objective (Johnson & Johnson, 1983) [18]. In contrast, one only
achieves one’s objective in a competitive situation when
others do not achieve their objective. The general conclusion
of current research suggests that competitive environments
nurture more aggression since the player tends to have to
block or obstruct his or her opponents from reaching their goal
(Sheese & Graziano, 2005) [27]. While in cooperative situations
the payer has to work together with their team. This will
nurture feelings of teamwork and cohesion, thus eliminating
most aggressive sensations (Deutsch, 1973) [8].
1.3 Video Game’s Prosocial Impacts
Research has shown that video games, when played
cooperatively instead of competitively, can lead to prosocial
behavior (Greitemeyer et al., 2012) [17]. In addition, the
playing of video games in a prosocial environment can
beneficially impact cognition and “helping” behaviors
(Bavelier et al., 2011; Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer &
Osswald, 2011; Saleem et al., 2012) [5, 14, 16, 24].
Gentile et al. (2009) [14] discovered that prosocial games can
have both short and long term influences. Immediately after
video game play, the participants exhibited behaviors that
demonstrated assistance towards others. Also, children
exhibited prosocial traits at the end of the school year, if they
played the game at the beginning of the school year (Gentile et
al., 2009) [14]. We can conclude from this research that simply
playing cooperative video games can lead to prosocial
behaviors. While, the term “prosocial” is quite general, it
encompasses a wide range of social behaviors that are
beneficial for the self and the other.
The real issue is that most cooperative and competitive games
are violent and FPS games, and these are the games that are
known to promote aggression. However, there is research that
suggests that violent games do not in and of themselves
promote aggression. Ferguson et al. (2011) [12] found that
participants who played violent games cooperatively tended to
display “helpful” behaviors inside and outside of the game
world. In addition, they discovered that these gamers exhibited
this quality more than gamers who played nonviolent games
cooperatively. Consistent with this finding, Eastin reported
that violent games, when played in social groups, can reduce
the tendency for hostile feelings (Eastin, 2007) [9] compared to
when played individually. Additional research confirms
Eastin’s findings (Schmierbach, 2010; Velez et al., 2012) [26,
30].
1.4 Video Game’s Impacts on Teamwork
While countless projects have been conducted on the impact
of video games on prosocial behaviors, aggressive sensations,
and cognitive benefits, minimal research had been done on the
effects of participation in competitive and cooperative
videogame play on participants’ teamwork performance
afterwards. As this is the main focus of the present` study, it is
important to delve deeper into this area.
Ewoldsen et al. (2012) [11] conducted an experiment that is
very similar to the present study. They told participants to play
Halo 2, which is a videogame that can be played competitively
or cooperatively. Afterwards they measured the participants’
behavior in a Prisoner’s Dilemma task. Ewoldsen et al. [11]
found that participants who played Halo 2 cooperatively were
more likely to engage in “tit-for-tat” behavior in the Prisoner’s
Dilemma task than those who had played cooperatively.
However, while the researchers pointed out that “tit-for-tat”
behavior can be a precursor to cooperation, “tit-for-tat” can
also be employed in competition as well. The researchers did
not clarify this as they did not report whether the participants
in the cooperative condition did indeed cooperate more and
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
26
achieve a higher group score than those in the competitive
condition. Moreover, they did not investigate whether the
effects of game play persisted beyond the day of the study.
The present study builds on the work of Ewoldsen et al. [11].
Our methodology is similar in that participants first play a
video game, either cooperatively or competitively, and then
participate in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Unlike the
participants in the Ewoldsen et al. [11] study, all of our
participants have no previous video gaming experience (to
eliminate any prior effectives of playing video games), we
added a control condition where no video games are played
and we look at Prisoner’s Dilemma performance two weeks
after the game playing to determine if there are any lingering
effects from game playing.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1 Participants
Participants were 60 middle school students who were
recruited from middle schools in Fairfax and Loudoun
counties in Virginia. None of them had prior experience
playing videogames. Each participated in the study without
compensation. Each of the participants was a boy. This was
not by design; it just turned out that when recruiting 60
volunteers from local middle schools, those responding were
all boys.
2.2 Videogame
The videogame used in the experiment was Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare III. It is a first-person shooter game in which
players engage in combat against an opposing force, which
can either be the computer itself or another human. The game
was chosen because it can be played in either a cooperative or
competitive mode, making it suitable as a testbed for the
experimental hypothesis. In competitive mode, players oppose
each other in combat and the goal is to kill the opposing
player. In cooperative mode, two players work together to
defeat a computer-controlled force. They make joint decisions
on the strategies they will use to defeat the enemy, including
how to spend the money they are given in the game on
weapons. Of particular interest to the present study is the fact
that if one player is injured, the other can save him if he is
close enough to arrive before the injured player dies. If the
injured player dies, then the game is over. Therefore, a key
teamwork element taught by the game is that the fates of both
players are linked; in order for one to succeed, both must
succeed and if one fails, then both fails. Therefore, the best
path to success is for each player to think of both himself and
his partner.
2.3 Procedure
The 60 participants were randomly assigned to pairs and to
one of the three experimental conditions: control, competitive,
and cooperative. The latter two conditions involved playing
the videogame. Those in the control condition only played the
Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Those in the other two conditions
received training on how to play the videogame and then
played the videogame for two hours. Participants in the
videogame conditions were brought back two weeks later to
play the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The rationale behind the
delay was twofold. First, by delaying the Prisoner’s Dilemma
game, it could be determined whether experience playing the
game had a more lasting effect on participants’ behavior than
could be measured if the Prisoner’s Dilemma game were
played immediately after the videogame. Second, delaying the
Prisoner’s Dilemma game was designed to negate a potential
immediacy effect whereby participants who just competed in a
videogame might be inclined to compete in the Prisoner’s
Dilemma game while those who had just cooperated might be
inclined to cooperate.
However, before playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, each
subject was randomly reassigned to a new partner. The new
partner was from the same videogame condition
(cooperative/competitive) as the subject. This was done in
case the previous competitive or cooperative relationship the
subject had with his partner in the videogame might spill over
the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Moreover, the participants were
blind to the experimental conditions their new Prisoner’s
Dilemma partners had been in so as to not induce a bias in the
participants as to how their new partners might act in the
Prisoner’s Dilemma game.
Each player was given a sheet (shown in Figure 1) that
described the rules of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game and
allowed the player to keep score. There were 20 trials in the
game for which participants were asked to select either X or
Y. If both participants chose X, they each received five points.
If they both chose Y, each lost five points. If one chose X and
the other chose Y, then the one choosing Y received ten points
and the one choosing X lost ten points. After each player made
his choice, he was told his partner’s choice as well. The player
then recorded both choices on the sheet provided and kept
track of his and his partner’s total points.
3. Results and Discussion
The primary purpose of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game was to
test whether experience playing a videogame can influence
subsequence teamwork behavior. The Prisoner’s Dilemma
game was chosen because it provides an overall score of team
performance that is dependent upon how well players look out
for their partner’s success and not just their own, something
representative of real life team performance. Therefore, the
measure of importance in the present study is the total score
achieved by each pair of players. Accordingly, the team score
for each pair of players was determined by adding the
individual scores for each player in the pair. As a result, there
were ten scores per condition, reflecting the ten pairs per
condition. These were then averaged across players in each
condition. The averages are shown in Table 1.
As can be seen from Table 1, the average team score was
highest in the cooperation condition and lowest in the
competition condition. A one-way analysis of variance
revealed that a statistically significant difference between
conditions, F (2.27) = 87.00, P < .0001. A Tukey test was used
to determine which means were significantly different from
each other. Because multiple comparisons were being made, a
.01 level of significance was used instead of a .05 level. The
critical value required for the means to be significantly
different from each other at the .01 level is 35.53.
Accordingly, each mean was statistically significantly
different from each other mean at the .01 level.
The primary purpose of the research was to investigate
whether playing videogames can affect subsequent teamwork
behavior. While many skills comprise effective teamwork, an
important one is thinking in terms of overall group, not
individual, performance, which entails maximizing the success
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
27
of one’s partners as well as one’s own success as the two are
often linked. The present results indicate that playing
videogames can affect team performance, both positively and
negatively. Those with no prior videogame experience showed
differences in their team performance after only two hours of
videogame play.
A Prisoner’s Dilemma game was chosen to test whether the
cooperation/competition skills learned during the videogame
would extend to contexts beyond the videogame. The results
suggest that there was such as transfer of behavior. The
Prisoner’s Dilemma game was purposely conducted with
different partners in order to demonstrate that any effect
produced from the videogame was not linked to the specific
videogame partner/opponent as this could be construed as
implying that the videogame merely induced a competition or
cooperation mindset that was unique to the individual
Prisoner’s Dilemma game partner. The fact that the effects
occurred two weeks after playing the videogame suggests that
the effects were not an immediate by-product of having just
competed or cooperated in a videogame, but rather may reflect
a genuine change in how the participants approach situations
where they have the choice to compete or cooperate with
others.
4. Tables and Figures
Table 1: Mean Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Scores based on Condition
Cooperation
Competition
Control
127
-20
60
Fig 1: Prisoner’s Dilemma Instructions
5. Conclusion
As noted in the Introduction, video game play is prevalent in
adolescents with the predominant type of video game being
violent first person shooter games. Research suggests that
there are both positive and negative potential effects from
playing video games. Given that video games are likely to
remain prevalent in the marketplace and that adolescents show
a preference for violent games, the issue becomes how to
manage video game playing to maximize benefits from game
playing and minimize harmful effects. Games that require
cognitive abilities and eye-hand coordination can be
beneficial. To the extent that adolescents prefer violent games,
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research
28
these should be played cooperatively to maximize teamwork
and prosocial skills.
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