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Raising Awareness Through Games: The Influence of a Trolling Game on Perception of Toxic Behavior

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Game + Design Education

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Design and Innovation ((SSDI,volume 13))

Abstract

The use of video games for purposes other than entertainment has become an appealing area of research. In recent years, games have become actors that support social and political change by raising awareness, i.e., persuasive games. In this study, we focus on a persuasive game that portrays toxic online behaviors, often considered as trolling: spamming, flaming, trash-talking, misdirection and using offensive language. To observe the influence of a trolling game that we designed as a tool for raising awareness about toxic behavior, we applied a single-group pre-test and post-test design in a quantitative manner. We collected data via an online questionnaire (N = 111) to have a descriptive view at the results. Even though self-reports did not show a change in awareness and knowledge acquisition by playing the game, participants had a more negative perception of toxic trolling after the gameplay. All five of the types of trolling were successfully represented in an immersion-neutral but realistic setting. We aim to bring more insight into persuasive games literature by discussing the implications of this study.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

    Gökçe Komaç & Kürşat Çağıltay

Authors
  1. Gökçe Komaç
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  2. Kürşat Çağıltay
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Correspondence to Gökçe Komaç .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Interior Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Özge Cordan

  2. Department of Interior Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Demet Arslan Dinçay

  3. Department of Interior Design, Raffles College of Higher Education, Singapore, Singapore

    Çağıl Yurdakul Toker

  4. Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Nişantaşı University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Elif Belkıs Öksüz

  5. Department of Industrial Design, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Sena Semizoğlu

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Komaç, G., Çağıltay, K. (2021). Raising Awareness Through Games: The Influence of a Trolling Game on Perception of Toxic Behavior. In: Cordan, Ö., Dinçay, D.A., Yurdakul Toker, Ç., Öksüz, E.B., Semizoğlu, S. (eds) Game + Design Education. Springer Series in Design and Innovation , vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65060-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65060-5_12

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65060-5

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