臉書遊戲社交性研究：玩家團體「角色」與人際「關係類型」觀點

Abstract

遊戲在人類社會與各種文化發展中扮演重要的角色。隨著新科技的發展，遊戲也延伸至社交導向的網絡社群空間，讓人們得以與親朋好友一同在各式社交帄台中追求娛樂並產生互動，對當今人們的社會關係和互動形式產生重大影響。眾多學者與遊戲設計者便指出，遊戲社交互動活動對於玩家獲得樂趣、形塑社群關係相當重要，儘管如此，過往學者多聚焦於遊戲中因規則、角色職業而衍生的社會互動，較忽略實際生活中玩家與他人交際的行為習慣和親疏關係，如何影響玩家的遊戲互動行為。 據此，本研究之目的，欲從電腦人機互動研究中的「社交性」觀點出發，並援引小團體動力學研究之團體「角色」和人際互動研究之「關係類型」概念，探討玩家如何透過遊戲進行不同層面之社會互動，期能從中釐清社交性與社交遊戲之關係，並作為遊戲設計上提昇玩家互動之參考。本文以臉書(Facebook)遊戲作為研究場域，挑選一班級團體，以日誌和深度訪談等方法蒐集玩家互動資料，並以活動理論作為分析的依據架構。 分析後發現，玩家於臉書遊戲中的活動型態與其在人際團體中扮演的角色特質密切相關，任務特質、關係特質與自我特質玩家主要遊戲動機分別為「獲得成尌」、「維繫關係」和「滿足好奇心」，隨著遊戲情境改變，亦觸發玩家不同的動機傾向，並進一步影響其社交需求和行為。本文認為，過往學者多視「社交」等同於「建立親密和睦關係」的概念並未符合所有臉書遊戲玩家需求，因此在臉書遊戲社交性設計上更應兼顧不同性質玩家之社交需求。

Historically, games have long been an important role in human culture. As the progress of digital technology, players can now interact with his/her virtual companions disregard the limitations of time and locations through login to various online social plateforms. Such new change has prompted significant impact on people’s social relationship and interaction modes. Although the increasing appeals from scholars and game developers constantly stress the importance of exploring issues such as virtual community and social interaction of games, few studies have managed to discuss how interaction and relationship triggered by gameplay activities might influence player’s interaction in a virtual group. The primary focus of the present thus tried to explore the sociability issues of Facebook games in terms of the ”group member roles” and “interpersonal relationship types”. Activity theory was used as the major framework to analyze research data collected by user diary and interview. The results indicate that (1) the activities of players in Facebook games are closely related to the interpersonal characteristics of the group member roles ; (2) each role shows unique gaming motivations: “Achievement”, “Maintain relationship”, and “Curiosity”; (3) as the game situations change, the player’s intentions might be initiated, which further influence their needs of sociability and behaviors; (4) the sociability concepts of desining closer or harmonious relationships do not meet the needs of all Facebook gamers. The Facebook game design should take into account the social needs of players with different motivations and interpersonal characteristics.