The Emergence of High-Speed Interaction and Coordination in a (Formerly) Turn-based Groupware Game

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1 The Emergence of High-Speed Interaction and Coordination in a (Formerly) Turn-based Groupware Game Carl Gutwin, Mutasem Barjawi, and David Pinelle Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan 110 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5C9 gutwin@cs.usask.ca ABSTRACT Although some forms of distributed groupware now enable fastpaced real-time collaboration (e.g., first-person shooter games), little work has been done to determine how coordination and interaction occur when people attempt to work together at high speed. Understanding the elements of high-speed coordination is important, because shared-workspace groupware systems offer opportunities for new kinds of high-speed work that is, they provide freedom from the physical constraints that can slow and restrict coordination in physical shared spaces. To better understand high-speed coordination, and to examine whether these opportunities can enable new kinds of interaction in groupware, we created and studied a new multi-player game (called RTChess) that is based on traditional chess, but adds multiple players and removes all turns from the gameplay. The result is a free-for-all game where people are limited only by their ability to move quickly and expertly a situation that is more like a team sport than a tabletop game. We carried out an observational study of 448 games of RTChess to look for the emergence of high-speed interaction, team coordination, and interactional expertise. We found that people can interact extremely quickly through distributed groupware, and saw evidence that people build expertise and develop several kinds of coordination in the game. Groupware systems like RTChess indicate that coordination and interaction in shared-workspace collaboration can occur at high speed, and suggest ways to free groupware users from the slow and stilted interactions that are common in many current multi-user systems. Keywords Game design; Real-time multiplayer games; Coordination 1. INTRODUCTION Real-time distributed groupware systems are now common (e.g., office software such as Google Docs, conferencing and screensharing systems such as Skype or VNC, and many kinds of multiplayer games). These systems have dramatically changed the way that people work and play together over distance; however, there are still substantial differences between the kinds of group behavior that are possible in groupware, and what is commonly seen in face-to-face settings. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. GROUP '16, November 13-16, 2016, Sanibel Island, FL, USA Copyright held by authors. Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM /16/11 $15.00 DOI: In particular, most real-time groupware still does not support high-speed interaction, in which people carry out interdependent actions quickly and with close coordination. This kind of behavior is a hallmark of human collaboration in face-to-face environments, where people are natural experts in the mechanical aspects of working together in physical spaces. For example, in real-world work and play settings, people are able to easily and rapidly transfer tools and objects to one another, are able to carry out synchronized actions simply and easily, are able to coordinate fast turn-taking actions smoothly and efficiently, and are able to respond naturally and quickly to subtle cues about others actions and intentions. High-speed interaction is common in many collaborative settings, but is perhaps most apparent in team sports like soccer or basketball, where split-second timing and precise coordination can be critical to a team s success. When interaction and collaboration move from the real world to groupware systems, high-speed interaction becomes more difficult. Multi-player games such as first-person shooters do support real-time interaction, but little is known about how this interaction occurs. In addition, it is unknown how the limitations of distributed interaction (e.g., the loss of awareness information about other people s locations and activities, the loss of tactile feedback from shared physical actions, and the loss of communication richness through the absence of non-verbal channels and body language [2,6,7]) also limit coordination. The restrictions of distributed groupware often force users into slow, awkward, and overly formal interaction patterns (even in real-time games), trapping them in interactional beginner mode even when they have a high degree of interactional expertise in realworld workspaces. However, distributed groupware also provides some new opportunities for high-speed interaction opportunities that can even take groupware beyond what is possible in the real world. One of these opportunities is that distributed groupware frees people from the constraints that govern shared action in a physical space: that is, people s hands and arms cannot be in the same physical place at the same time, but in a groupware environment there is no such limitation, meaning that people may be able to interact more quickly in groupware than in real-world workspaces. Given the strong correlation between high-speed interaction and team sports, the reduced physical constraints of groupware present natural possibilities for developing new high-speed groupware games. In this paper, we investigate the development of and support for high-speed interaction using a new game that is developed from chess, but that removes the turn-taking requirements that are used to mediate access to the board space and the chess pieces. The game, called RTChess, allows multiple people to play at once and removes traditional turns from the gameplay, instead adopting a free-for-all approach where people may move as fast as they are able. This approach changes the 277

2 game from a slow and thoughtful activity, in which people have time to optimize their decisions, to a fast-paced game that is much more like a team sport limited only by people s abilities to keep track of the action and move the pieces on the board. We used RTChess as a platform for observing the emergence and development of expert real-time interaction and coordination. We carried out an observational study in which we watched and recorded 448 games of RTChess over five sessions played by two teams of two players each. We analysed the video records to track the development of the teams play strategies and coordinated behavior. Our observations show that there is a whole new world of real-time high-speed behavior that is possible in distributed groupware. In many ways RTChess is more like a team sport than a game: we observed teams instinctively dividing into offensive and defensive roles, moving in a coordinated fashion to chase an opponent, and running trap and ambush plays where an opponent was lured out into a vulnerable position. However, the speed of the game (a move every 0.7 seconds) also means that teamwork and coordinated activity are difficult there is no time to plan during the game, and awareness, communication, and synchronization all become problems in the distributed system. Nevertheless, the teams clearly learned new strategies and learned the characteristics of their partners; that is, they got better at high-speed interaction over the five sessions. These results show that it is possible to design groupware systems that enable high-speed interaction and that allow people to make use of their natural expertise in working together. Systems like RTChess raise the upper limits on speed and coordination of shared-workspace collaboration, and help to free groupware users from interactional beginner mode. Although issues such as supporting group awareness are still critical, our results suggest that groupware can successfully enable high-speed interaction. In the next sections, we review background material for this investigation research into coordination in groupware, into traditional and real-time game design, and into the temporal structures that can govern interaction. We then introduce RTChess, describe design issues in the game that affect coordination, and provide general observations on what it is like to play the game. We then report on the observational study in which we looked more closely at the emergence and development of high-speed interaction and coordination. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1 Loose and Tight Coupling Coupling is the degree to which a person can operate independently of another in a collaborative workspace [12]. Researchers have considered how coordination works at both ends of this spectrum. Loosely-coupled interaction occurs when there is low interdependency (i.e., users interactions affect each other weakly or infrequently), high differentiation (i.e., users interactions are distinct, separate, and self-contained), and low integration (i.e., managing interdependencies between interactions does not occur regularly) [12]. Additionally, loose coupling involves interaction that requires people to be aware of each other, but without a need for immediate negotiation, and in which activities can proceed in parallel [11]. Tightly-coupled interaction occurs when there is high dependency between users interactions, and where immediate and frequent communication is required to negotiate some activities [11]. This communication is often verbal, but in situations where there is no time to talk, the communication channel is often implicit and visual that is, the visible indications of others actions immediately and continuously influence other users actions [16]. This kind of communication is exemplified in team sports, where activity happens too fast for lengthy verbal communication, and players need to coordinate their actions based on the visual information in the environment (e.g., in a soccer game, the location and movement of other players and the ball) [3]. As discussed below, however, there are ways of reducing the need for communication (i.e., prediction and set plays). 2.2 Coordination in Groups Coordination is the act of organizing interdependencies between activities in a collaborative setting [4,9]; in tightly-coupled activities, where there are more interdependencies, a greater degree of this organization is required. Coordination has been studied frequently in CSCW, although much of the research has considered low-speed types of coordination that occur in activities such as business processes [10], although the basic principles of coordination theory still apply to faster activities. Malone and Crowston [10] divide coordination into four generic components: goals, actors, activities, and interdependencies between the activities. Common types of interdependencies include shared resources, producer/consumer relationships, simultaneity constraints, and task/subtask relationships. Coordination mechanisms are the means by which these interdependencies are managed. People may coordinate their actions in several ways: Explicit communication, whether verbal or gestural, is a main mechanism used for coordination, and verbal exchanges are often needed in unfamiliar situations. Implicit communication allows people to gather information from feedthrough [2] or others movement ( consequential communication [16]). Group decisions and established protocols provide pre-arranged rules or policies about how the work will be carried out [9]; these can include one-time decisions (e.g., how to split up a task between people), or general guidelines (e.g., driving on the left side of the road, saying hello when answering the telephone, or taking turns in a game). A main difference between different coordination mechanisms is whether the mechanism allows people to predict others actions. Protocols and pre-arranged rules let people make decisions about what others are going to do, without requiring communication at the time of the event. This is critical in situations with time pressure, since verbal communication is slow. In fast-paced team sports, for example, players rely primarily on prediction (e.g., based on set plays or familiarity with another player s style) to coordinate activities. As suggested above, many instances of high-speed interaction can be found in team games such as soccer or basketball, and Kinesiology researchers have examined several aspects of team coordination and performance (e.g., [1,34,5]) For example, Eccles [3] proposed a conceptual framework of coordination and communication between team members. In this framework, coordination was divided into three parts: pre-process, in-process, and post-process coordination. Pre-process coordination occurs when the team prepares itself for a game by establishing roles, setting tasks, and learning set plays. In-process coordination is the coordination undertaken during gameplay as a response to the dynamic environment. Post-process coordination occurs when the team reviews and evaluates its behaviour and makes decisions and plans for future games. Eccles states that in most sports, inprocess coordination is difficult because of the scarcity of time, 278

3 which reduces cognitive resources and communication opportunities. 2.3 Turn-based Coordination in Games One main mechanism for coordinating players in games, particularly tabletop games like chess, is the idea of turn-taking. Many computer and video games use this simple coordination strategy, which mediates access to the shared resource of the game workspace (e.g., the board and game pieces). Turns are a fundamental part of most tabletop games, and it is difficult even to describe games like chess or backgammon without using the idea of turns. However, one of the main reasons that turns exist in these games has nothing to do with the gameplay: that is, turns are necessary to avoid physical collisions in the shared space of the board. Turns shape the play in other ways as well for example, they ensure fair access to all players and make the game into a discrete set of optimization problems but they may have arisen primarily to manage the physical difficulties of two people trying to operate on the same game board. The role of turn-taking as a coordination mechanism is highlighted in the example of real-time strategy games (RTSs) such as Starcraft. These games are computational versions of turn-based board games such as Axis and Allies or Diplomacy, in which players use their decision-making and planning skills to dominate their opponents within a game domain. Most early computer-based strategy games maintained the turn-based approach that is part of the physical board games. However, there are examples even from the early 1980s that add real-time elements to the gameplay (e.g., Utopia or Ancient Art of War). In the 1990s, modern RTSs such as Command and Conquer appeared that included further real-time elements such as mousebased control of units, resource gathering, and different levels of management, that are all now commonplace in RTS games. The shift to real-time play in RTSs dramatically changed the experience of the game and the strategies needed to succeed. Whereas turn-based strategy games focus on careful planning and optimal decision-making, RTSs are much more oriented towards the ability to act under extreme time pressure the need to track, manage, and direct many different units simultaneously is a hallmark of RTSs. The perceptual and cognitive overload that this can cause has become an important part of the gameplay, and there are even recognized strategies in RTSs that are based on overwhelming the opponent (i.e., rush and swarm [13]). Considerable debate has arisen over the relative merits of realtime versus turn-based strategy games [13]. Critics of the realtime genre complain that RTSs devolve into click fests where the person with the faster reflexes can always win. Proponents of the genre argue that real-time games are more realistic, since the real-world scenarios that the games are based on do not use turns; RTS players also argue that the faster pace of RTSs is more exciting and more immersive than turn-based games. Although there is no obvious winner in the debate, it is clear that removing turns from strategy games has created a new, legitimate, and dramatically different type of game and one that has now become more popular than the turn-based genre from which it originated [13]. 3. DESIGN ISSUES IN REAL-TIME GAMES 3.1 Temporal Structure In considering how to design a multiplayer game that encourages high-speed interaction, one of the main issues is the timeframe for interaction between players. In most traditional games, this consists of a series of turns where each player has a slice of time in which they are the only one who can make a move. In moving to real-time interaction, several strategies have been seen. In some real-time games, moves require time to carry out for example, pieces must walk from one location to another, or a fixed period must pass before a building or unit is constructed. Other real-time games do not support time-deferred moves, but instead process player actions instantaneously. We have identified seven different temporal organizations, listed below from most to least structured. Turn based with no time limits. In this organization, turns are sequential, and there is no limit on the amount of time each player can take to act. This is the most common organization in classic games: examples include chess, checkers, and poker. Turn based with a time limit. Turns are sequential, but each player has a limited amount of time to execute their move. Examples include various games that use egg timers (such as Boggle), and tournament rules for standard chess (e.g., 60 minutes per turn). Turn-based with time as a fixed resource. Turns are sequential, and the amount of time taken for a player s turn is subtracted from an overall total. Several variants of chess (e.g., Bullet chess or Blitz chess) use this organization. Simultaneous turns. In this organization, all players take their turns at the same time, and game play does not proceed until everyone has completed their move. Diplomacy is an example of a strategy game that uses this approach. Tick-based turns. In tick-based games, players can make moves concurrently, but the number of moves they can issue are regulated by in-game time units called ticks. Players are not obliged to carry out an action, and they can usually only carry out a limited number of actions during a tick. Examples include Utopia and many browser-based games. Real-time with temporal delays. Many real-time games do not carry out a player s commands immediately, but delay completion in order to simulate the time that would be required to finish the action. For example, units in an RTS must walk from one location to another, or a certain amount of time must elapse before a new building or unit is constructed. Almost all RTSs follow this approach (e.g., Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires); a variant of chess called Kung-Fu Chess is also similar in that it enforces a cool-down period that prevents a piece from being moved twice in a short span of time. Real-time with no artificial constraints. In this model, all players are able to interact with the game concurrently, and moves and actions initiated by each player are executed immediately. Examples include most action games (e.g., Doom, Quake), some RPGs (e.g., World of Warcraft), and RTChess as described below. The lack of artificial constraints does not mean that actions happen instantaneously, however: delays still occur because of limitations on the skill and speed of the player moving in the game s interface, and because of network transmission times for games that communicate with a server. 3.2 Access to Resources Another defining characteristic of coordination in multiplayer games is that rules establish how players will access space and resources. In most games people share different spatial regions, such as the board in a board game or the center of the table in a card game. Other areas are used by each individual player, and are usually off limits to others. In Monopoly, for example, players 279

4 typically sort their money in the area in front of them, and in Scrabble, they organize their tiles so that others cannot view them. In many games, people also share other resources, such as cards or playing pieces. For example, in Reversi, tile ownership changes hands frequently, and the tiles are not as tightly bound to players as are the tokens that are used in Monopoly. Similarly, some card games establish strict ownership of the cards in a player s hands, while others allow people to pass cards back and forth. Sharing rules often become more fluid when players are grouped into separate teams, where team members are able to move and manipulate the same resources. We present three different ownership and sharing strategies for games below. The strategies are ordered from exclusive ownership to fully shared ownership of space, units and resources. Exclusive ownership of space, resources, and/or units. Only one player is able to access a space (physical or virtual), resource (e.g. cards, money, etc.), or unit (e.g. playing piece, character, soldier, etc.). Examples: Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit. Flexible ownership of space, resources, and/or units. Access is selectively shared, where players form alliances with others, or where only certain types of game resources are shared. Examples: Variants of many real time strategy games, such as Starcraft, where resources are shared within a team. Shared ownership of space, resources, and/or units. Access is shared either with other teammates or with all other players. Examples include Warcraft or RTChess as described below. 3.3 Group Awareness When classic games are implemented as real-time games, the rules used to coordinate access are removed. Each player interacts with the game concurrently rather than sequentially, and people share the same space and game pieces. When compared to traditional games, real time games are more chaotic, and people have to track more events within a much tighter time frame. The risk of play-based interference increases substantially: people are much more likely to inadvertently interfere with each other when everyone moves at the same time. Further, in games that foster team play, players may have problems understanding the actions and intents of their teammates. Removing structural rules in regular games means that new coordination mechanisms must be added so that the game does not become unmanageable for a group. Further, when games are implemented as networked multiplayer games, people have less information about other users since they cannot directly observe others interactions with the game. Real time shared access requires game designers to develop new techniques to help foster mutual awareness, where players have an up-to-date understanding of others game actions [4]. The information needed to support awareness is dependent upon the interactions needed to play and succeed (e.g., information about who, what, where, and when) [6]. Past work on designing awareness support for groupware and for networked video games provides useful insights into how coordination support can be added to real-time shared games (e.g. [7,11,14,15]). Most commercial multiplayer games provide mechanisms for maintaining awareness of other players, and several real-time strategy games use customized interface widgets designed to help team members coordinate their actions. For example, RTSs often provide players with radar views, in which colored dots represent teammates units; players can coordinate attacks against enemies by tracking the movement of their teammates armies. When a unit is under attack, its representation turns red. This approach encodes several pieces of awareness information: identity of the player, location, and movement and action of units. Another common approach for coding awareness information in real-time distributed games is to use an embodiment to represent each player [7]. Avatars act as indicators of presence, location, and activity, and are usually designed to look like a character, vehicle, or pointer. For example, most role playing games and first-person shooters use elaborate 3D models to represent each player s character. Avatars almost always provide presence and location information, but often provide additional kinds of awareness, such as a label above the avatar indicating the player s name, animations showing the player s actions, and visual appearance to indicate team, player class, or level. Our implementations embody players using simple telepointers [7] that duplicate each person s local mouse cursor on remote clients, and are augmented with player names and team colors. 4. RTCHESS Real-Time Chess (Figure 1) is a fast-paced multiplayer game based on the classic board game. Most of the rules of chess still apply (such as the size of the board, the number of pieces, and the types of moves that pieces can make), but two fundamental changes have been made. First, up to 32 players can play the game at once (16 players per side), with any player able to control any of their team s pieces. Second, there are no restrictions on turns, and movement of pieces is limited only by the player s speed in manipulating the interface and the network delay to the server. Figure 1. RTChess with 10 players. Players jareddd and oli2 are moving pieces; the black rook has just been moved How RTChess is played Players join the game by starting the RTChess client and connecting to a server, and then choosing a team (White or Black) and a nickname. They then see a standard visual chessboard on which the game is played (Figure 1). Each of the players is represented with a telepointer that shows the player s name and team. To move a piece, a player drags the piece to a new square using the mouse. Since a player s move may not succeed (e.g., it may be illegal, or in conflict with another piece), the original 280

5 piece does not change position; instead, the user drags a grey ghost piece to the new square. When the piece is dropped, the client requests the move from the server (where the master game state is stored). If the move is legal, and if no other piece of the same colour is on the square, the move succeeds and is broadcast to all clients; at this point, the original piece also moves to the new square (Figure 2). If an opponent s piece is in the square, the piece is taken, as in normal chess. A game ends when one of the kings is taken by an opposing piece; after a pause of a few seconds, a new game starts automatically and play starts again. Figure 2. Move showing telepointer, ghost piece, successful move, and location highlights Architecture and concurrency control RTChess is a client-server groupware system built in C# using the GT toolkit. The server acts as both the message-passing hub, and as the holder and arbiter of the game state. There are two types of communication in the game move information and awareness information and these are handled in different ways. Moves in the game require concurrency control, and we use a simple firstcome-first-served locking strategy. When a player moves a piece on their local client s board, the move is sent to the server as a request. If the move is legal, it is accepted; the server updates its game state and broadcasts the move to all clients, who then update their displays. Awareness messages telepointer positions and ghost-piece locations do not require locking since they involve no game dependencies. These messages are not checked at the server but are simply forwarded to all clients Issues arising from removal of turn-taking Changing from a turn-based to a real-time organization of game play leads to a number of issues that do not arise in normal chess. The importance of awareness information. The real-time nature of the game means that people need up-to-date information about where others are located and where they are moving. Telepointers and ghost pieces provide this information. Since the game is mouse-based, broadcasting cursor locations provides others with enough awareness to be able to keep track of the game and attempt to anticipate others actions. Ghost pieces are equally importrant: since moves are official only when the server grants the request, we needed a way to provide feedback to both the local user (who needs to know where they are moving) and to others (who want to anticipate the move with their own actions). The ghost pieces and the lines connecting them with their counterparts (see Figure 1) are feedthrough mechanisms [2] that provide information about player intentions. As we describe below, players can also learn to manipulate this mechanism in order to fool others into thinking that they are going to move to a certain square. What to do about multiple-square moves. The discrete turn-based structure of ordinary chess means that pieces essentially move instantaneously. In RTChess, there are no turns, so we had to decide what to do about long-distance moves. There are several possibilities, and we have built prototypes to test each approach. The first approach ( running ) uses the metaphor of moving across the board to get to a destination. In this version, long moves are decomposed into a sequence of single-square moves, which are sent in sequence to the server (the exception is the knight, which retains its jumping ability from normal chess). The second approach ( jumping ) allows all pieces to complete their entire move in one action, and not move through any of the intermediate squares. However, the way must be clear before the move begins. In the study reported below, we used the running approach, with single-square intermediate moves sent to the server every 100ms. The running approach has the advantage for the attacking player that the individual single-square moves can each take an opposing piece so a long move in the opponent s home area can do considerable damage. However, this strategy also creates opportunities for the opponent, as described next. In-progress evading and blocking. The small pauses that are introduced by the running approach described above give other players time to react to a move that is in progress, enabling nontraditional interactions that can substantially change the game. For example, Figure 3 shows a king moving out of the way of a queen s long-distance attack as it happens, something that could not happen in normal chess. Figure 3. King evades a long-distance queen move. Other players can also disrupt a long-distance move, if their move request is processed by the server in the middle of the long move. This means that moves can be blocked: for example, a queen moving across the board could be stopped halfway because a pawn has moved into her way (Figure 4); the queen can even be taken by another piece en route (Figure 5). Figure 4. Blocking by friendly pawn Figure 5. King takes queen during a long-distance move 281

6 Check and checkmate. The traditional mechanism for winning a chess game is to create a board state where the King cannot move out of check. In RTChess, where the state of the board changes too quickly for players to easily calculate check positions, we decided to use taking the King instead of checkmate as the winning condition, since it is more definitive. In addition, we removed the notion of check altogether; this was initially done to reduce the number of calculations that the server had to carry out, but players have been happy with the change (and it allows two kings to engage in battle, which is not possible in regular chess). We have also experimented with other win states, such as last piece standing, in which the game continues until there is only one piece left (not necessarily the King) RTChess Gameplay and Strategies The shift from a two-player plan-and-think game to a multiplayer react-and-anticipate game dramatically changes the gameplay experience in RTChess. In more than a year of playing the game, we have made several observations about general gameplay and the basic strategies that teams have adopted. The game is fun and fast. RTChess games are extremely short usually less than 30 seconds which is vastly shorter than even the fastest variants of tabletop chess (e.g., even Bullet chess takes two minutes). People therefore generally play multiple games in a row: informal game sessions we have observed regularly involve more than 100 games, and we have had sessions with more than 200 games on several occasions. In addition, the game is highly social. Game sessions are accompanied by a great deal of talk, both between team members (planning, encouragement, and commiseration) and across teams (mock trash talk, laughing, congratulations on wins). Players report that the fast-paced nature of the game is one of the reasons for its sociability. In addition, the response to RTChess from established chess players has been positive. We have had several serious chess players try the game, and their reaction has been uniformly enthusiastic. In particular, they do not seem to mind the fact that we have removed the deep thought aspect of regular chess. One player commented that RTChess is simply at the end of a continuum that includes other time-limited chess variants (e.g., lightning chess, bullet chess) in which moves also happen quickly and where the action is fast-paced and somewhat chaotic. However, the amount of action in the game can be daunting for new players. When people see the game, they can be slightly overwhelmed by the amount of activity. They then often adapt by focusing on playing a single piece, and are thereby able to ignore some of the activity that is not happening in their immediate area. They then start to take notice of gameplay on the larger area. In addition, teamwork is difficult for new players due to the speed of the game in the beginning, it is difficult for people to determine what others are doing and what they should do to play as a team member. Teamwork does emerge as players become more familiar with the game, and we have noticed several general strategies and approaches that teams quickly discover (other more specific aspects of teamwork are discussed in detail later). Offense and defense. One of the first things teams learn is that they need to have players in both offensive and defensive roles. Defense means staying near (or controlling) the king, and taking any piece that is within range to attack. Failure to protect the king usually leads to a quick loss, particularly from the lightning attacks of knights (i.e., the knight rush as described below). Short-range vs. long-range moves. When there are many players in the game, short-range moves work better than long-range moves. With many people in the space, blocking by one s own teammates is common, reducing the value of long-distance moves, In addition, long-distance moves have two distinct disadvantages: they are easily seen by the other team (because of the long line connecting the ghost piece to the original), and because the series of intermediate moves is locked in after the move is executed. This means that the other team can predict the motion of the long move, and take action against it (e.g., move out of the way or take the piece en route). In contrast, short-range moves reveal less about the player s intentions, and are more difficult to predict. Usefulness of different pieces. The above problems reduce the value of pieces that traditionally take advantage of long-distance attacks (such as the Queen, Rook, or Bishop). As a result, players have changed their strategies with these pieces to play a shortrange game. In addition, Knights become a much more powerful piece, since they are the only piece that can truly move multiple squares at once (and can also jump over other pieces, as in normal chess). Knight movement is also very difficult to predict, making these pieces even more valuable for quick attacks. Speed attacks. Strategies similar to the rush seen in RTS games like Starcraft have emerged as a successful way to play RTChess. In lightning attacks, players simply move as quickly as possible, trying to overload the other team s ability to perceive or react. For example, a knight rush involves moving the knight as quickly as possible in pursuit of the king, using the harder-to-predict motion of the knight to confuse the other team. Figure 6 shows a fourmove knight rush at the start of the game, a strategy that can win many games before the opposing team learns to recognize the rush and devise a suitable defense. Figure 6. Four-move Knight rush from game start. Feinting. Ghost pieces are used to indicate a player s intended move but people can manipulate this visual signal and provide false information to the other team. If a player can make an opponent think that they are moving to a certain square, and trick the opponent into making a move based on the feint, the opponent will often be vulnerable from the very piece that they thought they were attacking. Just as in the real world, people use the available awareness mechanisms to present misleading information, and thereby manipulate other people s predictions of their actions. This occurs frequently in real-time games and sports, but is much less common in online interaction. Infantry charges and visual distraction. Some teams have tried simple coordinated attacks using several pieces, such as a Pawn charge, in which several players march a line of pawns up the board at high speed. This tactic is visually very obvious, and 282

7 although it is not always effective in and of itself (e.g., the charge tends to get delayed by the opposing pawn ranks, and knights can simply jump over the attack), it is very useful in drawing the attention of the other team. In a few cases teams have used the mass attack as a distraction to let a knight move in unnoticed Network and interface issues Although we have not played RTChess with large delays, the gameplay is surprisingly resilient to small amounts of lag (e.g., ms round-trip latency). The fact that delays have not caused major problems, however, may arise from the oftendisorganized nature of the gameplay as much as anything else. In games with many people and a great deal of action, it is difficult to keep track of exactly what other people are doing and without a clear understanding of another person s actions, it is much more difficult to notice the effects of delay. People are more likely to assume that a delay-induced phenomenon (such as trying to take a piece and not succeeding) is simply caused by their own movement error, the server s concurrency policy, or someone else s actions. It is a potentially useful finding that delay is less noticeable when extreme time pressures prevent people from forming good predictive models; however, we also expect that delays will become more obvious and more problematic as teams learn more coordinated strategies (such as those described below). We have also noticed that players could move even more quickly than they currently do that is, the main limiting factor on movement speed is the user interface, not the player. The game uses drag-and-drop as the technique for moving a piece, but the repeated click-drag-release action of this kind of interaction is a bottleneck in player actions. In a recent version of the game, we are addressing this limitation by allowing people to first select a piece (by double-clicking) and then move the piece with single clicks, which is considerably faster. 5. COORDINATION STUDY To look for the emergence and development of expert real-time interaction and coordination, we carried out an observational study in which we watched and recorded two teams playing numerous games of RTChess over five sessions, and analysed the video records to track the development of strategies and behavior. Four participants, all male, took part in the study. The participants were divided into two teams of two, and the same teams (and color assignments) were used for all play sessions to help increase familiarity with a particular partner. Participants ranged in age from 25 to 35 years (mean 29.7), all were regular computer users (> 10 hours per week), and one reported being a frequent player of real-time multiplayer online games. All of the participants were experienced with RTChess, and all reported being reasonably proficient at the game (> 3 on a 5-point scale). Five 30-minute play sessions were conducted over the course of three weeks; each session involved two play periods with a short break between. Sessions were videotaped for later analysis, and we also carried out informal interviews with the players at the end of each session to follow up on events seen during the games. We used a simplified version of RTChess with only four pieces per team (King, Queen, white-square Bishop, and Knight). All other elements of the game were the same as described above. 5.1 Results and Observations Number, length, and speed of games A total of 448 games were played overall (94, 89, 74, 93, and 89 games in the five sessions). The average game length was 14.3 seconds (s.d seconds); the longest game took 89 seconds and the shortest took two seconds. On average, there was a move made every 0.7 seconds (1.55 moves/second for the black team and 1.3 moves/second for the white team). In a game with the average length of 14 seconds, this means that there are about 20 moves made by each team. The black team won more games in four of the five sessions. As shown in Figure 7, Black showed a clear advantage after the first session, although White was improving over time, and the two teams were essentially even in the final session. Figure 7. Win rates for the two teams over five sessions General observations on gameplay The general approach for both teams was for each player to take a piece at the start of a game and control that piece until it was captured, and then find another piece to play. Teams most often divided into offense and defense, with one player controlling the king and taking a defensive role, and one taking a different piece in an attacking role. As seen below, however, the king was often played in support of the other person s attacks. The endgame for many of the games involved two-on-one situations in which three of the four pieces for one team had been captured. If there was no piece left for a player to select, they were idle until the end of the game (but their telepointer was still active on the board, which was occasionally important as discussed below). In these endgames, the single player was forced to play their King, and the other team had to opportunity to carry out joint attacks on the isolated opponent. It was also clear that individual players increased their mechanical abilities with the game over the course of the five sessions. For example, in the first sessions, players did not use their cursors to gesture, but by the end of the study, two players were regularly able to do this without losing control of their current piece. Similarly, player Black1 showed increasing skill in that he learned to control two pieces at once (he would move each in turn, keeping the two pieces close together). This allowed him to have two pieces nearby for different attacks, but required increased skill with the interface (and the ability to monitor both pieces simultaneously). Once the other players saw that this strategy was useful for Black1, they started doing it as well, and by the end of the sessions, each player was able to control two pieces Operating distance between partners One measure of whether teams are coordinating with one another is the distance between their pieces on the board if people are nearby, there is more likelihood that they are able to act in a coordinated fashion (particularly given the tendency towards short-range moves as described above). The study system recorded all piece positions and calculated the move-by-move distance between team members. Our distance metric was the discrete Euclidean distance using row/column indices, which measures how many board squares away one player was from the other (the minimum distance is 1.0 and the maximum is 9.89). 283

8 Teams did tend to stay close together, but not right beside each other (Figure 8). The average team distance was 3.32 (3.51 for black, 3.12 for white), implying that there were two to three board squares between team members. Our observations suggest that this is approximately as close as people can be to one another without interfering or colliding, in the absence of a pre-arranged set play or coordinated action. If people play too close together, collisions and mistakes are more likely (e.g., both players moving to the same square), often leading to the loss of a piece to the other team. A separation of two to three squares allowed teams to be in the same region, and ready both to help on defense (i.e., the attacking player had to keep an eye on their own king) and to take opportunities that presented themselves, but was not so close as to lead to errors. Figure 8. Team distances High-speed interaction with opponents We observed several instances where players were interacting with others at high speed. There were different kinds of interactions with opponents and team partners. With opponents, the main types were feinting and perceptual interference Feinting and deception One of the main ways in which people interacted with their opponents at high speed was through deception. As described above, players used the feedthrough provided by ghost pieces as a way to try and deceive opponents into making certain predictions about the player s intentions. For example, a player would show a ghost piece over a board square, so that the opponent would believe that they were in the process of moving there. If the opponent took the bait, they would move to the same square themselves, thinking that they would be able to take the player s piece, but would then become easy prey for the player. As players became more familiar with the basic tactic, there could be double and triple feints as each tried to deceive the other as to their true intentions. These fakes and feints occurred at high speed on several occasions we saw two or three movements of the ghost piece per second. This is a situation where most of the action is deception, and the actual action (i.e., the eventual attack) is of very short duration but the timing of that event must be managed with extreme precision Perceptual interference The speed of RTChess means that it is difficult for people to take in and process all of the information needed to make good decisions. As already mentioned, some teams used strategies designed to increase their opponents perceptual and cognitive load; we also saw this behavior in the observational study Some of the team strategies described below incorporate this behavior (e.g., the lure-and-trap play), but we also saw it in other instances. For example, when games reached a two-on-one endgame, one player would be left without a piece their telepointer was still visible on the screen, but there was no available piece for them to select. On several occasions, we saw player White2 attempt to help their partner by moving their mouse over the black king in an attempt to distract their opponent. This was a clear indication that even without a role to play in the game, the players believed that adding to the visual clutter on the board would make the game more difficult for their opponent. High-speed interaction with teammate We observed several episodes that clearly showed high-speed coordinated interaction between team members. In the paragraphs below, we look at situations where teams used awareness, opportunism, coordinated movement, and pre-arranged plays Awareness Team members maintained an awareness of each other s actions, and used this awareness to coordinate movement on the board. For example, in one situation the white team players were moving close to each other and they were about to move to the same square. White1 was moving the King and White2 was moving the Knight. White1 saw the ghost piece of their partner and realized that they were trying to move to the same square, so White1 moved away from that square in order to avoid a collision. It is useful to contrast this episode with the feinting behavior discussed earlier player White1 was able to use the awareness information to make predictions about their partner s movement, because they could be sure that the ghost piece was providing them true information about intentions. Players also regularly provided additional awareness information to one another through speech. Comments were generally short and direct (e.g., don t move there, or I ll take the Queen ); as player Black2 commented, brief and quick messages because these are easy to process, and we can send them frequently, if necessary. However, when one player did not have a piece to move, they would provide more detailed comments or directions. We saw numerous episodes of this kind of low-level coordination, both on its own during simple movement on the board, and also in the more complex types of coordination considered below Opportunism Part of the reason that players stayed near to one another on the board was to take advantage of opportunities that arose as a consequence of their partner s actions. This is a simple form of loosely-coupled coordination each player is able to act autonomously, but maintains an awareness of the other person s situation, and can exploit the situation when an opportunity arises. For example, player Black1 said that when they saw an opponent chasing after Black2, they would look for a way to attack the chaser, knowing that the opponent was focused on the partner and might not see their attack. Another situation occurred in which player White2 saw that their partner was in a one-on-one battle with the black King. White2 realized that the black King would be busy with White1, so they advanced from behind and successfully attacked the king. Such behavior shows that players try to take advantage of chances created by their partners and that they use visual information about their partners to organize their strategy. 284

9 Coordinated movement The Black team demonstrated on several occasions the ability to chase a white player in a coordinated fashion. They both moved in similar directions and then they moved closer together (e.g., Figure 9). To succeed in these chases, they needed to keep track of each other in order to not move to the same square, and they needed to keep scanning for opportunities caused by their partner. These episodes of coordinated movement required awareness of the partner s actions (where they were moving), the partner s intentions (where they were going to move next), and the overall goal (where they wanted to force the opponent). The chases showed the speed at which the Black players needed to respond to one another s actions (and to the movement of the White player); they were often successful in their chase, moving the white King to a corner of the board and restricting his movement Pre-arranged plays One of the most coordinated episodes involved a strategy that the black team developed over the course of the sessions. It was used in two-on-one situations for example, with the white king, the black king, and the black bishop left on the board. The black bishop moves only on the light squares, and as a result the white king stayed on the dark squares to avoid attacks from the bishop. Black s strategy in this situation was to have the black bishop move quickly and repeatedly around the white king (see Figure 9), providing both distraction but also an obvious opportunity for the white king to take the bishop. Figure 8. Fragment of Black team s coordinated chase. Figure 9. Luring the white king with the black bishop as bait. The idea was to lure the king into taking the black bishop, at which point the black king would attempt to take the white king. It was clear that the black bishop spent more time within one square of the black king (the location that would be best for the plan to succeed). The verbal exchanges during these situations showed that this was a coordinated plan for Black at one point Black1 said to Black2 Ready? Set the trap! ; in addition, they would frequently taunt the White player to try and goad them into taking the bait (i.e., taking the bishop) Participant comments and talk In discussions after the sessions, participants commented on a variety of topics, including their own performance, the game interface, and their coordination with their partner. Many of the comments mentioned the difficulty of coordinating during the games, due to the high speed of play (similar to earlier results from studies of real-world team sports [3]). For example, White2 stated No time for verbal communication. No opportunity for strategizing within game. [It was] too hard / too fast to coordinate and Black1 said that during the games there is too much going on to really coordinate [...] the sessions are so fast that there isn t much time to do anything but play. However, various comments showed that players were thinking about strategy and plans. For example, Black1 stated [we] changed the plan; this time Black2 took the queen rather than the knight. Seemed to work well throwing off the other team, and Black2 later stated I suggested small variation to our strategy to compensate for other team s modifications. In addition, some of the players felt that their increasing experience over the sessions helped them to coordinate with their partner: for example, after the final session, White2 said [in this session] I think I was a bit more aware of White1 s movement. Players also discussed strategy between games, during breaks, and after the session. Between-game talk usually reflected on what just occurred in the last game, and focused on what to change for the next game. When there was more time for talk, players reflected on their general strategy (again, similar to what Eccles et al found with team sports [3]), explaining why they moved in certain ways and how they used the information on the board. 6. DISCUSSION Our experiences with RTChess provide several new kinds of information for designers of real-time groupware. First, our observations suggest that people can indeed interact at high speed in distributed shared workspaces. Second, our study shows that many kinds of fast interaction and coordination can evolve in RTChess, particularly as people gain more experience with the game and with their playing partners. Third, it is also clear that high-speed and tightly-coordinated joint actions are just as difficult in distributed groupware as they are in the real world. In the following paragraphs, we consider some of our findings in more detail (both about RTChess and about coordination in general) and consider the implications for future work. How successful was high-speed coordination? There were several indications that fast interaction was possible in RTChess, and that people were able to behave as experts in our distributed groupware system. This shows that groupware s reduction in awareness information (both in terms of fidelity and richness) does not necessarily have to imply that distributed interaction must be slow and awkward. Our results provide clear evidence that real-time groupware can support high-speed coordinated interaction. However, it is important to note that the speed of RTChess itself was a limiting factor on coordination as seen in player comments, people were often unable to act in a coordinated fashion due to the pace of the game. This means that the groupware system was not the bottleneck in the speed of interaction RTChess was fast enough that the problem was in the human players rather than in the technology. Why so little coordinated team play? The observational study showed only a few cases of highly coordinated team actions (i.e., the lure and ambush play). Instead, coordination was primarily seen in loosely-coupled interactions, where players maintained awareness of one another and were able to exploit opportunities when they arose. We believe that this is not so much a limitation of RTChess or real-time groupware, but a limitation of human coordination at high speed. Even in studies of high-performance team (e.g., the French national under-17 basketball team [1]), researchers found that the primary play strategies involved single players acting independently (i.e., one-on-one with a defender) rather than the team acting in a synchronized fashion. We believe that with more practice, RTChess teams will continue to add to their repertoire of plays, something we will explore in future. 285

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