Vai além do desafio! Compreendendo as motivações para participar e colaborar em game jams

Abstract

Game jams have been attracting an increasingly diverse attendance, with thousands of professionals, students and enthusiasts coming together to build prototypes of games every year. However, little is known about what attracts people with such different demographic profiles to voluntarily participate in such events. The same can be said about the way participants collaborate during the event. Objectives: In this sense, this dissertation aims to investigating the reason why people willingly take part in such events, i.e., what acts as their motivations and priorities for participating in game jams. In addition, this work is also intended to verify how the motivations and demographic profiles of the participants are related to the way in which they seek and offer help throughout the event. Method: A multi-method study, using quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques, was conducted to understand the mentioned aspects. In this process, data was collected from more than 3,500 people, across more than 100 countries, who had participated in three editions of an annual and global-scale game jam. Results: Among the results, this dissertation presents an instrument and a conceptual model of motivation which resulted from the data analysis, the latter being composed of five motivational dimensions. Based on these aspects, it was possible to investigate the relative influence that the participants’ occupation profile has on the participants’ motivations. It was possible to identify, for instance, that students and hobbyists are the most influenced by technical motivations, i.e., motivations related to the practice and acquisition of technical knowledge. Indie developers are more attracted to business connections than other groups. Personal motivation related to ideation is the great motivation of all groups, with no significant difference between them in the averages of this specific motivation. Furthermore, it was found that professional and indie developers are the ones who provide help most often, while students constitute the group with the highest degree of intensity in interacting with mentors. However, the frequency with which participants receive help from mentors decreases with increasing experience in game development and the number of prior participations in game jams. Conclusion: Based on such results, a set of organizational implications is available to assist organizers in holding more attractive events and identifying practices that can make collaboration even more present and effective in such events. Finally, implications for design that can be derived from the results of this dissertations are also discussed.