ABSTRACT
Although the COVID-19 pandemic impacted individuals who bet on sports, sports betting tipsters (SBTs;i.e., individuals who provide professional tips on the outcome of sporting events) were arguably among the most affected groups. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to explore how SBTs in Turkey were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including alternate forms of gambling engagement (e.g., e-sports betting). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 85 SBTs aged between 20 and 48 years. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common themes. Based on the qualitative analysis, four themes emerged: (i) the meaning and role of sports betting, (ii) the effects of the pandemic on life and sports betting, (iii) comparing e-sports betting vs. traditional sports betting, and (iv) possible sports betting behavior if the pandemic continues. SBTs reported experiencing psychological distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic's cancellation of sporting events. More specifically, SBTs reported a sense of emptiness because of the lack of sports betting. Furthermore, SBT reported suffering a loss of income and turning to e-sports betting during the pandemic. However, the majority of SBTs did not find betting on e-sports as exciting as traditional betting but reported they would continue to engage in e-sports betting if traditional sports betting was not available. The findings of this study can contribute to a better understanding of the impact of SBTs on individuals and further provide practical implications for policymakers to promote a safe, sustainable, and long-term growth of the sports betting industry in Turkey.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the initial findings of a longitudinal study examining the role and experiences of LAN organizers in managing player communities pre, during and post the Covid 19 pandemic. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyze interviews with organizers of the Birdie LAN, Sweden's longest running LAN event. Five key themes were identified reflecting the roles of organizers and their experiences pre pandemic. (1) building and maintaining the culture, (2) encouraging inclusivity and community building, (3) negotiating professionalism, (4) learning, adapting and evolving, (5) creating sustainability through a future orientation. This paper presents the results of the first data collection to examine the impacts of the pandemic on grassroots gaming communities. The findings here represent a foundation in understanding the role of community leaders in maintaining a culture around gaming. These initial findings add value to our understanding of grassroots esports and player communities and the social practices of gaming in the modern era. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
E-sports and online games represent an entertainment industry that before the 2020 year was characterized by an incredible development. The COVID19 emergency has further accelerated the global process of diffusion of e-sports and online games, consecrating it as the leading economic industry in the entertainment and technology sector. This paper presents a study that is part of the URBAN GAMERS LAB project (in progress), that describes the role of conscientiousness and toxic behaviors. The study involves 227 professional e-gamers aged between 15 and 34 y.o. This project it is part of an interdisciplinary project that involves a municipality in the Emilia-Romagna region, schools' teachers, and researchers from University of Bologna: departments of psychology, architecture, and engineering. The main objective of the study is to investigate the relationship between the conscientiousness (measured by variables such as responsibility, traditionalism, orderliness, industriousness, virtue, self-control) and disturbing toxic behaviors (Mediocritizing, Sabotaging, Hostage Holding, Flaming), played by e-gamers during different phases of the online game League of Legends (LoL). Preliminary results show that for conscientiousness, there are no significant correlations with age but there is a significant correlation with gender and be part of an e-sports team. The latter is negative correlated with gender, positive correlated with been playing League of Legends and play ranked games. This aspect is positive correlated with age and been playing League of Legends. Regarding toxic behaviors, age does not seem to play an important role, that is, no correlations have been found between age and toxic behaviors. While there is a negative correlation with sabotaging and Hostage Holding and a positive correlation with flaming. Considering instead, how long they have been playing LoL, being more experienced negatively correlates with sabotaging, played with teammates who showed little mastery and positive correlated with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game Turning on been part of an eSports team, results show that this aspect positive correlates with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game and decided to mute the chat because of it. Finally, playing ranked games negatively correlates with sabotaging, and positively correlates with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game and decided to mute your chat because of it. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Over the last 15 years, we have witnessed a digitalization of the sports experience, i.e., many sports have been enhanced by digital and wearable devices. The centrality of the human body and the different contexts where sports can be practiced have led HCI research to explore how mobile and wearable devices could support the physical, social, and environmental aspects of sports disciplines. Yet, the field of HCI & sports continues to evolve under the push of new technological developments and events affecting people worldwide, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. Technological advancements like the metaverse, inbodied technologies, and AI have paved the way for augmented humans, esports, new forms of sociality, and new ways to engage the audience. Likewise, contextual factors push sports trends in two opposite directions simultaneously: on the one hand, they foster the indoorisation and individualization of sports;on the other hand, they encourage practicing sports outdoors and taking advantage of the "restorative environment"of nature. With this workshop, we would like to invite the MobileHCI community to discuss the current trends in portable technologies for sports and trace future directions for HCI research in this field. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
The rapidly growing market of eSports has become a lucrative industry. Sim racing is one of the traditional sports that gain increasing popularity in eSports. With raising profits, lucrative sponsoring contracts, and competitive price money, incentives for fraud are also on the upraise. This is further facilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the substitution of live eSport events by virtual formats. Particularly, in sim racing it becomes increasingly challenging to verify the contestants identity in virtual events. Here, we propose and evaluate a generic workflow to identify personal driving style by transforming raw racing data (including measurements extracted from the simulation software and connected simulator hardware) into a comparable representation (fingerprint). As data base we used an extensive collection of telemetry data recorded from the racing simulation Assetto Corsa on 3 immersive motion simulators. The set contains over 2,000 laps of seven player recorded in weekly sessions. The experiments demonstrate the feasibility to distinguish players using the proposed method on different tracks, car models, and motion simulators. Due to the extensive experiments, we could achieve a driver separation score of up to 89%. The raw data and the raw results are made publicly available on Github. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Background: During the pandemic COVID19 in 2020, Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented worldwide, including in Malaysia. This MCO restricts the movement and activities of the public to limit the community involvement in physical activity such as sports, exercise, and recreational activities. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the trend of involvement of Malaysian people in sports, exercise, and recreational activities while MCO. Methods: This pilot survey was conducted among 150 randomly selected respondents from the enumerators around Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, and Putrajaya. Malaysia Sports Culture Index questionnaire (2018), with high validity and reliability used to collect the data. The data were analyzed descriptively using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 26. Results: The findings showed that exercise was carried out by 60.5%, followed by e-sports by 19.5%, physical sports by 11.7%, and active recreation by 8.3%. Aerobics, walking, yoga, Zumba, and jogging are the five most frequent exercise activities in the exercise category. For the sports category, people prefer badminton and table tennis. The choice of time to be active during MCO shows the most common time is in the evening, 43.7%. This is followed by the morning option 28.8%, night time, 25.0%, and afternoon time, only 2.5%. Social media 78.7% is the most dominant medium used by Malaysians in performing sports activities, exercise, active recreation, or e-sports. On the other hand, some respondents used video conferencing 13.5% and conventional media 32.4% as a medium for being active. Conclusion: In particular, involvement in active sports and recreational activities declined significantly during the MCO. However, the dominant percentage of exercise activity plays a vital role in reducing the health risks associated with physical inactivity.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide health crisis. Measures taken to prevent the spread of this disease, such as lockdown implementation, have severely impacted different aspects of life. There was widespread economic disruption across the globe. Offices, colleges, businesses, and organizations were closed completely, switching to online working and studying. People could not socialize, travel, participate in sports, or any outdoor recreational activity due to lockdown. Many people found e-sports (electronic sports) as a new form of entertainment to overcome the boredom, stress, and anguish of lockdown. The pandemic turned out to be a big opportunity for the e-sports industry with tremendous financial growth and popularity. E-sports, such as Sim racing and development of smartphone games attracted a lot of attention and investment. The technological advancement of e-sports engaged more players and viewers in the pandemic. Many new platforms offered online games and live broadcasting which enhanced awareness of e-sports among people. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a significant increase in online gaming and other online activities, such as watching eSports and live streaming. This happened because the government require people to stay at home. Electricity used can be categorized as the scope 2 carbon emissions that have a negative impact to our environment. If there are more people do gaming activities, the carbon emissions produced will also be higher. Previous study shown that game spending affects the durations of gaming activities. This paper uses a qualitative research method by interviewing 18 respondents consisting of 17 gamers and 1 eSport expert. It is shown that during pandemic, the duration of playing video games increase significantly, this is also followed by an increase in their spending on in-game purchases and subscriptions. This can lead to the production of higher carbon emissions. Surprisingly, it was discovered that the electricity consumption of one server building is equal to the consumption of JABABEKA. This is considered as a big problem because gaming companies don't disclose concrete activities to reduce carbon emissions and tend to hands-off their wastes to other party. On the other hand, gamers tend to have low awareness about this issue. We suggest that gamers should be more aware about this issue and reduce their gaming activities, gaming related industries could do CSR by doing reforestation to help remove carbon dioxide, and government should expand the use of renewable energy to generate electricity. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The Tour of Flanders, a classic outdoor cycling event that opens the cycling season, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a suitable replacement was created in its place, intended to offer people some solace during this lockdown period during which most recreational activities were suspended. This paper explains how the team managed to create an exciting mixed-reality (MR) racing event within a short period of time, given the limits of all social distance rules. It provides insights into how the real riders raced through a virtual landscape and how the viewers got to see this at home. This cloud-based production was performed exclusively with standard office IT equipment and well-known internet technologies. From idea to execution, the clock was ticking: the entire project was to be completed within a matter of days. © 2002 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.
ABSTRACT
The need for non-face-to-face online health care has emerged through the era of "untact". However, there is a lack of standardization work and research cases on the exercise effect of immersive content. In this study, the possibility of the exercise effect of VR e-sports among e-sports cases were presented through a visual algorithm analysis. In addition, the evaluation criteria were established. The research method compares and analyzes e-sports cases and VR e-sports cases by applying existing evaluation research cases. It also sets up a new evaluation standard. As for the analysis result, the device immersion method and interaction range were set through an algorithm analysis; FOV and frame immersion were set through typification; the user recognition method and interaction method were set through the visual diagram. Then, each derived result value was quantified and a new evaluation criterion was proposed.