Responsibility

FIGURE 19 Value meter – Responsibility

The value of responsibility emerged in this study as the second most significant value construct in the players’ value co-destructive gaming experiences. Re-sponsibility represents an interpersonal and instrumental type of value, that is, a moral value. The construct is defined for this study as the state of being

re-Responsibility

25.0 25.0

12.0 1.0

sponsible and accountable for something within one’s control. It includes the concepts of reliability and dependability. In the study, responsibility occurred only once in connection with the value co-creative gaming experiences in rela-tion to a participants’ experience of the accessibility of the service provider (1).

The emphasized values and goals in the participants’ co-destructive gam-ing experiences included responsibility related value contradictions (9), effort in the game getting wasted (8), and disappointment in the game (5). The last two types of experiences were mostly connected to the game not working (reliabil-ity). The participants’ co-destructive experiences were thus related to both the players’ experiences concerning their own actions and those of the service pro-vider and the game.

Most of the participants’ experiences of value contradictions were related to gaming and it contradicting with the players’ values. In this regard, the par-ticipants described experiences already presented in the study, such as choosing to play over other priorities and playing while driving. In the context of respon-sibility, the key affected priority was work instead of time with friends and family suffering that emerged in connection with sociality. Experiences of gam-ing contradictgam-ing with work were associated with, for example, begam-ing late or neglecting work due to gaming:

I have sometimes accidentally gone astray on my way to work when I’ve gone after a rare Pokémon, yeah I have been late from work because of it...it is such an important thing, however, to be on time...so I still remember the situation, that is, it is a kind of negation, therefore because of it. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to be late, but when it [Pokémon] jumped there, I was a little forced to look, I was forced to find it...

when there is no reason to be late, other than myself, so keeping people waiting for no reason... (Participant 11)

...it easily goes into that you should, should, work a little, if it’s a nice weather then it’s much nicer to go out for a walk [with Pokémon]...then the work is not done...might miss that day’s calls then...now the calls are marked on the calendar so they can’t be forgotten...on the one hand it is a good thing that the responsibility has come back better...it is a challenge to be responsible for your own doings...when you are your own boss you have to decide for yourself...on the other hand it’s positive that I can do it... (Participant 15)

...it is always embarrassing if someone has to wait... I always try to be timely, it has been taught that it is impolite to make others wait...when playing there is always this higher risk of being late, you get easily misdirected or have to stop if there are many Pokémon or you cannot catch all, so it is more challenging to keep to the sched-ule...so I guess I don’t find this as a good reason [to be late]...this is just a game...another person’s time get wasted there if I wonder around there... and then especially, as it’s a self-dependent reason, then it’s not a good reason to be late. (Par-ticipant 33)

Playing while driving had resulted in a sense of irresponsibility of one’s own actions and of endangering others safety, in the same way as with the security value construct, as well a contradiction about the environmental impact (re-sponsibility) of everyone traveling by their own car (ease), as experienced by participant 31:

I’ve tried to say like we could all go, you know and some of us could go in the same car but no one wants to do that in Finland anyway and, and so then all like twenty of us each go in our cars, driving madly across the city to the next place and, and I thought that this is very bad for the environment (Participant 31).

As mentioned, players’ experiences of effort in the game getting wasted (8), and disappointment in the game (5) were largely related to the game failing to work.

The players described in their experiences that when the game crashes while playing or does not work properly, their effort in the game is wasted, and gam-ing suffers. The problems with the game were seen in this study as relatgam-ing to the reliability of the service provider and gaming platform and were thus classi-fied under the responsibility value construct. The participants described their negative experiences as follows:

...there have been a lot of bugs or those problems have been fixed and then the fixes don’t always work out...there have been GPS problems like that from time to time and then when it’s like a new update so it has not worked on my phone even though it works on others...when you can’t play it’s annoying...it was a bit disappointing to see that there is now an update and upgrade and then it doesn’t work. (Participant 10) ...well yeah there was this kind of terrible rush, if there was some new Pokémon on the map then you had run for it when you didn’t know if the game would crash or not, there was always a little question mark whether or not you will make it...such a negative feeling or annoyance that you didn’t even get, get everything you could have gotten... (Participant 19)

... it is just annoying when it doesn’t work as it should...it annoys if things don’t work as designed and they should work. I suppose the main thing is that it stops you from doing that thing...if there is a game that just systematically prevents me from playing then I will stop playing it because then it just becomes frustrating...if there would happen something like that I walk around five kilometers to get that Pokémon egg hatched and then the game crashes and suddenly those five kilometers would be lost then it would be quite annoying... (Participant 23)

Sometimes all the work has gotten wasted when the game has crashed, I for example had some like, some better Pokémon and then like the game just crashed there and then it no longer appeared. Kind of annoying, I had just walked for a while, hunted for it in a way, and then found it...and then, of course, the phone did the tricks...suddenly crashes and kind of feels, somehow feels so frustrating...instead of a good feeling comes a bad and upset feeling about it. So, then it feels like is this worth it. (Participant 25)

...the phone has done so that even though I get into that Raid, it throws me out of it and it does it very often and it is like the most frustrating feeling in the world that because of technology you can’t try...the disappointment comes from having to use your items in those situations...you don’t want to waste money or just...the trouble you see to get the group together for you to even try it...it feels like all those re-sources get twice as wasted. (Participant 28)