Manipulation in Board Game Interactions: Accountability, Timing, and Morality

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session III
  In Interactive Poster Session: Language and Social Interaction Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

Deception and manipulation are part of strategic gameplay, but sometimes players accuse each other of going too far. Players must negotiate what counts as ‘sporting’ (gameplay-appropriate; or ‘fair play’) kinds of manipulation. The ‘sporting’ resource (an inherently moral concept) is used to manage instances of deceit (an inherently amoral concept). In this abstract, we show how players draw on the ‘sporting’ resource to negotiate and collaboratively manage the acceptability of attributed deceptions. We compare four examples from a corpus of 30 hours of competitive board game play as an initial conversation analysis of how manipulations are called out and treated as reasonable or unreasonable during board game interactions. We show that contingencies of timing of the attribution and receipt of the manipulation are as morally concerned as the original manipulation itself.

Authors

• Emily Hofstetter, Loughborough U

• Jessica Sarah Robles, Loughborough U