Awareness Tools : Lessons from Quake-Like

This paper presents a study that aims to review the awareness tools provided by video games to support team-play and team collaboration/communication. It also focuses on the use of these tools in groupware. A content analysis of gamers interview, the games observation and the game guides reading have revealed that, awareness tools used in games, support mainly location, presence, identity, action and event history. Communication tools like chat are also provided. From the tools that are reviewed here, there are several that might be useful in groupware : those which allow participants to gather in order to perform a task, those which provide direct vocal communication, those which allow users to configure their own awareness tools, etc. Video games also provide indication about the quality of the information that the awareness tools should offer. They must be accurate (a system should provide awareness tools adapted to the task) and as responsive as possible in order to minimize the user's cognitive load.