Rhythmic transitions during game playing session: a case study of Malaysian gamers

This research investigates the actions of gamers during the in-game cut-scenes transitions and how they adapt in multiple higher level actions during their game playing sessions. Drawing on Mediated Discourse Analysis and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, the exact lower-level action - pressing a button and higher-level action - playing a game provides important insights throughout the entire video game playing session obtained through video ethnography method. Video data of 5760 minutes were collected over a period of twelve weeks from four participants. Videos transcription and multimodal transcript were utilized to further explain the complex interaction between the video gamer and the video game playing. The term ‘Rhythmic Transitions’ was derived from this research which explains the switching over from the primarily focused attention away during cut-scenes provided us with a perfectly linked and synchronized rhythm of actions. Findings provide important insights to games’ developers to have a better understanding and able to utilize transition period during cut-scenes in order to create a better game playing experiences to the gamers.