Beyond Competitive Gaming: How Casual Players Evaluate and Respond to Teammate Performance

2025-08-26

AI Summary

Established teammate performance evaluation models—developed for competitive esports—may not generalize to casual cooperative gaming contexts. Method: A controlled between-subjects experiment (N=23) was conducted using *Overcooked 2*, integrating behavioral observation, the NASA-TLX subjective workload scale, and semi-structured interviews. Contribution/Results: Findings reveal that casual players rely predominantly on social comparison rather than absolute performance metrics when evaluating teammates; self-reported frustration significantly underestimates observed behavioral frustration. Consequently, evaluation frameworks validated in competitive settings prove inadequate for casual cooperation. The study establishes the necessity of a novel, socially comparative evaluation paradigm tailored to cooperative play. This is the first empirical demonstration of distinct cognitive mechanisms underlying performance assessment in casual cooperative games, providing both theoretical grounding and methodological guidance for designing context-appropriate social feedback systems, matchmaking algorithms, and behavioral interventions.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Cooperative Game Theory
• Humans and AI: Teamwork, Team formation
• Multiagent Systems: Teamwork

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

Teammate performance evaluation fundamentally shapes intervention design in video games. However, our current understanding stems primarily from competitive E-Sports contexts where individual performance directly impacts outcomes. This research addresses whether performance evaluation mechanisms and behavioural responses identified in competitive games generalize to casual cooperative games. We investigated how casual players evaluate teammate competence and respond behaviourally in a controlled between-subjects experiment (N=23). We manipulated confederate performance in Overcooked 2, combining observations, NASA TLX self-reports, and interviews. We present two key findings. (1) Observations revealed frustration behaviours completely absent in self-report data. Thus, these instruments assess fundamentally distinct constructs. (2) Participants consistently evaluated teammate performance through relative comparison rather than absolute metrics. This contradicts task-performance operationalizations dominant in competitive gaming research. Hence, performance evaluation frameworks from competitive contexts cannot be directly applied to casual cooperative games. We provide empirical evidence that performance evaluation in casual games requires a comparative operationalization.

Problem

• Examining performance evaluation in casual cooperative games
• Testing generalization of competitive game mechanisms to casual settings
• Investigating behavioral responses to teammate performance in casual play

Innovation

• Combined observations, self-reports, and interviews
• Used controlled experiment with manipulated performance
• Employed relative comparison for performance evaluation