In this contribution, we analyze the data that have been collected within an interdisciplinary project on embodiment in collaborative serious games for soft skills training in Lyon (France). During the game, participants can communicate with each other through a webcam and a microphone. As for the game setting, players are members of the crew of a submarine that suffers damage and needs to be repaired. The player taking her/his turn has an immersive view of the room s/he is in, while the inactive players have access to the plan of the submarine. By relying on the plan of the submarine from a bird's eye perspective, the inactive players can guide the active player and inform him/her of possible damage and flooding.
During video game sessions, participants who are playing may receive advice or instructions from co-participants about the game actions to be accomplished during their own turn. In doing so, the co-participants are not merely limited to a spectator role (Baldauf-Quilliatre & Colón de Carvajal 2021), but they position themselves in an encompassing game perspective by prefiguring future single moves and also sequences that concern the actions of the whole team of players. Game strategies emerge and can be illustrated by extended turns-at-talk.
In this contribution, we focus on the conversational resources used by players for disaligning when teammates propose actions to be realized in the ongoing game round. A current player can exhibit disalignment from an envisaged prospective action through dispreferred resources (silences, outbreaths, non-lexical vocalizations), by responding verbally and argumenting against the co-participant's proposal or by rejecting responsibility for the action mentioned as possible next accomplishment (e.g. by saying "I don't know"). The player can also suspend the course of game actions and mobilize other teammates by soliciting their opinion on the actions to be taken and, in a broader perspective, on the strategy of the game which also involves the future actions of the other players (Reeves et al. 2017). In our data, these suspensions can be realized by movements of the cursor, which can be positioned on a specific designated object in the video game interface without the current player clicking on it.
The study of strategies that participants deploy during this collaborative serious game makes it possible to identify the emergence of disagreements between the members of a team. More generally, this gaming activity is to be considered as a site of observation where certain interactional skills can be highlighted from an applied linguistics perspective (Fasel Lauzon et al. 2009). The analysis of disalignment strategies makes it possible to scrutinize the ways in which participants express and crystallize their disagreement about the scenario of future in-game actions, which is always subject to negotiation.
Baldauf-Quilliatre, H. & Colón de Carvajal, I. (2021). Spectating: How non-players participate in videogaming. Journal für Medienlinguistik 4(2), 123-161.
Fasel Lauzon, V., Pekarek Doehler, S. & Pochon-Berger, E. (2009). Identification et observabilité de la compétence d'interaction : Le désaccord comme microcosme actionnel. Bulletin VALS-ASLA 89, 121-142.
Reeves, S., Greiffenhagen, C. & Laurier E. (2017). Video gaming as practical accomplishment: Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and play. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(2),308-342.
