'Parklife' game Blurs the lines between building an Oasis and smashing someone else's

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-09-22 09:01

International

Goulburn_Belmore_Park_002 By Mattinbgn (talk · contribs) - Own work, CC BY 3.0

French and UK scientists designed a videogame called Parklife to see whether people split into two teams would work to make their own park the best it could be, or instead focus their energies on vandalising the other team's park. To build their parks, both teams had to tap on touchscreens, but at some points, one of the groups had to work much harder than the other to build their park, which led directly to increased aggression by the disadvantaged group, who also reported higher relative deprivation and frustration. Using computer models, the scientists worked out that the conflict was caused by social connections between individuals, and inequality between the two groups. The game and the computer models could be used to gain insights into the causes of riots and unrest in the real world, the scientists suggest.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

We predict a riot: inequity, relative deprivation and collective destruction in the lab

How do you predict a riot? We created a virtual game – Parklife - where two groups of players used smartphones to work together. They could build their park, or destroy the other group’s park. Sometimes one of the groups had to work much harder to build their park. This led directly to increased aggression by the disadvantaged group. Computational models showed that conflict was caused by both the social connections between individuals, and the social inequalities between groups. We argue that our experimental games and models can bring new insight into the causes of riots in the real world.

We predict a riot - Why do people riot? In this multiplayer virtual game – Parklife – players could build their park or destroy another by tapping the screen, but sometimes one group had to tap more to build their park. The disadvantaged team engaged in more destruction and reported higher relative deprivation and frustration, and models indicated the conflict was caused by the social connections between individuals, and social inequalities between groups.

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Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University College London, UK, INSERM U960 & IEC, France

Funder: This study has been funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation (The Psychological Roots of Societal Self Harm, 42868) awarded to D.C.R., and a British Academy Newton International Fellowship (NF 171514) and Alumni Follow-on Funding awarded to G.D. G.D. also acknowledges the support received from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche of the French government through the program ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ (16-IDEX-0001 CAP 20-25).

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