November 7, 2023 • 29 mins
My guest for this episode is the charming and erudite Catherine Flick, who is an ethics researcher (and newly minted Professor) working with the Digital Observatory Research Cluster. We have been friends on social media for ages, most recently on the dear departed Pebble, and this was our first chance to chat.
We had a fascinating discussion about her research findings using access to a unique and large gaming dataset.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode of the Data Revolution podcast.
(00:18):
Today my guest is Catherine Fleck, who I have known and who I have followed around the various
social media platforms since Twitter started to decline. Even on the recently demised pebble
app. Hello Catherine.
Hi Kate, it's nice to be here. I feel like I've been following you around for quite a
(00:41):
bit longer than that, but it's nice to know that you're sort of reciprocating that now
because I think we've got a lot of shared interest, which is great.
Yeah, well I was looking at your research interests and there's a whole pile of stuff
that I'm really interested in. And I see that you've got a crossover between sort of
(01:01):
you're a steam person, so you're an arts and computer science kind of person.
Yeah, so at the moment I'm a reader in computing and social responsibility, so I'm actually
a technology ethicist. So I kind of feel like I bridge the gap between kind of philosophy
and technology, but particularly in terms of the ethical and social impact. And I'm
actually about to finish that job up like literally in a week and a half or so. And
(01:25):
I'm moving to Staffordshire University, where I'm going to become a professor in Ethics
and Games Technology. And I think that's probably the first of that sort of type of
professorship in the world, which is quite exciting to me as well. So yeah. I guess what
I really do is I kind of like I try to kind of translate. I see myself as a bit of a bridge,
so I sort of try to translate technology to people that might be affected by it in potentially
(01:50):
negative ways. But then I also try to kind of translate back again and help industry understand
what the impact of their technologies might be. And I've worked with everything from small
companies through to really large companies in European based projects. And I've done
all sorts of random bits and pieces. So I've worked on online child protection. I do stuff
(02:11):
was in video games. I wrote a whole paper about how terrible NFTs are. So I did a lot
of stuff in the crypto kind of world when that was all kind of kicking off. And I mean,
yeah, lots of weird little bits and pieces on the side. I think my favorite papers that
I've ever written was one about the ethics and archaeology of chickens in video games.
(02:33):
So there you go.
Well, I'm really interested in what you're working on now because you were telling me
about your work with the digital observatory, which was quite interesting. Tell us a bit
about that.
Yeah, so I mean, one of the professors you're putting video games is I'm kind of like trying
to I'm general, I'm a generalist, a technology ethicist, but in the most in the most like
(02:56):
the most recent years, I've been really interested in how video games kind of interact with society
and a societal impact and how, you know, we create I mean, because obviously video games
is like an artistic endeavor, but it also has quite a significant social impact. I mean,
we see all the kind of moral panics around violence and, you know, addiction and all
of this. And I think there's a lot of space still to be kind of sorted out in terms of,
(03:20):
you know, what's actually really the impact that is happening and what's just kind of
what what we think the impact might be, right? And a lot of the issue that we have with that
is that industry is not particularly keen on sharing data with academics in particular.
I mean, they're all quite happy to kind of hype up their own kind of, you know, well
known well being usually a lot of things essentially around but well being so I mean, you saw all
(03:43):
the kind of the Pokemon go from a couple of years ago, how that was kind of talked about
in terms of well being and getting people out and walking and things like that. I mean,
so we have like quite positive potential social impacts as well. And it's just I sort of,
you know, really want to the next I don't know how many years it takes me, I want to
kind of sort out the fact from fiction a little bit and kind of work out what where these
(04:06):
actual real impacts kind of lie and how we can kind of harness those positive impacts
from, you know, mitigate or prevent the negative ones. And one of the ways I'm doing this is
working with some friends of mine that I met through. Gosh, yeah, actually the internet
good old internet once again Twitter. I know it's best collaborations were back pre must
(04:26):
Twitter and I do element element the demise of Twitter because I mean, you know, we've
all moved to these different places but it's not quite the same and you sort of find it
anyway, it's all fragmented now it's not quite quite as good as it used to be. But anyway,
I met some friends and basically after a few years of collaborating with them informally,
we've decided to kind of work we work really well together. And as you probably know in
(04:51):
academia when you find people that you work really well together with you tend to stick
around with them. And so yeah, we we've formed this digital observatory research cluster,
where we look at data driven, like we want to look at the what the data is actually telling
us in terms of the actual social impact of games. So we've actually got collaboration
(05:13):
with Unity, which is the big video game company that creates all the engines that people make
video games with. We have access to several years of their data in terms of their playtime
and monetization. And part of what I've been doing is making sure that we work with that
in an ethical manner. And because obviously, you know, we've got billions and billions
(05:35):
and billions of hours of playtime that we can access, we're going to make sure we can't
like identify people or whatever. But we also want to make sure that we can find some interesting
things out, you know, in the process, but do so in a in a socially beneficial way, but
also an ethical way. So one of the, you know, we've been really keen on looking at like
(05:55):
actually, how does like monetization look? What does it actually look like? Because I
mean, a lot of this stuff hasn't even like industry is so stingy, I want to say, but
in like a positive way, they're not super forthcoming with data. And so the fact that
we've got this massive data lake just to kind of paddle around in is the most incredible
thing for us. And we're really excited about all the such a huge, such a huge pool of data.
(06:19):
And they must track just about everything. Yeah, they really do. So I mean, the sorts
of data we have access to as things so we can track what we what we can see when we look
at like, obviously, they have a lot more data, they've they've we've, they don't give it
all to you. No, they don't give it all to us. That would be quite unethical in many ways.
And also not pro not great for their, their, you know, IP and things like that. But what
(06:43):
they do give us access to is, is the play time that somebody had like an individual has
within one game. So let's say you really like playing Baldur's Gate or something. That's
not made with unity, but you know, you get the idea. If you really like playing Baldur's
Gate, we can track you as an as an anonymous individual, how long you play for what, you
(07:05):
know, when, you know, basically when you play and how long you play for, right? And just
within that game. So we can't track you in between games. So we can't if you go off and
play on an O something else, we can't we can't track that you're switching between games
or anything. But what we can do is track people across multiple games. All right. No. So that's
one of the stipulations we have, because we didn't want to build profiles of people.
(07:27):
We just wanted we wanted to build profiles of kind of games, because, you know, that
seemed a bit more sensible to do it that way, basically. And we also have access to monetization
data as well. So if your game has got if this if a unity game uses unity analytics, and it
has the unity like money like in app purchases, so we don't track ads, unfortunately, doesn't
(07:50):
we don't have access to that. So it's a third party thing from what I can tell. But we have
access to all the monetization from in app purchases that are made through unit kit,
right? So we can, you know, find out what what you've bought how it like, you know,
when you've bought it, like if it's late at night, or if it's early in the morning, or
you know, how frequently you buy it, all that sort of stuff. And then we can kind of map
(08:10):
out what the monetization of a game looks like. So we can see how much a particular game
has made. We can see what the the actual like structure of that monetization looks like.
So if it peaks very early on and then kind of dribbles off, or if it kind of, you know,
steadily, you know, increases over time, or, you know, we can we can follow things like
(08:31):
when new things are added to a shop, for example, stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, there's
lots of stuff we can we can actually kind of follow, which is really interesting insights
so far. So we've got four main papers that we've published out so far says within the
last year and a half or so. It's about two years actually, we've been we've been working
(08:55):
together on this. And we've got so the they're all really interesting. That's the thing. I
mean, so one of the main one of the big ones we've done is we kind of mapped out what mobile
game monetization looks like and what sorts of basically if you want to make a mobile game,
what might the pattern of monetization look like in terms of just in terms of different
(09:15):
genres. So if you make kind of like a collectible card game, like, I don't know, say, like,
my own Pokemon card case, I'm not a card game person. If you make something like that for
a mobile for a mobile, what might it look like? Right. And so we've got sort of spending
pattern analysis of different genres of games. So unsurprisingly, actually, actually, maybe
(09:41):
not unsurprisingly, because I didn't even really know that this kind of category existed
because I guess it doesn't really appeal to me. But it turns out that the most if you
want to make game that makes loads of money, make a social casino game. What social casino
hold on a sec. So social casino games. So basically, it's gambling, but you don't actually
(10:03):
get any money. So you pay money to play, but you just get like any money. Well, you win
in game coins, so you can keep playing. But that's it. You don't get a payout or anything.
I just don't understand. I'm a very different kind of person to those people. Because I
don't understand gambling. I went to the RSL club with my husband one time, and we put
(10:25):
20 bucks in and we made 100 bucks. And I was like, yeah, let's go home now. And he was
like, what? We just got here. And I was like, but we made money. We should leave.
Yeah, no, I guess I guess this game is made for you. Because it really is about like,
I mean, they call them so I mean, I don't know how much social there is to social casinos.
(10:46):
But I mean, the idea is that you just get the you get the I guess the kick of winning
without you see, don't even like you don't even it's not even got to do with like losing
or winning money back or anything like that. Right. Like it's really about it's really
about kind of like just playing for fun, I guess. And that's how they kind of frame it.
(11:09):
Right. So they're not allowed to give like if they get give payouts and Apple or Google
tend to kick them off the app store. So that's one of the rules. And a lot of them will say
I have all these like disclaimers saying this is not you know, you don't win any real money
in all this. But I guess it's the same. Okay, so it's just a concept to me. Yeah, it hits
all the same dopamine kind of receptor things, I guess. And like, I mean, because they're
(11:33):
so good at kind of tapping into very psychological triggers, right, in terms of, you know, even
if you feel like you're winning, if you feel like you're winning, if you feel like it doesn't
really matter in some ways, if it's real money or money that keeps you able to play, right?
Because I mean, a lot of people go to the casino, they start out, you know, as you say
with 100 bucks or whatever. And then and then but then they play until they run out of that
(11:55):
money, right? Like, and so for them, it's not so much about the winning the money, it's
more about the playing, you continue to play. So I guess that's kind of what they're tapping
into. So that's, I mean, that's one of the ones. I mean, if you want to make a classic
kind of game where you have little pretty skins and things like that, you know, you
might end up with a more stable, like there's different kind of patterns, but we sort of
(12:18):
were trying to see if there was like a nice kind of sustainable method of making money
ethically within games. And it's we haven't quite got to that point yet. Like we've only
just done the first stage where we've mapped out what they actually look like. So the next
stage now to look at how do you actually like what what might you if you want to make a
nice sustainable mobile game that makes you some money? What does that look like in terms
(12:40):
of what we understand about monetization? So that's the next next step really. But then
we also looking at the correlation between things like the the reward sounds and the
reward visuals. Right. So this is also another another like we like the thing is this this
data set opens up so much that we like there's only four of us. Well, and we got so it's
(13:03):
four key key key people and then we've got some postdocs and stuff working with us and
some PhD students working with you need postdocs. Yeah, we definitely need more postdocs. I
need I need to get my grant grants engine back up and running. I've been on maternity
leave for a year and I had a had a we had a grant that went in but the research council
(13:23):
we submitted to said, oh, we like it, but it's not in our room. We don't feel like it's
in our remit. We should you should send it to this other one. We just didn't quite get
there yet. But yeah, we will say let's just take that division. So you've just been appointed
professor and you've just been on maternity leave. That's pretty interesting. That doesn't
happen very often. No, it doesn't. I've actually had two babies in the last five years. So
(13:45):
I've been on, you know, two lots of maternity leave in the last five years. But I think
it's yes, I'm, you know, yeah, definitely a lot of props to Staffordshire University
for picking me up. Despite that, I think it's actually because I had a lot of stuff that
was on the go. And then as I was on maternity leave, like, you know, the publication system
like takes a while to kind of keep. Yeah. And so I mean the pipeline. Yeah, basically
(14:10):
I had a bunch of the pipeline to keep to kind of keep the reputation going. But I mean,
they were good publications. We had a nature, human behavior paper and things like that.
So it's pretty, pretty good papers and things. So I think that helped. But you know, I like
to well done to you and well done. Thanks for, you know, for appointing you. Yeah,
no, I think it's really, I mean, it's a good sign of the university if they're willing
(14:32):
to kind of take someone that has been on maternity leave for, for, you know, quite a while on
there. See, especially the senior, senior stage. But I mean, I think it would be a very different
case if I were more junior because you don't, I wouldn't have had all that stuff happening,
you know, boiling around on in the background, if you know what I mean. So yeah, I mean,
it's having children later in life as a choice that I made. And I mean, I'm glad that I did
(14:55):
it obviously, but it's not a choice that everyone can, can always make either. So yeah, it's
an interesting, an interesting space being sort of a senior, senior academic, you know,
senior woman academic, because there is a lot of, I mean, I think also like, I mean,
different sorts of universities, like a bit more kind of old fashioned, and they might
not have like looked at that as a, as a having as being of benefit, like having, you know,
(15:19):
working kind of parent. But anyway, I'm very pleased to be moving to Staffordshire. And
I'm very excited about, about what my role is going to, you know, what I'm going to keep,
you know, plugging away at all this sort of stuff and nurturing you researchers and things
like that. So I'm very excited about it. Yeah.
That sounds fabulous. All right. So I'm sorry for that division, but it's just something
(15:39):
that's okay. What was worth asking the question about.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess the other really interesting one that I thought was
cool was so the other paper that we did was, I mean, it's a bunch of different papers,
but the other one that I really liked was the fact that we looked at what impact COVID
had on gameplay. So we looked back at data before COVID. So we looked at the years with
(16:00):
the data before COVID, and then we looked at the data during COVID. And we mapped it
against all of the, like, and we have global data, right? So we mapped it against all of
the different countries that published what their lockdown, you know, like their different
phases and stages and types of lockdown type responses to COVID were and we, we mapped
(16:25):
those against those and saw we looked to see which types of mechanisms for, you know, controlling
COVID had the most impact, right? So have a guess, what you do you think? So I mean,
let me, we sort of had like, so it was kind of like, altogether lockdown, like everybody
don't go outside. Well, like all of the UK for a very long time and even more so in
(16:48):
Leicester where I am. So it was a total lockdown. There was schools being shut. There was workplaces
being shut just generally. But otherwise you could move around. There was like no contact
with other people type, you know, don't have any parties or whatever. No Christmas parties,
like in one case for us, stuff like that. Yeah. So what do you what do you think was
(17:11):
the most impactful? Oh, I don't know. I would just go to the lock everybody up and don't
let anybody out. So surprisingly, no, it was actually the schools being locked down had
the most impact. Oh, because kids are they are just little Petri dishes. Well, like while
(17:37):
you're working, you want them to be distracted doing stuff. I mean, this is just speculation,
right? But I think it's reasonable speculation. So you whack him in front of a video game
off you go, right? Or TV or whatever. But it was we suspect that was probably what it
had something to do with.
Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. Because because I think there's there's been a really
(17:59):
interesting set of people with strongly held few opinions about what's happening. What
happened with COVID and you know, we need more data, we need more studies like that.
Yeah. And I think it's the important thing about this particular get this particular
paper was that it was really a we only saw a short term impact as well. So it's not like
(18:23):
everyone went, you know, stopped working or stopped going to school and then started playing
games and kept playing games. Like even when things open back up again, it was very much
a short kind of short term thing. I think there was a lot of concern about screen times,
especially for children and stuff like as a result of COVID. And so this I mean, certainly
(18:43):
from the data that we saw, there's no there's no real, you know, like, we didn't we didn't
find any impact that that it had a longer term effect, basically. So I think that's actually
quite benefit like that's a positive finding. And yeah, it was like most of the lockdown
procedures policies just didn't have any impact at all. Like people just played games the
(19:05):
way they normally did. And that's probably because people were mostly still working but
working from home, we think, but obviously we don't have evidence for why these things
are and this is why doing these kind of low level studies that just show what what was
going on in the data is a really good like basis for them going in and delving deep into
some of these these results. And that's kind of what I want to start doing. When I take
(19:27):
up my new role.
Do you have any idea what what what the profiles looked like before, during and after with
each country on the country by countries?
Yeah, yeah. So that's that's another one a fun one that we did. So we looked at actually
how does it how do countries around the world play? Like how do how do they actually, you
know, what how can we cluster like other clusters of how people play like we want to see if there
(19:52):
was a culture of play, right, in terms of of countries and normally traditionally we
sort of when you talk about video games, we talk about like how we this kind of like a
we talk about like the North American and kind of European and like probably Australian
as well. So basically kind of the Anglo sphere I want to I want to call it but also plus Europe.
(20:13):
We sort of assume that they all play the same right. And then we assume as well that sort
of East Asia generally plays the same because we talk a lot about like Japanese video game
play culture and there's also a big Chinese market and we assume that they have that they
have a like a similar sort of a particular culture that plays differently from these
(20:37):
other places and we actually what we found was surprisingly that wasn't the case. In
fact, we had a whole bunch of like the countries. So, for example, USA, Canada, Japan and Russia
all play much the same way, but they play differently from Europe and China who play
(20:58):
the same way as each other. So it was quite an interesting finding.
It's fascinating.
Yeah. Yeah. So they tend to have like, like mobile. So we were looking particularly mobile
gaming and so we weren't looking at PC or console games, but we're looking very much
at mobile gaming. But we yeah, it was it's some of these things we can kind of speculate
(21:19):
as to why but there are a lot that we just we have no idea why why they why they play
in certain ways, right? So for example, with the we call the E type cluster, which is the
one with Australia, Russia and North America. They have kind of it's very, very common to
play games. And there's a well established layer of heavily engaged players is what we
(21:42):
what we call what we call it. And then but then in Europe, we have the it's there are
very, very unequal gaming cultures. So there's a strong layer of extremely engaged players.
But they like we looked at things like the monetization practices and stuff as well.
And so like it was so it was very much about kind of like playtime. Sorry, no, we didn't
(22:04):
look at monetization for that one. We looked at like the playtime per capita. And there
were some people that played a lot and then not like some people that didn't play very
much at all. So that's what we call an unequal gaming culture. Whereas in Australia and the
US, etc. It was mostly fairly equal, like the mostly people played much the same. So it's
kind of interesting. So we can kind of like, yeah, it was then there's these very, very,
(22:30):
very highly engaged players who and it's mostly in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and
like Macau and some of these these East Asian countries that are but they're very, very
tiny. And we call that the the wealthy East Asian territories with the highest playtime
per capita, with extreme game play, the top 1% of players accounting for almost 58% of
(22:56):
total playtime. So it was a really, really heavily like heavily weighted sector of the
of the gaming of mobile gaming there. So it was very interesting. Yeah, yeah.
So are you thinking of supplementing your research with things like focus groups or
anything?
To do?
Yes, I mean, like, like I said, this, I mean, we're basically doing kind of the very fun
(23:19):
at what we would consider to be kind of the fundamental research, like what are the pictures
actually look like? Right. And then I can see certainly for the next sort of 10 years
or so really getting into some of these. Okay, so we've got these fundamental studies. Why
do these like why are these cultures similar? Right. And so the logical stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
(23:39):
Yeah, yeah, it is like, right. I mean, I'm an ethicist and like, so I mean, people often
not say, well, what does an ethicist do? And I kind of like, I mean, I'm a philosopher,
I'm a sociologist, I'm an anthropologist, I'm a, you know, I'm a computer scientist,
I'm all of these things kind of all kind of packaged in, I guess, one little bundle. And
(24:03):
it's I really love just getting out and getting, you know, getting into data and getting into
it, like talking to people and finding out their stories. And, and I mean, I find this
is stuff really exciting. And yeah, I guess that's, you know, and I want to make sure like
that everything that I do is looking at this kind of social technological kind of crossover.
(24:23):
Right. So, I mean, another hat that I wear is I'm a vice chair of the ACM Committee on
Professional Ethics. And I really kind of want to make sure that all the things that
I do and that my research, like any of my collaborations, you know, that we, we'd have
a very high ethical standard and we, you know, kind of abide by the ACM's Code of Ethics.
(24:45):
So, but yeah, it's, it's
How does that along with university ethics?
Well, the ACM is the Association of Computing Machineries, one of the biggest professional
organizations for, for computing.
I am a member?
Yeah, good on you. So you would have signed the, well, you would have agreed to abide by
(25:06):
the Code of Ethics, which I helped to write the, well, the rewrite of it recently in 2018.
And yeah, basically, it's different from research ethics in that it's not so much about like
consent and like kind of the minutiae of doing a piece of research, it's more about kind
of an aspirational guide of how do we create technology and how do we create research about
(25:30):
technology in ways that are beneficial to society, right? And so things like centering
all that we do on the human rather than say profit or, you know, I guess personal gain
in some way, right? Whether that's through status or prejudice, like some of our
Yeah, right.
(25:52):
That's a whole other episode.
But yeah, so things like that where we want to sort of make sure that we've got like,
yeah, so it's about more understanding the context in which we create technology and
the fact that we have to think outside of our own very limited experience with, you
know, in terms of things like the impact of that, right? So if we're creating technology
(26:15):
and we're only testing it on people from our neighborhood, it's probably going to have
a very specific, you know, it'll have a very specific focus. Whereas if we make sure we
diversify, you know, like the people that we tested with or the people that we consult
along the way, in fact, and we should be including people at the beginning rather than just
waiting to the end, right? That, you know, we make technology, we make research that
(26:40):
has a beneficial impact for these communities, for all communities, not just the ones that
we're specifically interested in, but ones that could be potentially impacted further
down the line, right?
So yeah, so I guess that's kind of like, and there's, I mean, the ACM code of ethics has
got a load of, you know, specific things like, I mean, we, I mean, there's a whole, a whole
(27:01):
conversation about the things that change between then and the old, the old version
from 1992, and the new version from 2018, not to mention the fact that security, computer
security has changed slightly. The previous code of ethics was like locked doors to server
rooms, you know, and these days we're like, you probably need to do a little bit more
(27:24):
than that, you know,
Well, when I was running my first system in the 90s, you know, we didn't even consider
security because there was no, nobody trying to hack in.
No, I mean, I was changed a bit.
I did, I did web programming back in like 99,000, we were running MySQL databases with
(27:45):
root access with no passwords. And this was on public facing websites. Like, I mean,
that's just how it was, you know, nobody was like, it's cross-server scripting wasn't
invented, like, then, you know, I mean, yeah, that was a good old days.
It wasn't a good old days yet.
The wild worst of the internet back before there were regulations.
Well, you know, some people, some people still building that way sad to say, you run across
(28:11):
and say, I think we can probably agree that running my SQL databases with it's probably
not the, the most, you know, safe, safe.
The number of times I find an unencrypted S3 bucket on the internet is just astonishing
anyway. But no, I'm not astonished actually, because people don't think people just think,
(28:35):
Oh, well, you know, I don't have it like I haven't, it's not listed on Google. Therefore,
it doesn't exist and stuff like that. Right.
I like to show people show Dan, let me just Google your company. Let's look on show Dan.
Anyway, yeah, it's crazy. But yeah. So ethics, good.
It has been an utter delight to finally chat with you. Thank you so much, Catherine. And
(28:59):
thanks for joining me.
No, thanks very much. I've had a lovely time.
And that is it for another episode of the Data Revolution podcast. I'm Kate Caruthers.
Thank you so much for listening. Please don't forget to give the show a nice review and a
like on your podcast app of choice. See you next time.
Welcome to another episode of the Data Revolution podcast.
(00:18):
Today my guest is Catherine Fleck, who I have known and who I have followed around the various
social media platforms since Twitter started to decline. Even on the recently demised pebble
app. Hello Catherine.
Hi Kate, it's nice to be here. I feel like I've been following you around for quite a
(00:41):
bit longer than that, but it's nice to know that you're sort of reciprocating that now
because I think we've got a lot of shared interest, which is great.
Yeah, well I was looking at your research interests and there's a whole pile of stuff
that I'm really interested in. And I see that you've got a crossover between sort of
(01:01):
you're a steam person, so you're an arts and computer science kind of person.
Yeah, so at the moment I'm a reader in computing and social responsibility, so I'm actually
a technology ethicist. So I kind of feel like I bridge the gap between kind of philosophy
and technology, but particularly in terms of the ethical and social impact. And I'm
actually about to finish that job up like literally in a week and a half or so. And
(01:25):
I'm moving to Staffordshire University, where I'm going to become a professor in Ethics
and Games Technology. And I think that's probably the first of that sort of type of
professorship in the world, which is quite exciting to me as well. So yeah. I guess what
I really do is I kind of like I try to kind of translate. I see myself as a bit of a bridge,
so I sort of try to translate technology to people that might be affected by it in potentially
(01:50):
negative ways. But then I also try to kind of translate back again and help industry understand
what the impact of their technologies might be. And I've worked with everything from small
companies through to really large companies in European based projects. And I've done
all sorts of random bits and pieces. So I've worked on online child protection. I do stuff
(02:11):
was in video games. I wrote a whole paper about how terrible NFTs are. So I did a lot
of stuff in the crypto kind of world when that was all kind of kicking off. And I mean,
yeah, lots of weird little bits and pieces on the side. I think my favorite papers that
I've ever written was one about the ethics and archaeology of chickens in video games.
(02:33):
So there you go.
Well, I'm really interested in what you're working on now because you were telling me
about your work with the digital observatory, which was quite interesting. Tell us a bit
about that.
Yeah, so I mean, one of the professors you're putting video games is I'm kind of like trying
to I'm general, I'm a generalist, a technology ethicist, but in the most in the most like
(02:56):
the most recent years, I've been really interested in how video games kind of interact with society
and a societal impact and how, you know, we create I mean, because obviously video games
is like an artistic endeavor, but it also has quite a significant social impact. I mean,
we see all the kind of moral panics around violence and, you know, addiction and all
of this. And I think there's a lot of space still to be kind of sorted out in terms of,
(03:20):
you know, what's actually really the impact that is happening and what's just kind of
what what we think the impact might be, right? And a lot of the issue that we have with that
is that industry is not particularly keen on sharing data with academics in particular.
I mean, they're all quite happy to kind of hype up their own kind of, you know, well
known well being usually a lot of things essentially around but well being so I mean, you saw all
(03:43):
the kind of the Pokemon go from a couple of years ago, how that was kind of talked about
in terms of well being and getting people out and walking and things like that. I mean,
so we have like quite positive potential social impacts as well. And it's just I sort of,
you know, really want to the next I don't know how many years it takes me, I want to
kind of sort out the fact from fiction a little bit and kind of work out what where these
(04:06):
actual real impacts kind of lie and how we can kind of harness those positive impacts
from, you know, mitigate or prevent the negative ones. And one of the ways I'm doing this is
working with some friends of mine that I met through. Gosh, yeah, actually the internet
good old internet once again Twitter. I know it's best collaborations were back pre must
(04:26):
Twitter and I do element element the demise of Twitter because I mean, you know, we've
all moved to these different places but it's not quite the same and you sort of find it
anyway, it's all fragmented now it's not quite quite as good as it used to be. But anyway,
I met some friends and basically after a few years of collaborating with them informally,
we've decided to kind of work we work really well together. And as you probably know in
(04:51):
academia when you find people that you work really well together with you tend to stick
around with them. And so yeah, we we've formed this digital observatory research cluster,
where we look at data driven, like we want to look at the what the data is actually telling
us in terms of the actual social impact of games. So we've actually got collaboration
(05:13):
with Unity, which is the big video game company that creates all the engines that people make
video games with. We have access to several years of their data in terms of their playtime
and monetization. And part of what I've been doing is making sure that we work with that
in an ethical manner. And because obviously, you know, we've got billions and billions
(05:35):
and billions of hours of playtime that we can access, we're going to make sure we can't
like identify people or whatever. But we also want to make sure that we can find some interesting
things out, you know, in the process, but do so in a in a socially beneficial way, but
also an ethical way. So one of the, you know, we've been really keen on looking at like
(05:55):
actually, how does like monetization look? What does it actually look like? Because I
mean, a lot of this stuff hasn't even like industry is so stingy, I want to say, but
in like a positive way, they're not super forthcoming with data. And so the fact that
we've got this massive data lake just to kind of paddle around in is the most incredible
thing for us. And we're really excited about all the such a huge, such a huge pool of data.
(06:19):
And they must track just about everything. Yeah, they really do. So I mean, the sorts
of data we have access to as things so we can track what we what we can see when we look
at like, obviously, they have a lot more data, they've they've we've, they don't give it
all to you. No, they don't give it all to us. That would be quite unethical in many ways.
And also not pro not great for their, their, you know, IP and things like that. But what
(06:43):
they do give us access to is, is the play time that somebody had like an individual has
within one game. So let's say you really like playing Baldur's Gate or something. That's
not made with unity, but you know, you get the idea. If you really like playing Baldur's
Gate, we can track you as an as an anonymous individual, how long you play for what, you
(07:05):
know, when, you know, basically when you play and how long you play for, right? And just
within that game. So we can't track you in between games. So we can't if you go off and
play on an O something else, we can't we can't track that you're switching between games
or anything. But what we can do is track people across multiple games. All right. No. So that's
one of the stipulations we have, because we didn't want to build profiles of people.
(07:27):
We just wanted we wanted to build profiles of kind of games, because, you know, that
seemed a bit more sensible to do it that way, basically. And we also have access to monetization
data as well. So if your game has got if this if a unity game uses unity analytics, and it
has the unity like money like in app purchases, so we don't track ads, unfortunately, doesn't
(07:50):
we don't have access to that. So it's a third party thing from what I can tell. But we have
access to all the monetization from in app purchases that are made through unit kit,
right? So we can, you know, find out what what you've bought how it like, you know,
when you've bought it, like if it's late at night, or if it's early in the morning, or
you know, how frequently you buy it, all that sort of stuff. And then we can kind of map
(08:10):
out what the monetization of a game looks like. So we can see how much a particular game
has made. We can see what the the actual like structure of that monetization looks like.
So if it peaks very early on and then kind of dribbles off, or if it kind of, you know,
steadily, you know, increases over time, or, you know, we can we can follow things like
(08:31):
when new things are added to a shop, for example, stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, there's
lots of stuff we can we can actually kind of follow, which is really interesting insights
so far. So we've got four main papers that we've published out so far says within the
last year and a half or so. It's about two years actually, we've been we've been working
(08:55):
together on this. And we've got so the they're all really interesting. That's the thing. I
mean, so one of the main one of the big ones we've done is we kind of mapped out what mobile
game monetization looks like and what sorts of basically if you want to make a mobile game,
what might the pattern of monetization look like in terms of just in terms of different
(09:15):
genres. So if you make kind of like a collectible card game, like, I don't know, say, like,
my own Pokemon card case, I'm not a card game person. If you make something like that for
a mobile for a mobile, what might it look like? Right. And so we've got sort of spending
pattern analysis of different genres of games. So unsurprisingly, actually, actually, maybe
(09:41):
not unsurprisingly, because I didn't even really know that this kind of category existed
because I guess it doesn't really appeal to me. But it turns out that the most if you
want to make game that makes loads of money, make a social casino game. What social casino
hold on a sec. So social casino games. So basically, it's gambling, but you don't actually
(10:03):
get any money. So you pay money to play, but you just get like any money. Well, you win
in game coins, so you can keep playing. But that's it. You don't get a payout or anything.
I just don't understand. I'm a very different kind of person to those people. Because I
don't understand gambling. I went to the RSL club with my husband one time, and we put
(10:25):
20 bucks in and we made 100 bucks. And I was like, yeah, let's go home now. And he was
like, what? We just got here. And I was like, but we made money. We should leave.
Yeah, no, I guess I guess this game is made for you. Because it really is about like,
I mean, they call them so I mean, I don't know how much social there is to social casinos.
(10:46):
But I mean, the idea is that you just get the you get the I guess the kick of winning
without you see, don't even like you don't even it's not even got to do with like losing
or winning money back or anything like that. Right. Like it's really about it's really
about kind of like just playing for fun, I guess. And that's how they kind of frame it.
(11:09):
Right. So they're not allowed to give like if they get give payouts and Apple or Google
tend to kick them off the app store. So that's one of the rules. And a lot of them will say
I have all these like disclaimers saying this is not you know, you don't win any real money
in all this. But I guess it's the same. Okay, so it's just a concept to me. Yeah, it hits
all the same dopamine kind of receptor things, I guess. And like, I mean, because they're
(11:33):
so good at kind of tapping into very psychological triggers, right, in terms of, you know, even
if you feel like you're winning, if you feel like you're winning, if you feel like it doesn't
really matter in some ways, if it's real money or money that keeps you able to play, right?
Because I mean, a lot of people go to the casino, they start out, you know, as you say
with 100 bucks or whatever. And then and then but then they play until they run out of that
(11:55):
money, right? Like, and so for them, it's not so much about the winning the money, it's
more about the playing, you continue to play. So I guess that's kind of what they're tapping
into. So that's, I mean, that's one of the ones. I mean, if you want to make a classic
kind of game where you have little pretty skins and things like that, you know, you
might end up with a more stable, like there's different kind of patterns, but we sort of
(12:18):
were trying to see if there was like a nice kind of sustainable method of making money
ethically within games. And it's we haven't quite got to that point yet. Like we've only
just done the first stage where we've mapped out what they actually look like. So the next
stage now to look at how do you actually like what what might you if you want to make a
nice sustainable mobile game that makes you some money? What does that look like in terms
(12:40):
of what we understand about monetization? So that's the next next step really. But then
we also looking at the correlation between things like the the reward sounds and the
reward visuals. Right. So this is also another another like we like the thing is this this
data set opens up so much that we like there's only four of us. Well, and we got so it's
(13:03):
four key key key people and then we've got some postdocs and stuff working with us and
some PhD students working with you need postdocs. Yeah, we definitely need more postdocs. I
need I need to get my grant grants engine back up and running. I've been on maternity
leave for a year and I had a had a we had a grant that went in but the research council
(13:23):
we submitted to said, oh, we like it, but it's not in our room. We don't feel like it's
in our remit. We should you should send it to this other one. We just didn't quite get
there yet. But yeah, we will say let's just take that division. So you've just been appointed
professor and you've just been on maternity leave. That's pretty interesting. That doesn't
happen very often. No, it doesn't. I've actually had two babies in the last five years. So
(13:45):
I've been on, you know, two lots of maternity leave in the last five years. But I think
it's yes, I'm, you know, yeah, definitely a lot of props to Staffordshire University
for picking me up. Despite that, I think it's actually because I had a lot of stuff that
was on the go. And then as I was on maternity leave, like, you know, the publication system
like takes a while to kind of keep. Yeah. And so I mean the pipeline. Yeah, basically
(14:10):
I had a bunch of the pipeline to keep to kind of keep the reputation going. But I mean,
they were good publications. We had a nature, human behavior paper and things like that.
So it's pretty, pretty good papers and things. So I think that helped. But you know, I like
to well done to you and well done. Thanks for, you know, for appointing you. Yeah,
no, I think it's really, I mean, it's a good sign of the university if they're willing
(14:32):
to kind of take someone that has been on maternity leave for, for, you know, quite a while on
there. See, especially the senior, senior stage. But I mean, I think it would be a very different
case if I were more junior because you don't, I wouldn't have had all that stuff happening,
you know, boiling around on in the background, if you know what I mean. So yeah, I mean,
it's having children later in life as a choice that I made. And I mean, I'm glad that I did
(14:55):
it obviously, but it's not a choice that everyone can, can always make either. So yeah, it's
an interesting, an interesting space being sort of a senior, senior academic, you know,
senior woman academic, because there is a lot of, I mean, I think also like, I mean,
different sorts of universities, like a bit more kind of old fashioned, and they might
not have like looked at that as a, as a having as being of benefit, like having, you know,
(15:19):
working kind of parent. But anyway, I'm very pleased to be moving to Staffordshire. And
I'm very excited about, about what my role is going to, you know, what I'm going to keep,
you know, plugging away at all this sort of stuff and nurturing you researchers and things
like that. So I'm very excited about it. Yeah.
That sounds fabulous. All right. So I'm sorry for that division, but it's just something
(15:39):
that's okay. What was worth asking the question about.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess the other really interesting one that I thought was
cool was so the other paper that we did was, I mean, it's a bunch of different papers,
but the other one that I really liked was the fact that we looked at what impact COVID
had on gameplay. So we looked back at data before COVID. So we looked at the years with
(16:00):
the data before COVID, and then we looked at the data during COVID. And we mapped it
against all of the, like, and we have global data, right? So we mapped it against all of
the different countries that published what their lockdown, you know, like their different
phases and stages and types of lockdown type responses to COVID were and we, we mapped
(16:25):
those against those and saw we looked to see which types of mechanisms for, you know, controlling
COVID had the most impact, right? So have a guess, what you do you think? So I mean,
let me, we sort of had like, so it was kind of like, altogether lockdown, like everybody
don't go outside. Well, like all of the UK for a very long time and even more so in
(16:48):
Leicester where I am. So it was a total lockdown. There was schools being shut. There was workplaces
being shut just generally. But otherwise you could move around. There was like no contact
with other people type, you know, don't have any parties or whatever. No Christmas parties,
like in one case for us, stuff like that. Yeah. So what do you what do you think was
(17:11):
the most impactful? Oh, I don't know. I would just go to the lock everybody up and don't
let anybody out. So surprisingly, no, it was actually the schools being locked down had
the most impact. Oh, because kids are they are just little Petri dishes. Well, like while
(17:37):
you're working, you want them to be distracted doing stuff. I mean, this is just speculation,
right? But I think it's reasonable speculation. So you whack him in front of a video game
off you go, right? Or TV or whatever. But it was we suspect that was probably what it
had something to do with.
Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. Because because I think there's there's been a really
(17:59):
interesting set of people with strongly held few opinions about what's happening. What
happened with COVID and you know, we need more data, we need more studies like that.
Yeah. And I think it's the important thing about this particular get this particular
paper was that it was really a we only saw a short term impact as well. So it's not like
(18:23):
everyone went, you know, stopped working or stopped going to school and then started playing
games and kept playing games. Like even when things open back up again, it was very much
a short kind of short term thing. I think there was a lot of concern about screen times,
especially for children and stuff like as a result of COVID. And so this I mean, certainly
(18:43):
from the data that we saw, there's no there's no real, you know, like, we didn't we didn't
find any impact that that it had a longer term effect, basically. So I think that's actually
quite benefit like that's a positive finding. And yeah, it was like most of the lockdown
procedures policies just didn't have any impact at all. Like people just played games the
(19:05):
way they normally did. And that's probably because people were mostly still working but
working from home, we think, but obviously we don't have evidence for why these things
are and this is why doing these kind of low level studies that just show what what was
going on in the data is a really good like basis for them going in and delving deep into
some of these these results. And that's kind of what I want to start doing. When I take
(19:27):
up my new role.
Do you have any idea what what what the profiles looked like before, during and after with
each country on the country by countries?
Yeah, yeah. So that's that's another one a fun one that we did. So we looked at actually
how does it how do countries around the world play? Like how do how do they actually, you
know, what how can we cluster like other clusters of how people play like we want to see if there
(19:52):
was a culture of play, right, in terms of of countries and normally traditionally we
sort of when you talk about video games, we talk about like how we this kind of like a
we talk about like the North American and kind of European and like probably Australian
as well. So basically kind of the Anglo sphere I want to I want to call it but also plus Europe.
(20:13):
We sort of assume that they all play the same right. And then we assume as well that sort
of East Asia generally plays the same because we talk a lot about like Japanese video game
play culture and there's also a big Chinese market and we assume that they have that they
have a like a similar sort of a particular culture that plays differently from these
(20:37):
other places and we actually what we found was surprisingly that wasn't the case. In
fact, we had a whole bunch of like the countries. So, for example, USA, Canada, Japan and Russia
all play much the same way, but they play differently from Europe and China who play
(20:58):
the same way as each other. So it was quite an interesting finding.
It's fascinating.
Yeah. Yeah. So they tend to have like, like mobile. So we were looking particularly mobile
gaming and so we weren't looking at PC or console games, but we're looking very much
at mobile gaming. But we yeah, it was it's some of these things we can kind of speculate
(21:19):
as to why but there are a lot that we just we have no idea why why they why they play
in certain ways, right? So for example, with the we call the E type cluster, which is the
one with Australia, Russia and North America. They have kind of it's very, very common to
play games. And there's a well established layer of heavily engaged players is what we
(21:42):
what we call what we call it. And then but then in Europe, we have the it's there are
very, very unequal gaming cultures. So there's a strong layer of extremely engaged players.
But they like we looked at things like the monetization practices and stuff as well.
And so like it was so it was very much about kind of like playtime. Sorry, no, we didn't
(22:04):
look at monetization for that one. We looked at like the playtime per capita. And there
were some people that played a lot and then not like some people that didn't play very
much at all. So that's what we call an unequal gaming culture. Whereas in Australia and the
US, etc. It was mostly fairly equal, like the mostly people played much the same. So it's
kind of interesting. So we can kind of like, yeah, it was then there's these very, very,
(22:30):
very highly engaged players who and it's mostly in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and
like Macau and some of these these East Asian countries that are but they're very, very
tiny. And we call that the the wealthy East Asian territories with the highest playtime
per capita, with extreme game play, the top 1% of players accounting for almost 58% of
(22:56):
total playtime. So it was a really, really heavily like heavily weighted sector of the
of the gaming of mobile gaming there. So it was very interesting. Yeah, yeah.
So are you thinking of supplementing your research with things like focus groups or
anything?
To do?
Yes, I mean, like, like I said, this, I mean, we're basically doing kind of the very fun
(23:19):
at what we would consider to be kind of the fundamental research, like what are the pictures
actually look like? Right. And then I can see certainly for the next sort of 10 years
or so really getting into some of these. Okay, so we've got these fundamental studies. Why
do these like why are these cultures similar? Right. And so the logical stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
(23:39):
Yeah, yeah, it is like, right. I mean, I'm an ethicist and like, so I mean, people often
not say, well, what does an ethicist do? And I kind of like, I mean, I'm a philosopher,
I'm a sociologist, I'm an anthropologist, I'm a, you know, I'm a computer scientist,
I'm all of these things kind of all kind of packaged in, I guess, one little bundle. And
(24:03):
it's I really love just getting out and getting, you know, getting into data and getting into
it, like talking to people and finding out their stories. And, and I mean, I find this
is stuff really exciting. And yeah, I guess that's, you know, and I want to make sure like
that everything that I do is looking at this kind of social technological kind of crossover.
(24:23):
Right. So, I mean, another hat that I wear is I'm a vice chair of the ACM Committee on
Professional Ethics. And I really kind of want to make sure that all the things that
I do and that my research, like any of my collaborations, you know, that we, we'd have
a very high ethical standard and we, you know, kind of abide by the ACM's Code of Ethics.
(24:45):
So, but yeah, it's, it's
How does that along with university ethics?
Well, the ACM is the Association of Computing Machineries, one of the biggest professional
organizations for, for computing.
I am a member?
Yeah, good on you. So you would have signed the, well, you would have agreed to abide by
(25:06):
the Code of Ethics, which I helped to write the, well, the rewrite of it recently in 2018.
And yeah, basically, it's different from research ethics in that it's not so much about like
consent and like kind of the minutiae of doing a piece of research, it's more about kind
of an aspirational guide of how do we create technology and how do we create research about
(25:30):
technology in ways that are beneficial to society, right? And so things like centering
all that we do on the human rather than say profit or, you know, I guess personal gain
in some way, right? Whether that's through status or prejudice, like some of our
Yeah, right.
(25:52):
That's a whole other episode.
But yeah, so things like that where we want to sort of make sure that we've got like,
yeah, so it's about more understanding the context in which we create technology and
the fact that we have to think outside of our own very limited experience with, you
know, in terms of things like the impact of that, right? So if we're creating technology
(26:15):
and we're only testing it on people from our neighborhood, it's probably going to have
a very specific, you know, it'll have a very specific focus. Whereas if we make sure we
diversify, you know, like the people that we tested with or the people that we consult
along the way, in fact, and we should be including people at the beginning rather than just
waiting to the end, right? That, you know, we make technology, we make research that
(26:40):
has a beneficial impact for these communities, for all communities, not just the ones that
we're specifically interested in, but ones that could be potentially impacted further
down the line, right?
So yeah, so I guess that's kind of like, and there's, I mean, the ACM code of ethics has
got a load of, you know, specific things like, I mean, we, I mean, there's a whole, a whole
(27:01):
conversation about the things that change between then and the old, the old version
from 1992, and the new version from 2018, not to mention the fact that security, computer
security has changed slightly. The previous code of ethics was like locked doors to server
rooms, you know, and these days we're like, you probably need to do a little bit more
(27:24):
than that, you know,
Well, when I was running my first system in the 90s, you know, we didn't even consider
security because there was no, nobody trying to hack in.
No, I mean, I was changed a bit.
I did, I did web programming back in like 99,000, we were running MySQL databases with
(27:45):
root access with no passwords. And this was on public facing websites. Like, I mean,
that's just how it was, you know, nobody was like, it's cross-server scripting wasn't
invented, like, then, you know, I mean, yeah, that was a good old days.
It wasn't a good old days yet.
The wild worst of the internet back before there were regulations.
Well, you know, some people, some people still building that way sad to say, you run across
(28:11):
and say, I think we can probably agree that running my SQL databases with it's probably
not the, the most, you know, safe, safe.
The number of times I find an unencrypted S3 bucket on the internet is just astonishing
anyway. But no, I'm not astonished actually, because people don't think people just think,
(28:35):
Oh, well, you know, I don't have it like I haven't, it's not listed on Google. Therefore,
it doesn't exist and stuff like that. Right.
I like to show people show Dan, let me just Google your company. Let's look on show Dan.
Anyway, yeah, it's crazy. But yeah. So ethics, good.
It has been an utter delight to finally chat with you. Thank you so much, Catherine. And
(28:59):
thanks for joining me.
No, thanks very much. I've had a lovely time.
And that is it for another episode of the Data Revolution podcast. I'm Kate Caruthers.
Thank you so much for listening. Please don't forget to give the show a nice review and a
like on your podcast app of choice. See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.