Lauren Winter

University of York

Lauren was introduced to gaming from an early age when they received a PlayStation One as a gift. From there, video games became a huge part of their life, exploring new worlds through the eyes of a vast array of characters. Following their undergraduate degree in Psychology with Sociology, they completed their MSc in Psychology Research Methods at the University of Nottingham. A fascination with looking for trends in data and creating complex spreadsheets in Excel led them to a job analysing student information in a school, where they also ran four Esports teams competing across three games. Their research interests primarily focus on player research in team-based PVP games and looking at players’ awareness of each other in these environments.

A description of Lauren's research:

Lauren’s work investigates the player experience in team-versus-team games such as League of Legends.  This is achieved through the lens of social presence: the awareness of others in a digital environment.  The social experience has been found to be one that is related, but separate to the more commonly explored facets of player experience.  Through measuring player experiences in popular team-verus-team games, validating a purpose-designed questionnaire, and developing a bespoke game in Unity, Laurens’ work explores how the ‘social’ in these social games is built between and within teams, and how all of the players contribute to this shared experience.