emotions about the deniable/undeniable: sketch for a classification of game content as experienced. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
Computer games contribute to their players' emotions in diverse ways, ranging from sheer exhilaration to anger and disillusion. Our ability to enjoy computer game play that involves genuine intense emotions which in other contexts would be easily deemed as "negative" suggests that there is something in the ways in which we make sense of computer games that separates gameplay from other activities we engage in. Focusing single player computer games and situating within the emerging fi eld of computer game studies, this dissertation starts from the assumption that emotions are always already intertwined with the experience of play and proceeds to describe, not any idiosyncratic emotional experience, but the means by which games can ensure their contents to be involved in players' emotions. Emotions are taken as intentional, as always about something. From this premise follows that to understand an emotion it is necessary to understand the reasons the subject has for relating to the object of the emotion in the particular way. Building on game studies, existential phenomenology, and philosophy of technology, this dissertation postulates a first person perspective from which to describe solitary computer game play and the emotions it involves in terms of their experienced signi cance. From describing the freedoms and responsibilities imposed by the materiality of the computer game artefact on its voluntary player, the gameplay condition emerges as an intersubjective baseline for the players' judgements about events, objects, and states of a airs in the game, potentially surfacing as emotions. Rather than being explained in terms of their rules, computer games appear as technological artefacts which simultaneously extend the concrete limitations against which their human players are free to realize their projects, and shape the ways in which human mind can be directed at aspects of the world. However, this can go on only as long as long as the player ful fills the requirements of which the gameplay condition comprises. Based on this condition, game artefacts can be described as standing out from among all other technological artefacts which co-shape human intentionality. By the conduct of emotional investment, the dissertation describes how voluntary players can end up experiencing emotions about aspects which would most likely seem trivial from a non-player's perspective. Finally, the dissertation postulates an experiential ontology of computer game content, distinguishing between game content that is undeniable: crucial in terms of ful lling the gameplay condition, and deniable: game content whose taking seriously is mostly voluntary. Thus, undeniable game content can be safely assumed as being involved in the emotions' of all players.
In Gameplay : the invariant structures and varieties of the video game gameplay experience
2018
This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study on video game gameplay as an autonomous form of vernacular experience. Plays and games are traditional research subjects in folkloristics, but commercial video games have not been studied yet. For this reason, methods and concepts of the folkloristic research tradition have remained unknown in contemporary games studies. This thesis combines folkloristics, game studies and phenomenological enactive cognitive science in its investigations into playergame interaction and the video game gameplay experience at large. In this dissertation, three representative survey samples (N=2,594, N=845, N=1,053) on "Rewarding gameplay experience" are analyzed using statistical analysis methods. The samples were collected in 2014-2017 from Finnish and Danish adult populations. This dissertation also analyzes data from 32 interviews, through which the survey respondents' gameplay preferences, gaming memories, and motivations to play were further investigated. By combining statistical and qualitative data analyses, this work puts forward a mixed-methods research strategy and discusses how the findings relate to prior game research from several disciplines and schools of thought. Based on theoretical discussions, this dissertation argues that the video game gameplay experience as a cultural phenomenon consists of eight invariants in relation to which each individual gameplay experience can be interpreted: The player must demonstrate a lusory attitude (i), and a motivation to play (ii). The gameplay experience consists of explorative and coordinative practices (iii), which engender a change in the player's self-experience (iv). This change renders the gameplay experience inherently emotional (v) and performative (vi) in relation to the gameworld (vii). The gameplay experience has the dramatic structure of a prototypical narrative (viii) although a game as an object cannot be regarded a narrative in itself. As a key result of factor analytical studies and qualitative interview analyses, a novel approach to understanding player-game interaction is put forward. An original gameplay preference research tool and a player typology are introduced. This work argues, that, although video games as commercial products would not be intuitive research subjects for folkloristics, video game gameplay, player-game interaction, and the traditions in experiencing and narrating gameplay do not differ drastically from those of traditional social games. In contrast to this, all forms of gameplay are argued to be manifestations of the same vernacular phenomenon. Indeed, folkloristic research could pay more attention to how culture is experienced, modified, varied and expressed, regardless of whether the research subject is a commercial product or not.
Emotional Gaming, 2013
In recent years, research on the psychology of gaming has examined the negative and positive outcomes of playing video games. Thus far, a variety of affective phenomena have been investigated. In this chapter we will continue this exploration by examining the emotions elicited by the act of playing video games.
A Cognitive Psychological Approach to Gameplay Emotions
Although emotions elicited by the fictional world or the artefact play a part in story-driven video games, they are certainly not the focus of the experience. From a cognitive psychological perspective, this paper studies the appraisal and action dimensions of emotions arising from gameplay. As it relies on cognitive film theories about popular narrative movies, it also revisits their conceptual sources in order to better reflect on the specificity of those gameplay emotions.
The nature of gameplay: a videogame classification
2007
This paper is part of an experimental approach aimed to raise a videogames classification. Being inspired by the methodology that Propp[3] used for the classification of Russian fairy tales, we have cleared out recurrent diagrams within rules of videogames, named "Game Bricks". The combinations of these different bricks will allow us to represent a classification, in accordance to their rules, of all the videogames. In this article we will study the real nature of these bricks, especially the link they seem to have with two types of game rules: the rules that allow the player to "manipulate" the elements of the game and the rules defining the "goal" of the game. We will then study the relation between these bricks and the gameplay. These questions will help us to propose an hypothesis about the nature of gameplay.