Affective Gaming Essay -- essays research papers

Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of the Mario and Zelda franchises, tells us that he designs his games around a series of specific emotional experiences. Console manufacturer Sony have christened the PlayStation 2's CPU the ‘emotion engine'. Clearly the gaming community understands the importance of emotion in games, so why do most games offer the player such a shallow emotional play experience? The reason is partly due to the relative immaturity of the games industry. Whereas the film industry has a mature and well developed structure for how the auteur might evoke tears in the eyes of the audience, the digital games industry is still in the process of writing the rule book. With digital gaming being a visual medium, you might expect techniques for eliciting emotion to be transferable across media. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. The film director has complete control over the image appearing on the cinema screen – the camera angle, the sequential order of each scene, and the pacing of a scene. In contrast, the game designer hands control of such things to the player. The player will choose the camera angle best suited to getting Mario across the tight rope, as well as the direction and pace at which the game progresses. Interactive media needs to find their own rules for supporting emotion in games, and they have a couple of neat tricks which set them apart from the competition. Evoking an emotional response in the player The interactive nature of digital games provides new and very different possibilities for eliciting emotions. For example, whereas the movie goer simply watches the narrative world unfold, the game player gets to interacts with it - and each environment has the potential to evoke a different emotional response. For example, a large building with towering marble pillars is generally considered much more imposing and makes people feel smaller and more uncomfortable than a small room with a sofa and a blazing wood-fire. At Glasgow Caledonian University we are currently looking specifically at those environments which are renowned for producing supernatural experiences. By modelling and adapting reputedly haunted places in Edinburgh, UK we have been able to create game environments which evoke ghostlike experience for approximately 60% of people who experience it. Reported experiences include the feeling a ghost breathing on the... ... how to control their avatar. With the arrival of online gaming it is often the case that a player's opponent is not physically present, thus diluting the social experience of multiplayer gaming. However, if the software could determine the player's affective state, an on-screen persona could be adapted to reflect the player's emotional state. 3. AFFECTIVE GAME-MECHANICS Knowing the affective state of the player allows for novel game mechanics based around the player's emotions. An example of such can be found in Zen Warriors, a game currently in pre-development at Glasgow Caledonian University. Zen Warrior is a fighting game where, to perform their finishing move, the player has to switch from fast paced aggression, to a Zen-like state of inner calm. These are exciting times. Games have taken the huge aesthetic leap from two dimensions to three dimensions. The next evolutionary step is for games to elicit deeper and more varied emotion in players. And we are still only writing the first chapter of the rule book. -- Jonathan Sykes Jonathan Sykes currently heads the eMotion Laboratory at Glasgow Caledonian University, where he investigates emotional engagement with technology.