Moving Impact of Video Games Unveiled
Games as Emotional Powerhouses: A New Frontier in Storytelling
In the ever-evolving world of entertainment, video games are increasingly being recognised for their unique ability to evoke powerful emotions in players. This shift in perspective is largely due to the work of visionary game designers like Brenda Brathwaite Romero, Will Wright, and Jenova Chen, who have pushed the boundaries of what games can achieve emotionally.
Romero's game, Train, is a prime example of this new wave of emotional storytelling. By utilising interesting choices and the flow state, Train immerses players in social choices and outcomes, creating a profound emotional experience that leaves a lasting impact.
Wright, the designer of The Sims, shares a similar vision. He believes that games can evoke emotions similar to those in movies, and his work certainly supports this assertion. Wright's creations, like Romero's, offer players a level of control and interaction that is unparalleled in other media.
The concept of flow theory provides a useful lens for understanding the emotional power of games. This theory posits that the ability to choose and control actions gives rise to the ease with which players can enter a pleasurable, optimal performance state called "flow". Games offer players the chance to influence outcomes, which unlocks new emotional possibilities.
However, there isn't a common language for discussing these emotional experiences in games. Game developers use strategies and techniques to create emotional experiences, but a shared vocabulary is still lacking. This is where researchers like Katherine Isbister come in. Isbister, a game and human computer interaction researcher and designer, currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of "How Games Move Us," is helping to bridge this gap.
Isbister's work, along with that of other researchers, is contributing to a new approach in game design. Maxis, the developer of The Sims, and Rovio, the creator of Angry Birds, are prime examples of this new approach. These developers design their games to guide players through specific emotional experiences by enabling interesting decisions within immersive game mechanics. This emotional engagement enhances motivation and perception in games, and studies show that emotional design improves player investment and learning outcomes.
How Games Move Us is an excerpted article from Isbister's book, which delves deeper into this topic. The book explores how games can evoke a wide range of emotions, from joy and excitement to guilt and responsibility.
The grounded cognition theory supports this idea, suggesting that our brains compare real and mediated experiences to come up with emotional and cognitive responses. This makes games capable of evoking emotions like guilt and responsibility.
One such game that meditates on these emotional juxtapositions is Train, which is part of Romero's Mechanics Is the Message series. These games focus on the systems and rules of games to forge complicity and highlight the power of games to evoke deep, socially based emotions triggered by choice and consequence.
The phrase "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" was used as a recruitment advertisement by Electronic Arts (EA) in the 1980s to encourage the creation of games that evoke social emotions. Today, with the work of visionary game designers and researchers, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
Researchers have also used videogames as research instruments to study emotional responses. Phoebe C. Ellsworth and Klaus Scherer's "Appraisal Processes in Emotion" is a reference in this regard.
Nicole Lazzaro's "The Four Fun Keys" is another reference in the discussion of emotional responses in games. Lazzaro's work identifies four primary emotional responses in games: hard fun (challenge), easy fun (relaxation), people fun (social interaction), and serious fun (learning or self-expression).
In conclusion, games are more than just a form of entertainment. They are a powerful medium capable of evoking a wide range of emotions, from joy and excitement to guilt and responsibility. As game designers and researchers continue to push the boundaries of what games can achieve, the emotional impact of games is only set to grow.
