What is the player experience of playing games that evoke both negative and positive emotions?

What is it about?

We interviewed people about their play experiences in games that are known for having a deep mixed affect (that is, positive and negative emotions combined) emotional impact on players, rather than the mainstream emotional experience of frustration and victory/power fantasy fulfilment that's common to videogames. Think 'Papers Please', 'Dear Esther' and 'Journey' rather than 'Gears of War', 'Call of Duty' or 'Grand Theft Auto'. We interviewed them and analysed the transcripts. We were interested in finding out what was going on during this emotional experiences. The longer term goal is to see what lessons we can learn from these games, and how we can design games to elicit a broader and deeper range of emotions than are usually seen amongst videogames. We used a method called Grounded Theory Methodology to work up a theory that's grounded in the data we collected (in this case, transcripts of the interviews). Here, we found that the concept of 'Emotional Exploration' explained what was going on in these emotional experiences, why players seek these kinds of experiences out, and suggested how to design for them. We also made a case for naming this kind of emotional experience the 'Eudaimonic Gameplay Experience', to differentiate it from both the more mainstream emotional experience of most videogames.

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Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This paper provides a powerful theory and concept for exploring this kind of Eudaimonic Games Design i.e. designing games that give us a reflective mixed-affect emotional experience. This is a useful concept that can be understood by academics, designers and enthusiasts alike, and we hope it enables people to understand and design for this kind of game experience more often.

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