Negative Emotion, Positive Experience?: Emotionally Moving Moments in
Digital Games
Players' Motivations in Games
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Bopp, Julia Ayumi
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Mekler, Elisa D.
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Opwis, Klaus
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.2996-3006
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Emotions are key to the player experience (PX) and interest in the potential
of games to provide unique emotional, sometimes uncomfortable experiences is
growing. Yet there has been little empirical investigation of what game
experiences players consider emotionally moving, their causes and effects, and
whether players find these experiences rewarding at all. We analyzed 121
players' accounts of emotionally moving game experiences in terms of the
feelings and thoughts they evoked, different PX constructs, as well as
game-related and personal factors contributing to these. We found that most
players enjoyed and appreciated experiencing negatively valenced emotions, such
as sadness. Emotions were evoked by a variety of interactive and
non-interactive game aspects, such as in-game loss, character attachment and
(lack of) agency, but also personal memories, and were often accompanied by
(self-)reflection. Our findings highlight the potential of games to provide
emotionally rewarding and thought-provoking experiences, as well as outline
opportunities for future research and design of such experiences. They also
showcase that negative affect may contribute to enjoyment, thereby extending
our notion of positive player experience.
"It Was Sad But Still Good": Gratifications of Emotionally Moving Game
Experiences
WIP Theme: Gaming
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Bopp, Julia Ayumi
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Mekler, Elisa D.
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Opwis, Klaus
Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems
2015-04-18
v.2
p.1193-1198
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Players have increasingly become interested in emotional game experiences
beyond simple "fun". Although previous research has identified several
gratifications of fun experiences, still little is known about whether and what
gratifications players derive from emotionally moving game experiences.
Interviews with 12 Japanese and Western players revealed several
gratifications, such as liking to experience strong emotions, whereas other
players did not enjoy being emotionally moved, but appreciated that the
emotional experience stimulated reflective thought or allowed them to engage
more with the game. Based on these findings, we discuss opportunities for
future research.
A systematic review of quantitative studies on the enjoyment of digital
entertainment games
Understanding and designing games
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Mekler, Elisa D.
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Bopp, Julia Ayumi
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Tuch, Alexandre N.
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Opwis, Klaus
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.1
p.927-936
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Enjoyment has been identified as a central component of the player
experience (PX), but various, overlapping concepts within PX make it difficult
to develop valid measures and a common understanding of game enjoyment. We
conducted a systematic review of 87 quantitative studies, analyzing different
operationalizations and measures of game enjoyment, its determinants, and how
these were related to other components of PX, such as flow, presence and
immersion. Results suggest that game enjoyment describes the positive cognitive
and affective appraisal of the game experience, and may in part be associated
with the support of player needs and values. Further, we outline that enjoyment
is distinct from flow in that it may occur independently of challenge and
cognitive involvement, and argue that enjoyment may be understood as the
valence of the player experience. We conclude with a discussion of
methodological challenges and point out opportunities for future research on
game enjoyment.
