‘Stargazing’ Emotional Analysis of

Game Designs

Aki Järvinen, Ph.D.

GameCultures Conference / Magdeburg 2009-3-21

Background: PhD study in game design

theory

http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.php?id=11046

Recent work on games &

emotions

•  ‘Understanding Video Games as Emotional Experiences’

•  B.Perron & M.J.Wolf (eds.) Video Game Theory Reader 2. London & New York: Routledge. 2008.

•  Adapting the ‘OCC model’ into game analysis

Exploring models for analyzing

events, agents &

objects in game worlds

My design research

into games as results of

design practices &

solutions

‘Stargazing’ summarized

•  The author introduces means for analyzing existing game designs with particular emphasis on identifying their emotionally relevant features.

•  The method aims to give tools for uncovering the secrets of successful game designs, so that such findings could be creatively reinvented for new designs.

•  The method applies terminology from object-oriented programming in order to produce results that can be reformulated into a game design document, or channeled into a rapid prototyping task instantly.

Phasic emotions

parallel phasic

gameplay

•  Recognition of something significant

•  Evaluation of the situation; plans to cope with the situation

•  Action readiness; tendencies

•  Bodily and expressive effects

•  The four-fold phasic nature of emotions is constantly at work in gameplay

•  Such, admittedly totalizing view to gameplay emotions, lets us to try to design them, knowingly

Emotional game design through the metaphor of

stargazing

•  Metaphor of stars, sky, and their relationships

•  A romantic metaphor for a romantic design practice

•  In terms of the stargazing method, the design elements of a game represent the stars that align into certain constellations...

•  ...thus creating so-called eliciting conditions, i.e. ‘conditions under which an emotion can be triggered.’

The most frequently designed/played

eliciting condition in video games?

Game Design Research Problem

•  The premise: any particular emotional episode of a player, or players, can be traced back to a certain game state, or a sequence of game states.

•  Examples:

•  Scripted events in Gears of War or Dead Space

•  Sequences of dialogue interaction in Animal Crossing

•  Instance in World of Warcraft

•  Behavior of fire in Far Cry 2

•  How to analyze their emotional constituents & consequences with a rigorous method?

Game States as emotional

waypoints

•  Game state is the ‘frozen slice’ of gameplay, a recognizable phase, that can be used

•  as a focus point when analyzing games

•  as the smallest factor in designing game play from an emotional /experience design standpoint

•  Game states combine into sequences, and emotional experiences are sequences of emotions, where the result is more than the sum of its parts

Goal monitoring;

where does it focus,

perceptually?

•  Goal monitoring is a concept originating from psychological studies in personal goals

•  It conceptualizes the constant tracking of how one is doing in terms of the goals under pursuit

•  i.e. as behavior that has to do with both predicting and experiencing of emotions

•  Are there certain perceptual and cognitive vectors or formations – constellations - that emerge in the game play process, and are particular important for goal monitoring

•  ...and consequently, for the emotional design of the game?

Stargazing at Zuma:

‘The vector of suspense’

between the skull and the closest

ball as the focus

of goal monitoring

Stargazing at Tetris:

‘The skyline vector’

as the focus of goal monitoring

A practical future

application:

Emotional wireframe prototypes

•  Future work: Turning stargazing results into concrete design tools with which emotional gameplay dynamics, similar to the above examples, could be modeled and tested through abstractions

Abstractions of vectors into game

design ‘toys’

Stargazing at Braid

Stargazing at Portal

Stargazing at Braid & Portal:

‘Projected vectors’

•  The emotional vector, rather than being a concrete visual set of dynamics, is a mental projection into the game space that has to be figured out, and then executed, by the player

•  Goal monitoring consists of a sequence of logical deductions and their outcomes

•  Perceptual goal monitoring is used to inform cognitive goal monitoring, and vice versa.

•  ... This type of goal monitoring has different consequences to the emotional flavor of the play experience

Stargazing 3D & sound:

Flower:

‘musical time-space

vector’

heavily based on aesthetic

perceptions

Stargazing Facebook

games; Parking

Wars:

‘revisiting vector’

via login/logout

Practical design case:

Jukem the puzzle

game prototype

with a design where the

skyline and suspense vectors

combine

How to extrapolate the method

to more complex genres?

•  Research question in the works:

•  How can more complex game mechanics & dynamics be modeled in abstract forms?

•  Hypothesis: With the help of analyzing metaphors, and how they relate to the events, objects, and agents

•  Left 4 Dead: how is the ‘left to one’s own devices’ metaphor emotionally aligned in the design of the game?

Contact •  Aki Järvinen, Ph.D.

•  aki@mygamestudies.com

•  www.mygamestudies.com

•  Twitter: @aquito