Designing for Emotional Complexity in Games

Abstract

People play games for the experience, and one of the aims of player experience research is to understand what constitutes and contributes to positive gaming experiences. Emotionally challenging and uncomfortable game play experiences have been largely neglected, as they are seemingly at odds with the field's focus on fun and positive affect. We argue that the positively-biased perspective on desirable emotions in games misses out on opportunities that the interplay between positive and negative emotions offers. A previous workshop at CHI PLAY 2015 covered this missed opportunity by focusing on the false dichotomy between positive and negative affect, and identified a number of factors, both personal and contextual, which determine when players will value emotional game experiences that go beyond the purely positive. The present workshop is a continuation of this effort, putting the spotlight on the complexity of emotional experience and how it evolves throughout game play. Crucially, a central aspect of this workshop is to get participants thinking more about the design and evaluation of these types of experiences, by allowing hands-on game design exercise for the examined emotional experiences.