Zack Hiwiller, Full Sail

Brief statement of the problem(s) on which the group worked

One of the most powerful ways in which a game influences its players and audience is through the use of emotion.  Emotion can most readily be conveyed through narrative elements.  Our group recognized that emotion can be conveyed entirely through narrative on one extreme, and entirely through game mechanics, rules, and systems on the other extreme.  We decided to explore the problem space represented by the extreme use of physical mechanics, absent story context, could convey emotion to its audience.

“Change 1st person shooters into 1st person feelers.”

Our group focused on three efforts

1. We discussed the problem space and broke it up into not just a possible range of emotions, but also properties of those emotions, including:

If the emotion is felt by the player, in absentia of his or her game context, if the emotion is imposed on the player based on another game agent; or if the emotion is conveyed to another player by the game player.
For example, while “serenity” and “boredom” are typically thought of as a feelings of solitude and “anger” or “acceptance” typically involve two agents, the entire range of emotions can apply to self or others.
If the emotion is cast on a 3rd person player avatar or is projected directly onto the player;
If the emotion is created by part of the game narrative, or if the emotion is part of the game system;

The mechanics and systems of the conveyance of emotion differs from single player experiences, multiplayer asynchronous experiences, and multiplayer synchronous experiences.

in a larger game setting, feeling an emotion may be required to advance a game state, which then provides a feeling of accomplishment.  A  theoretical adjunct to this entire problem state is a game that conveys the emotion as a goal in and of itself.

2. We then worked through games that conveyed emotions, determined whether or not those emotions were conveyed more by story than mechanic, and drilled down into those that could be conveyed more by mechanic.

3. We spent a significant amount of our time creating an operational computer game prototype that was as devoid as possible of emotional context.  The goal is to have people play simple mechanics and see whether or not behaviors exhibited in the game convey any particular emotional response in the player.

Items from the brainstorming lists that the group thought were worth reporting

Along the way, we discovered:

The way that emotions are conveyed are heavily dependent on whether or not the game is “app” or “epic”, and along another dimension if it is story-based or abstract (such as Twixt or Tetris).

Games that are multiplayer are much easier to use mechanics that convey emotions, as these have

The most challenging emotion we felt to explore in gameplay was “How do you make a game that conveys boredom fun”?  We created a first pass at this game.

section 6

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1. Introduction
2. Workgroup Reports Overview
3. Practical Psychological Manifesto
4. How to Reinvent a Genre
5. Topics, Tactics and Tools for Building Authentic Long-term Engagement Mechanisms
6. Emotions Through Rules And Systems
7. Location-Based Games
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