Wired Realities: Unveiling the Human Circuit

SOME WOULD ARGUE THAT THE IMMERSIVENESS OF GAME PLAY MAKES VIDEO GAMES THE MOST AFFECTIVE MEDIUM. BUT HOW DO GAME DESIGNERS MOVE US THROUGH GAME PLAY?

Abstract

This critical response explores how game designers use Affect Theory to shape the emotions of players through choices, narrative, and sensory design. Giving players choices creates agency and emotional depth, and sensory elements like music and visuals enhance immersion. Using Uses and Gratifications Theory, Affect Theory, and Media Effects Theory, this paper explores how games fulfilemotional needs and foster empathy and emotional expression. Ultimatel-ecome tools for emotional exploration, influencing how players process feelings in digital and real-world contexts.

Introduction

Games designers use a number of techniques to manipulate the emotions of players. Presenting them with choices, narratives, and sensory design are a few key techniques that accomplish this. Choices create a dynamic experience that resonates on an emotional level. Their characters are both abstract and real and they have 'potential'. According to authoritative sources like Brian Massumi and Aubrey Anable, players experiencing emotions as part of the gameplay isn’t purely a byproduct of play itself, but is in fact woven into the interactive fabric of games.

Choices as Affective Tools

One of the most powerful affecting tools that games designers use is choices, which in part enables player agency. Unlike passive media such as movies, books, radio, paintings, or photography - video games require active participation. The players’ decisions can have a direct impact on the narrative, world, or have other effects in the game, and its outcomes. This creates a personal investment for the player - to the characters and of the game world. Choices create engagement for the player by giving them a sense of agency, and allows them to shape their own story in meaningful ways. Open world, or sandbox games increase this sense of agency - though sometimes the journeys players take may need intervention through seamless, unobtrusive guidelines, instructions, or directions, and finding this balance is another important aspect of games design.

For instance, in games like The Witcher or Mass Effect, moral choices confront players with dilemmas that often don’t have a clear 'right' or 'wrong' answer, and ask them to think about their own values, ethics, and desires to weigh them against the consequences (Sicart, 2013). This not only immerses the players in the story, but can trigger emotions such as guilt, grief, and regret, along with pride, joy, or satisfaction while navigating the complex scenarios and story lines. This creates an emotional bond with the player and player character (PCs), as well as places, non-player characters (NPCs), and elements in the game world (Anable, 2018). This can lead players to load a previous saved game (known as scum-saving) if the reward is not a satisfactory pay-off in the case of emotional turmoil, erasing (potentially) hours of gameplay.

Affective Triggers and Pre-conscious Reactions

Through the lens of Affect Theory, choices act as affective triggers. While in the moment, the decision – for example, to pick up the bedroll and water bottle lying on the sidewalk – may not have any direct emotional impact the way an immediate decision would, but when the consequence is revealed to the player – that for example they were a homeless man’s only possessions – it sparks an emotional response through the consequences of their actions. This is an application of preconscious reaction. The immediacy of choice means that players often respond instinctively and the emotional impact is only processed after the consequences are revealed.

Designers use this interplay between the immediate and processing to create emotional depth making players feel responsible for the world they are shaping or characters they are interacting with, and for – this in turn heightens their connection to the narrative, or other elements of the game. Games that lack meaningful consequences often feel less immersive; linear titles such as The Last of Us, Uncharted, Half-Life, and Inside offer limited player impact on the narrative, providing a curated experience focused on storytelling instead. Games like these may sometimes present the illusion of choice, (Juul 2005), but ultimately they guide players along a fixed path, limiting their sense of agency and emotional involvement (Isbister, 2016).

Sensory Design and Emotional Arcs

There are many different aspects of game design. Sensory elements like music and sounds are a sometimes overlooked aspect, and leveraging these sensory elements to create variable affective music and ambient sounds, and culturally coded sound effects to guide players through emotional arcs enhance the overall immersion experienced by players (Collins, 2013). These elements, when expertly curated, influence players’ moods and emotional states.

Doom 3 is a great example of this – it incudes the feeling of terror by switching from tense, building music made of soft, high-pitched strings, and low guttural noises of the creatures from Hell, and being in pitch dark with nothing but a sliver of light to guide your character through mazes, while being surrounded by demons making low, guttural sleeping noises. Sound cues like creaking doors or sudden footsteps, increase anxiety and anticipationmaking players feel the weight of their decisions even more acutely.

These elements are seamlessly integrated into the world with triggers and pacing sometimes used in horror movies (Kirkland, 2009). Then in the next sequence, the game designers expertly move to an action-fuelled score and change the pace and feeling of the game drastically. This cycle continually moves the players’ flow states (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), changing and increasing the challenge by manipulating player emotions

Sonic the Hedgehog is a classic example where culturally coded cues, both visually and aurally, are leveraged to tap into the psychological allure of risk and reward. For example, the game features spinning gold rings that are visually similar to gold coins in slot machine games, and thus stimulate a sense of excitement and anticipation. By capitalising on familiar audio cues, these coins trigger dopamine releases and reinforce the reward system (Schüll, 2012).

Such affective tools work in unison with choices, enhancing the immersive impact of each decision,encouraging players to feel as though they are truly part of the game world.

Uses and Gratification Theory in Reward Systems

Gaming can fulfil greater emotional needs such as exploration, escapism, or the desire for control, which can be achieved by using rewards systems in gaming and mechanisms which are carefully and deliberately written to enhance this and are tailored to fulfil a need for each 'type' of player (Bartle, 2004).

For example, mechanics applied for Achievers might be XP; secrets for the Explorers; avatars and customisations for the Socialisers;while Killers might be presented with leaderboards and tournaments to fulfill their competitive needs. This can be linked directly to Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), which suggests that people seek out certain media to fulfil these needs (Rubin, 2009), and is especially evident in narrative-driven games like Life is Strange, where player choices directly shape the narrative, creating unique emotional experiences that can make the player feel personally involved with the characters (Shaw, 2015).

Emotional Labour and Empathy Through Choices

By making choices that have an effect in game, the players are engaging in emotional labour - the impact of which extends beyond the personal feelings of the player and has social and cultural ramifications within the game. This creates a layered experience of empathy and reflection which encourages players to consider the consequences of their actions on other characters and the virtual society around them, fostering a deeper connection to the narrative and its moral complexities (Isbister, 2016).

The media effects model is relevant to this and highlights the influence of media on emotional and behavioural outcomes, demonstrating how games can shape players' empathy, decision-making, and moral understanding (Bryant & Oliver, 2009). Through these decisions, players are encouraged to empathise with characters, reflect on the consequences of their choices, and connect with the greater gaming community, sharing their journeys and discussing the impact and emotions their choices have brought about (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004).

Emotional Exploration

These choices are more than just gameplay mechanics – they are affective tools, that allows players to connect in ways that traditional passive media cannot, whilst also being able to provide the same or similar connection that passive media does. This allows players to work through complex emotions, concepts, and relationships, letting them make decisions and face consequences in a virtual world that they may not normally have access to, and indeed for many, their gaming world is as real as 'real life', with many people forming complex, deep, and long-lasting relationships in gamessuch as World of Warcraft (WoW). As players interact with the world and others in the world, they experience a range of emotions from fear to pride, sadness, and joy (Anable, 2018). Games become spaces where emotions are not simply experienced but actively navigated, allowing players to process and make sense of them in ways unique to interactive media.

Conclusion – Games as Affective Journeys

By integrating choices, sensory design, UGT reward systems, and other affective tools into their narratives, game designers evoke deep emotional engagement from players, creating an affective journey that resonates long after the game ends. Through these crafted experiences, games become cultural artifacts with the unique ability to engage players on many different emotional levels through variable angles which can be defined per player. The profound ways in which affect operates within the cultural industries shape the way we understand and process emotions both in virtual and real worlds (Hesmondhalgh, 2013).

This makes gaming an extremely powerful medium for experiential and emotional exploration, and in this author’s opinion, gaming has the potential to be the most powerful method of storytelling, as it can combine approaches and techniques from other mediums to achieve this outcome.

References

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