"Whatever the Emotional Experience, It's Up to Them": Insights from Designers of Emotionally Impactful Games

Title of the Paper

“Whatever the Emotional Experience, It’s Up to Them”: Insights from Designers of Emotionally Impactful Games

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Research on the design of emotionally impactful games, focusing on the relationship between player experience and designers' perspectives and practices.
• Keywords: Emotional challenge, game designers, design practices, player agency, emotionally impactful games, emotions, player experience, video games

Research Background and Problems

• What problems or challenges did the authors identify?

  1. Current research on emotionally impactful games primarily focuses on player experience (PX), while the perspective of designers is largely overlooked.
  2. Existing studies emphasize the elicitation of specific emotions in players but rarely explore how designers create these game experiences.
  3. There is a disconnect between design practices and PX research, which hinders the development of theories and tools.

• Why is this issue important? Emotionally impactful games can provide profound and complex player experiences, which are significant in game research and design. Understanding designers' practices can help researchers develop more targeted theories and tools to support the design and evaluation of emotionally impactful games.

• Motivation and related work Previous research has extensively discussed players' emotional experiences, such as moments of being moved, challenged, or discomforted. However, how designers address these player experiences remains a mystery. The authors aim to explore designers' practices and values to bridge the gap between game research and practical design, proposing new research directions.

Solutions

• What methods or solutions did the authors propose? The authors conducted a study involving semi-structured interviews with 14 independent game designers to deeply explore their philosophies, motivations, and practices in designing emotionally impactful games.

• What is innovative about this solution?

  1. It provides direct insights from designers on the design of emotionally impactful games, a perspective that has been underexplored in previous research.
  2. It connects PX research with design practices, highlighting the gap between practitioners and academic research.
  3. It emphasizes the importance of player experience, particularly focusing on players' autonomous interpretations and personal experiences.

• What are the implementation steps? What key techniques were used?

  1. Interview Design: Open-ended questions were used to explore designers' motivations, player experience goals, strategies for designing emotional challenges, and the difficulties they face.
  2. Data Collection: Interviews were conducted via video calls, email, and instant messaging, resulting in approximately 40,000 words of data.
  3. Data Analysis: A qualitative method based on Thematic Analysis was used to code and categorize the interview content, ultimately identifying three themes.

Research Findings

• What specific findings were achieved?

  1. Design Vision: Designers often have a clear vision for the emotional goals of their games, such as evoking feelings of loneliness or disturbance, while encouraging players to form personalized interpretations and experiences.
  2. Gameplay: Designers create spaces where players can freely experience emotions, while gameplay mechanics are designed to reduce cognitive load and avoid interfering with the game's intent.
  3. Experience Refinement: Designers adjust games during development through testing and feedback to ensure the coherence of emotional experiences.

• What advantages does it have compared to existing solutions?

  1. It highlights designers' emphasis on open interpretation and personalized experiences, complementing discussions of emotional patterns in PX research.
  2. It identifies the disconnect between professional practices and the evaluation of emotional experiences, providing clear directions for future research.

• What are the experimental or evaluation results? The study reveals that designers often avoid collecting player feedback on emotional experiences during the early stages of design, as prototypes may not accurately reflect the final game's emotional effects. It also emphasizes that the evaluation of emotional experiences in games requires a complete and consistent development process.

• Limitations and future directions Limitations:

  1. The study mainly focuses on independent game designers, which may not be applicable to design processes in large game studios.
  2. The interviews are largely retrospective, based on already released games, and do not capture the dynamic details of the design process.
  3. The study does not explicitly discuss how contextual factors influence designers' perspectives.

  Future directions:

  1. Explore the perspectives and practices of designers in large game studios regarding emotionally impactful games.
  2. Conduct longitudinal studies to track the entire development process and reveal dynamic changes.
  3. Develop a shared research and design language to bridge the gap between practice and academic research.

Conclusion

Through interviews with independent game designers, this study reveals the practices and values underlying the design of emotionally impactful games, emphasizing the importance of players' active participation and personalized experiences in games. Based on the findings, the authors propose several future directions for PX research, including open interpretation, ambiguity in design, and the influence of player-related factors on emotional design. They also highlight ways to better support designers in evaluating and optimizing game experiences.