Affective responses in Digital Games

In Digital Gaming

Emerging Studies (2004)

• Visual Bias has dominated games studies: a structural/semiotic angle– Structure/rhetorical/narrative/taxonomical– Semiotic and rhetorical understanding of

enjoyment– Psychoanalytical frameworks to understand

relationships between players/characters/gamespace

– Interactivity: A Rhetorical Performance Loop

Games are powerful

Experience or Affect is key

• The rush you get from playing is not confined to the screen;

• It is sub-rational, • a body thing• It has affective dimensions, which are not

programmed but vital to the game.

Affect?

• Affect is not about emotions• It is a way to describe the “feel” or intensity of

an experience• Semiotic approach can address content but

NOT the user’s experience• Theories of affect alter how we understand

the meaning and experience of virtuality and virtual space and politics of games.

Virtual space

• Is part of the real world• Interactivity is not a simple transaction between

eye and mind• Interactivity is a transaction between

eye/mind/body It is a reflexive/strategic relationships

• Virtual is a REALM of potentialities based on peoples’ experiences, not just content distribution systems.

Example

PostModern Cybertheories

• Release of the subject from the body • The “floating eye ball”• Assumptions: – Cartesianesque subject: The subject is distinct from then

world, a disembodied mind– Sight is the dominant sense, experience is visual– Narrative: from the movement of the eye in a cinematic space– Pictorial perception of Time and space that only exist only in

content– Virtual = withdrawing from the world/isolation

Floating eye?

Perception?

• Also has an intensity: – strength of duration of an effect– Embodied reactions: skin response, heartbeat

etc…– We don’t just see images, we experience them in

ways structural/rhetorical/narrative analysis cannot adequately explain.

Human Perception

• Image Perception is synaesthetic: involves the participation of other senses and rooted in hearing, movement, touch.

• Embodiement and hapticity is essential to understanding the game image.

• The effect of presence is felt not seen.• Touch + movement + vision = Spacial

coherence

The body senses

• Tactile/Affective Perception: Links subjectivity + active presence in the world. NOT withdrawn from it

• The body is a multisensory system that is fully engaged in digital games and worlds.

Power• Cartesian= a specific system of power• Media transmission = real world events become cinema• Many games = cinema• Affective system: games are dynamic system in flux, change is

central to them • Games which address political/social issues might do so by

encouraging change and modification instead of role playing.• Designing social content in games that incorporates players in

action• There are new realities to be met with in our interactions with

games; Thru looking at games as affective and embodied praxes.• Opening up new relations between mind/body/technology

For example