“Tomb Raiders & Space Invaders” by King & Krzywinska

The book looks games for four different perspective:

  • gameplay
  • gamespace
  • realism, spectacle, and sensation
  • cultural

I find the first chapter Gameplay and its context most elaborated part. Conceps like gameplay, genre, narrative (or representations), and their relations are explored in detail. They argue, e.g., that the role of genre (and representational level) is to guide players in the game (building their argument from paper by Satu and me among others, so I must mention this;).

Continue reading ““Tomb Raiders & Space Invaders” by King & Krzywinska”

Evolutionary Neurobiology and Aesthetics

Smith study on how some evolutionary aspects might relate to aesthetic evaluations.

  • Sensory system is tuned to react unexpected; unexpected inputs leads high arousal state and that might be basis for aesthetics of modern: shock of new
  • Savannah-like landscapes with water, large trees, semi-open space, changes in elevation, and some complexity is preferred across different cultures; environments of hunter-gatherers
  • Also landscapes with mystery (what’s behind that hill) seems to have cross-cultural appeal; they appeal humans inborn thirst for knowledge
  • Bases of beauty and ugliness comes from inborn functions of mate selection
  • Appreciation of symmetry relates to our bodies: they are symmetric. Sense of harmony have also bodily bases — it relates to pulse.
  • Complexity appeals to our thirst of knowledge
  • Aesthetic preferences have plausible evolutionary origins, but that does not exclude that interactions with environment will shape aesthetic preferences

Smith, C. U. M. (2005). Evolutionary Neurobiology and Aesthetics. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48 (1). http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/perspectives_in_biology_and_medicine/v048/48.1smith.pdf

Neuroaesthetics

Papers on neuroaesthetics seem, at first glance, seem to be interesting. I need to take more detailed look on these:

Goals, Affects, and Empathy in Games

***
To be presented at
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES
REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY, ON JANUARY 25�27, 2007
The paper available on conference web site
http://game.unimore.it/Papers/Lankoski_Paper.pdf
Version on my site contains few typo corrections
EDIT: An extended and much revised version of this paper was published in The Philosophy  of Computer Games with the title Computer Games and Emotions.
***

Petri Lankoski
University of Art and Design Helsinki

Mette Hjort and Sue Laver notes:

It is generally assumed that art and emotion are inextricably linked, as is shown by even the most cursory account of the history of critical thinking about music, painting, literature, or theatre. [1]

The same goes with games, whether one see games as art or not: aesthetics and affective experience of a game are connected. Affects are the basic building block of experience. Furthermore, the important function of affects in games is to guide decision-making and attention. [2] In this sense, goals are vital part of games as they give basis for decision-making: The goals give means to reason and decide which outcome is more advantageous in a given situation. Without preferred outcome, the decisions are meaningless. Affects are also important in social domain�when we are interacting with others. [3] It seems that affects, especially empathy with characters, are also crucial in engaging with film and literary fiction. [4] As a starting point, I assume that this is also a case with games with anthropomorphic characters, entities that get categorized as persons. (Typical features that trigger categorizations as a person include: discrete human body, intentional states like goals, affects, persistent attributes or traits, self-impelled actions, and self-awareness and self-interpretation.) [5]

Continue reading “Goals, Affects, and Empathy in Games”

“Investigating the Affects of Music on Emotion in Games” by Moffat & Kiegler

  • N=15, Three random groups (N=5), 11 male, 4 female, aged between 18 and 26.
  • They were evaluating two Alan Wake trailers in the study with different types of music.
  • Study was about comparison of affects when viewing of the clip with different music (group1: silence, clip 1, and fearful, clip 2; g2 sad and aggressive; g3: happy and fearful).
  • Participants labeled their affects and study indicates that background music influenced labeling in statistically significantly.
  • Skin conductivity,heart rate, and pupil-range indications measured corresponded to the reported affects.
  • Study was also addressing to the question whether music influenced player’s thinking: especially aggressive music made participant infer situation differently (question used here was something like: “Alan Wake have gun in his coat pocket, agree-disagree).
  • They state: “An inappropriate piece of music can kill the experience for the player”, which seem intuitively correct.
  • However, the study does not address whether playing the game would change the results; there might be differences between concentrating on clip and concentrating on making decisions (especially if cognitive load of playing is high).

Moffat & Kiegler. 2006. Investigating the Affects of Music on Emotion in Games. Presented at Audio Mostly Games, Piteaå, Sweden (October 11 – 12). Available http://wood.tii.se/sonic/images/stories/amc06/amc_proceedings_low.pdf.