Week 1
Date 3/10/07
Over the past week since receiving the project, I have read many journals to help understand the title and hopefully start to move the project forward with a pitch idea.
Below is a list of journals I have read so far with a brief description
1.
M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones, Editors (2000).Evolutionary Psychology and the Emotions
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/emotion.html
Date accessed: 27/09/07This document focuses on emotions and uses fear as its example. It goes into great detail about what happens to the body during emotion such as fear. Later on in the document it goes onto how to characterize an emotion, which could come in useful later into our project.
2.
Evoking fear in video games
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1528238
Date Accessed 28/09/07This gives seven methods which are used by game developers to will try and induce a state of panic or fear in the gamer. From this document I am going to do some research into conditioned response as this seems like an interesting topic to look into..
3.
Darryl Charles and Michaela Black (2005), Dynamic Player Modelling: A Framework for Player-centred Digital Games. http://www.cp.eng.chula.ac.th/~vishnu/gameResearch/AI_november_2005/DynamicPlayerModelling.pdf
Date Accessed: 28/09/07There was only one piece of information that I could take from this journal and that was that game players will sometimes adapt there own gameplay style due emotional response.
4.
Daniel Muller, Heather Logas, Mise-en-scène Applied to Level Design: Adapting a Holistic Approach to Level Design
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.13262.pdf
Date Accessed: 28/09/07This was a very good journal; it explains how mise-en-scene can be applied to level design and how emotion can be portrayed by using the techniques that are used in films.
One quote stood out from this article:
“In the future, level designers have the opportunity to become a very important part of creating more emotional experiences in games. Examining the ways mise-en-scéne is used in film will help these designers adapt a holistic approach to their own discipline and create deeper resonance with the player for whom the game is ultimately created.”I feel that mise-en-scene is a very important aspect to this project and should be investigated further.
5.
Eugénie Shinkle, Feel It, Don’t Think: the Significance of Affect in the Study of Digital Games
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.00216.pdf
Date Accessed 30/09/07This was another good article which brought affect into the emotion debate. It goes on to explain that affect is the ’emotional factors’ that motivate individuals to play games, and list beauty, aesthetics, enjoyment, and fun as possible affective factors
6.
Bernard Perron, A Cognitive Psychological Approach to Gameplay Emotions
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.58345.pdf
Date accessed: 30/09/07This was another brilliant journal. It was a study into the emotions the player is likely to feel during gameplay. It breaks up these emotions and gives them different names such as ‘Fiction emotion’ or F emotions, which the documents quotes as being
“Rooted in the fictional world and the concerns addressed by that world, the first type of emotions are referred to as fiction emotions or F emotions [27 : p. 65] To begin with, though the viewer or gamer visits, via the power of their imagination, a fictional world where he or she runs no risk, this world does have an emotional impact. It is not the same thing to step into the nightmarish city of Silent Hill, the corrupt neighbourhoods of Grand Theft Auto, or the fantasy worlds of Final Fantasy.”(Fiction emotions or F emotions [27: p. 65]. This refers to the book Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine by Ed S. Tan)It goes on to give more examples such as the Artefact Emotion and the Gameplay Emotions
7.
Nicole Lazzaro (2004) Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story
http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf
Date Accessed 30/09/07This was a very interesting journal to read as it was the results from a study into the emotional impact that games have. The final results gave ‘the four keys to unlock emotion with.’ These 4 keys are Hard Fun, Easy Fun, Altered States, and The People Factor.
8.
Veronica L. Zammitto, The Expressions of Colours
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06278.05074.pdf
Date accessed: 1/10/07
This journal gave me another perspective into how emotions can be expressed on screen through the use of colour. It has a table in the journal that gives a list of colour and a description into the feeling that that colour gives off. This could come in useful as we continue through our project.
9.
Sienna, Mise-en-scène http://www.gignews.com/mise_en_scene.htm
Date accessed: 1/10/07This gives a good explanation into what mise-en-scene is:
“Mise-en-scene is a cinematography term, from the French, which means roughly '"Arranging the scene." Not to be confused with genre, it is the Mise-en-scène that implicitly defines the mood, color, style, and feeling of the world. It includes the style of art, camera movement, lighting, architecture, terrain, atmosphere, color palettes, and generally everything that is not a player controlled character or the graphic interface.”10.
Jones, Mike (2007), Game Probe - Bioshock narrative architecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSNE-Oz_iUM
Date accessed: 2/10/07
This video explains about how it is the composition of space and architecture (mise-en-scene) that creates the emotional content in games, and it uses Bioshock as an example. This is very interesting as I could see via the video what the narrator was explaining. This will hopefully prove to be a useful tool for what to look out for in games in the future.
11.
Campbell, Colin, Lazzaro, Game Theory Episode 9 – Emotion
http://www.gametheoryshow.com/index.php?post_id=216328
Date accessed: 2/10/07
This was a Podcast that was free to download and listen to. Colin Campbell and Nicole Lazzaro talk about the emotional gaps in gaming, and how with more research into the area of emotion in games can give the player a more in depth game experience.
There was one comment that stood out in this Podcast and that was that Lazzaro explains that in films that viewer has no choice as to what happens on screen, whereas in computer games the player has a choice and this can be a factor in the emotion that the player is feeling.
Overall I have read a lot of journals over the past week. There was some key information such as the mise-en-scene, which sets the scene in a film or game to convey emotion. Also the gameplay emotion is also very important. Further research into these topics will be continued over the next week.
