“This made me very emo5onal” A mixed method study of digital game players and emo5on Jenkins Alexander Communica5on, Culture, and Media, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA Introduc'on In the last decade digital games have undergone revolu5onary technological, mechanical, and narra5ve changes that have redefined how players experience and interact with games. This research was a mixed method study that examined how players discussed their emo5onal experiences and asked players to report the types of emo5ons that games elicit. Methods The qualita5ve method employed was a discourse analysis of 27 video game player diaries collected from gamers enrolled in a video game focused course. The most popular game choices for the journals were The Walking Dead, Dishonored, and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. The journals were analyzed for discussion of emo5on using qualita5ve textual analysis. The quan5ta5ve por5on of the study was an online ques5onnaire responded to by 406 users of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). This por5on of the study used Hakanen’s (2004) Emo5onal Recogni5on Inventory and an adapta5on of Yee’s (2006) player type survey. A principle component analysis was conducted on the 11 emo5ons from the inventory and three groupings were retained -­‐-­‐ posi5ve emo5ons (excitement, delight, happiness, sa5sfac5on, and passion), nega5ve emo5ons (anger, grief, sadness, and frustra5on), and ego-­‐
centered emo5ons (pride and sa5sfac5on). A principle component analysis was also conducted on the player types. This yielded three player type components (PTCs), Immersion, Social, and Achievement. Qualita've Analysis Conclusions There were also posi5ve emo5ons reported in the game play journals, like sa5sfac5on and excitement. For example: Players reported feeling a range of emo5ons in the game play journals. By far the most prevalent of the nega5ve emo5ons men5oned in the journals was frustra5on. For example: “Arriving to the hos5le territory I just became super mad. I already restarted it five 5mes. Like my rage level is so high…So just make myself feel good, I played the level killing everyone. I used all my bombs, arrows, gunfire and traps. I just went crazy and killed as many people as I could. There was no mercy even a lady that was doing nothing I just stealth killed her. AJer the ten minutes of doing that, I restarted the level. It felt great. I need that.” “I was able to defeat aJer a few more changes, giving me probably my most sa5sfying feeling from playing the game.” “I have come to a point in the game where the mission become more challenging definitely. They are geMng more intense – that sweat palm, nerve wracking feeling. I found myself yelling at the TV some5mes.” “I was greatly frustrated because I wasted a substan5al amount of 5me trying to complete this objec5ve. I was very turned off by this and took some 5me off from playing” “I tried a few more 5mes and aJer con5nuously dying, my confidence was gone and I got too frustrated and decided to quit before I got too mad” Posi5ve
Quan'ta've Analysis As the table on the right shows, players largely reported agreeing or strongly agreeing that they felt posi5ve emo5ons and pride while playing digital games and strongly disagreeing that they felt anger, sadness, or grief when they played digital games. A linear regression analysis (shown below) also displays the absence of nega5ve emo5ons in the Mturk sample. In the emo5on-­‐PTC model nega5ve emo5ons explain very liEle of the varia5on. The immersion player type is a strong predictor in both the posi5ve and egocentric emo5ons. Immersion
Social
Achievement
R2
F
Posi3ve Emo3ons
B
SE B
.38
.05
.05
.05
.27
.05
β
.38***
.05
.26***
.21
27.11***
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Neither Agree
Agree nor Disagree
Excitement 1% (5)
3% (11)
9% (36)
58% (235) 29% (119)
Delight
4% (16)
14% (58)
57% (232) 23% (93)
Happiness 1% (4)
2% (6)
11% (46)
60% (242) 27% (108)
Sa5sfac5on 2% (6)
2% (8)
11% (45)
60% (243) 26% (104)
Passion
14% (56)
23% (94)
40% (163) 13% (51)
2% (7)
10% (42)
Strongly Agree
There was a no5ceable discrepancy of nega5ve and posi5ve emo5ons between the survey research and journal research. In the qualita5ve study players frequently discussed the presence of nega5ve emo5ons while they played a digital game. Frustra5on and anger were frequent topics of discussion in the journals, as were feelings of sadness during certain moments of gameplay or in the narra5ve of the digital game. In the quan5ta5ve study there is largely an absence of nega5ve emo5ons. This likely indicates that there is some issue of emo5onal salience with regard to how players experience emo5on in the moment while playing a game and how players recall their emo5onal experiences with digital games. Future research should further examine emo5onal salience and recall. Why do nega5ve emo5ons seems to be put in the background by players? Why do players want to discuss games in terms of posi5ve emo5ons? Nega5ve
Anger
40% (159) 30% (121) 16% (66)
13% (53)
2% (6)
Grief
49% (200) 35% (140) 11% (43)
5% (21)
1% (2)
Sadness
58% (233) 30% (123) 9% (35)
3% (12)
1% (2)
Frustra5on 20% (80)
23% (93)
24% (98)
30% (122) 3% (13)
18% (71)
31% (125) 38% (154) 7% (28)
9% (38)
25% (102) 49% (200) 13% (54)
Egocentric
Pride
7% (28)
Confidence 3% (12)
Nega3ve Emo3ons
B
SE B
.00
.06
-­‐.01
.06
.10
.06
Egocentric Emo3ons
β
B
SE B
β
.00
.27
.05
.27***
-­‐.01
.32
.05
.33***
.12
.11
.05
.11*
.00
.19
1.14
23.45***
References Hakanen, E. A. (2004). Rela5on of emo5onal intelligence to emo5onal recogni5on and mood management. Psychological Reports, 94, 1097-­‐1103. Yee, N. (2006). Mo5va5ons for play in online games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(6), 772-­‐775. For More Informa'on Please contact arj28@drexel.edu