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Jacob Pasche

Mr. Dees

Major Assignment 3: Scholarly Research Article

4 April 2024

Emotion in Video Games: What's so Special About These Ones and Zeros

Why do video games cause emotion? What about these cold lines of code

creates an experience someone will never forget. This is the topic of my research article

trying to dig deep into what makes an impact and how it does so. There are many fields

of gamedev that could affect this. But, most have been researched such as sound

design, art, level design. However, the niche my research falls into is the story itself. In

this article I will analyze popular games, find the popular story elements, then conduct

research as to the difference in reaction between a naked game versus one with a story.

This research is very important to all in the field of making video games. Whether

it is for monetary value or as a creative outlet everyone should want to make the best

thing that they can, and to do so they need to know what makes a good story. By setting

popular games such as Undertale, Omori, Outer Wilds, and Celeste as the benchmark

for plots and characters to add to my research project there will be no shortage of

excellent ideas that many fans adore. Putting these elements to the test will help us find

out what's the most effective way to hook the player in and how to make sure they never

forget that experience. The reason why this research means a lot to me is because I

have had many moments myself playing games growing up where I felt like I was a part

of that world. Finding out the reasons as to why, and being able to implement them into
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my own games to hopefully make someone else feel that way would be the ultimate

accomplishment.

There are not many people that are researching the topic I am. Thus the

secondary sources I could find are not very specific to the idea of story elements.

However, articles that will help greatly are: “Death with a Story: How Story Impacts

Emotional,Motivational, and Physiological Responses to First-Person Shooter Video

Games.” This is an article that researches how players react when there is a story

introduced into a fps(first person shooter). While the research project that they did is

very similar to mine they mainly researched aggressiveness and whether it changed

how ruthless they were to the enemies. The idea of hate is very useful when propelling

a story and I will use a main bad guy to use this feeling. In a similar sense of developing

an emotional response to characters the article “Undertale’s Loveable Monsters:

Investigating Parasocial Relationships with Non-Player Characters.”Is the best thing I

could possibly research to find out how to implement a NPC to my videogame. By

knowing what causes people to feel attached to characters I can better deliver the story

in a more impactful way. Hopefully creating a better and closer bond with the characters

that will ultimately lead to a greater conclusion in the end. To make the end even greater

I will be implementing a version of this unique idea “If anyone’s going to ruin your night,

it should be you.” Responsibility and affective materiality in Undertale and Night in the

Woods.”your own morality causes differences in the story. This will be an excellent thing

to test because depending on what actions you take during the game you can get one

of the two endings hopefully being able to see if there is guilt or triumph when they find

out how their actions affected the outcome. However the research that these and the
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other articles I found are not similar to mine. Because I will be tracking the

implementation of story elements and responses to them. This is the niche that my

research will take on, a topic not heavily researched but one that is crucial to any game

developer.

So how will I use this data and turn it into a research topic? In order to implement

ideas and monitor gamers' responses to the story I made two versions of a game. One

version is solely a side scroller game where you defeat enemies one by one until you

escape the forest after defeating a homeless man. In the second version, however, it is

the exact same but has 3 unique differences.

1) The first thing they are greeted with is a video showing them losing their dog in a

forest.

2) They encounter a homeless man that you can either give money to or not.

3) If you choose to not give the homeless man money, a cut scene plays where he tells

you it's your fault for thinking he's less than you and kills your dog.

The gameplay itself was about five to ten minutes and I had a small sample size of six

people play the game due to difficulty with publishing it. Three people played the version

with a story and only one decided to give the homeless man money. The following are

the research questions asked with a few notable answers, and a chart about how

people felt at significant points in the game.

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Research Questions:

The top two are people who played without the story and the bottom two are people

who played with the story.

The basic questions:

● How did the absence/implementation of a story affect your emotional
engagement?
1. “It was a lot of fun but I didn't feel any emotion besides that.”
2. “I was just killing enemies because I could.”

1. “It felt tense.”

2. “‘I’m mad at the hobo.”
● Did you feel any attachment to the game world?
1. “No.”
2. “No, but I thought the main character was cool.”

1. “Yeah the dog is cute.”

2. “I don't know but I hate that guy.”
● Did you feel enjoyment, satisfaction, or fulfillment after finishing the game?
1. “Yeah, it was fun.”
2. “It was fun.”

1. “The gameplay was enjoyable and I was engaged but I don't like the
ending.”
2. “I was happy to save my dog.”
● Would you play again
1. “Yeah I would play again.”
2. “There's not a lot of replayability.”
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3. “No, I'm content.”

4. “I need to get revenge.”

The specific questions

● How did facing the final boss make you feel
1. “It was just a boss.”
2. “Nervous I guess.”

3. “After seeing him kill my dog I was angry.”

4. “I was shocked before the fight but happy I won.”
● Did you feel an urge to finish the game
1. “Yeah.”
2. “Not really.”

1. “Yeah.”
2. “Yeah I wanted to know what happened to the dog.”
● How did you feel after completing the game
1. “Good.”
2. “Happy.”

1. “Good”
2. “Mad”
● Why didn't you give the homeless man money?
- “I didn't think it would change anything”
- “Why would I?”
- “I’m a philanthropist”
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By analyzing the results of the primary research it is easy to tell that there was a

lot more emotion in the second version even if it was primarily negative. The fact that

only adding 3 things changed the game from a fun boring side scroller to an emotional

and tense scenario is fascinating. Through this I’ve learned that even something as

simple as adding a short plot changes the emotion greatly and by implementing more in

depth ideas from great game devs such as your actions affecting the outcome greatly

increases the overall experience for better or for worse. Overall the findings are that

despite having no sound and mediocre art the story is the most important part. And that

it is not as complicated as many make it out to be. By simply adding a story the

effectiveness, replayability, and impact of your product increases greatly. This confirms

my previous research however, I thought other parts of the game would matter more

and that it would change this much.

The implications of this are that when creating a game the most important thing is

the writing. Without decent writing your game is a dime in a dozen and this is something

that every game developer should know. The implementation of consequence to your

own actions changed everyone's emotions greatly. So because of this I would like to

test in the future different types of writing. like adding foreshadowing or other small

things and testing subtle differences. I can take away from this research and enhance

my future games to be able to reach more and more people.

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Works Cited

Welhouse, Zach. “What Am I Fighting For?”: Creating a Controlled Vocabulary for

Video Game Plot Metadata.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol 53, no. 2,

2015, pp. 157-189. This source talks about how to define genres and what effect

that has on a user. The author mainly dives into the idea of defining genres

based on a multitude of characteristics. He finds out the most efficient way to

describe your game based on the different auditory and visual aspects of the

designs. The reason he says that properly and accurately defining your genre is

important; is because it makes recommending your game to other more popular

games much easier. The reason why you would want this is because it will not

only drive more users to your game but make sure that people who like those

types of games find you. This will in turn create a strong fanbase and better

reviews that would've come from people who don't enjoy things like this but got

led to believe it was something else. The reason I am using this as a source is

because defining a genre to work within and knowing how to use the aspects of a

game to properly elevate the story. With a clear idea, the story will be more

fleshed out and real than before. In the article, he conducts a study about

Wouters, Pieter. “The Role of Game Discourse Analysis and Curiosity in Creating

Engaging and Effective Serious Games by Implementing a Back Story and

Foreshadowing” Interacting with Computers, vol. 23, no. 4, July 2011,

pp.329–336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom. 2011.05.001 In this source, the

author's main concern is how to create an engaging and effective game. In order

to achieve the results that he wanted he conducted a research study. He had

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people try a game he made with different aspects changed and different

storylines. He found that by foreshadowing the gameplay was much more

engaging. Alongside foreshadowing other common and easy-to-use writing skills

elevated the experience greatly. This is a very valuable resource eto be able to

reference because it has direct data on the effect stories have on video games.

By being able to reference how an engaging story is directly related to

enjoyability I can greatly speed up the point I am trying to make in the article. I

will be using this resource to properly showcase that good writing is directly

important in making a game great. This will lead into the main point about how to

even make a good story clearer and more impactful because there is a direct

reason as to why we should care about this research topic.

Schneider, Edward F et al. “Death with a Story: How Story Impacts Emotional,

Motivational, and Physiological Responses to First-Person Shooter Video

Games.” Human communication research, vol. 30, no. 3, 2004, pp. 361–375.

Web. This study investigates how the game-playing experience changes when a

story is added to a first-person shooter game. Dependent variables include

identification, presence, emotional experiences, and motivations. When the story

was present, game players felt greater identification, a sense of presence, and

physiological arousal. The presence of a story did not affect self-reported arousal

or dominance. This study demonstrates that story is something that video game

players enjoy; it helps involve them in the game play, makes them feel more

immersed in the virtual environment, and keeps them engaged. The greater

character identification may be especially worrisome, as past research has

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shown that justified media violence disinhibits actual aggression on the part of

the audience. I will use this source as a beginning argument as to why a story is

even necessary for a game. The author does a great job showing the results

from the studies and proving logically the differences in people when put into the

same game but different backgrounds. my primary research will be based on this

idea of creating two games one with a story and one without but studying more

so the emotions.

Martínez-Tejada Laura, González Alex, Yoshimura Natsue et al, "Video Game design as

an elicit tool for emotion recognition experiments," 2020 IEEE International

Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2020, pp. 4320-4326. In

this article, the author conducts in depth research into how video game designs

directly relate to emotions. The research done will be incredibly useful to me to

elaborate on the idea of emotions based on writing the theme setting and

characters. There are many different scenes in video games that elicit a strong

emotional feeling solely from the writing. There is a scene where a knight has to

sacrifice himself to save someone and the art is beautiful. However in a similar

situation in lisa the painful the art is lacking however just because of the story

and characters it causes a even stronger reaction than the latter. This source will

help me explain why research into the effect of game development is important

and how using this toolbox of information elevates someone's experience tenfold.

The result of the study was of course that the more engaging art and gameplay

created a better environment and experience for the player. I will be using a

similar primary resource.

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Veale, K. “If anyone’s going to ruin your night, it should be you.” Responsibility and

affective materiality in Undertale and Night in the Woods.” Convergence, vol. 28,

no. 2, May 2021, pp. 451-467. This source talks about how games like Undertale

and Night in the Woods use the effect of your morality to influence the game.

This is a very important reference when it comes to making a good story for a

game. The emotional connection that the author talks about is something that

you should always keep in mind. This article tells us that when making the user

reflect on their decision. In doing so, both games apply storytelling techniques

that distinguish playing video games from the experience of other media forms

and encourage an empathetic engagement with fictional storyworlds.This article

shows the master class of creators like Toby Fox and how directly relating

progression even if subtle changes as the story progresses will cause a great

sense of morality and control for the user. When I played through Undertale I

killed every monster I came across because I treated it as a normal game.

However, as the city slowly started getting desolate and families were missing

their parents, this video game made me emotionally connected and feel guilty.

This article will help when researching how to write engaging and emotional

stories and the effect that good writing has on players.

Elvery, G. “Undertale’s Loveable Monsters: Investigating Parasocial Relationships with

Non-Player Characters.” Games and Culture, vol. 18, no. 4, 2023, pp. 475-497.

This article also uses Undertale as an example but focuses on how Toby Fox

writes the side characters so well that people feel a one-sided parasocial

relationship towards them. I will explain parasocial relationships in the article and
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that this is the goal when creating a game like this. I will use this article towards

the end talking about side characters, and interaction with non-player characters

(NPCs) that simulates one-sided social interaction. This is a common feature of

many role-playing video games (RPGs). This article marries close analysis of the

video game Undertale with theories of parasocial phenomena to examine how

effective parasocial relationships (PSRs) are created with its cast of quirky,

loveable monsters. The article uses players’ reception of the game in the form of

Steam reviews and Let’s play content to evidence players’ attachments to NPCs

and uses the concept of parasociality coupled with close reading to explore why.

This is a valuable asset to one of the elements of my video game, Creating a

lovable character. By researching further into how to make great side characters I

can better conduct my research.

Marina Klimenko and Kevin Kapadia and Gaillot Jr Andre. “What Are the Morals of

Video Game Stories? A Content Analysis of the Most Popular Video Games”

Journal of Broadcasting \& Electronic Media, vol. 67, 2023, pp. 553-573.

This is a very cool research article that searches the most popular video games

and finds the moral principles presented in it. They go in depth about the data

regarding the amount or moral implications presented and what type of moral

value it is. They use this research to find like and disliked principles the game

takes. The idea of loyalty was the highest and having to break it caused intense

emotional reactions to the player. By using moral decisions to guide your game

you can effectively manipulate the player towards feeling a certain way. By

forcing them to make the decision or by causing long term reactions to their own
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character the attachment and emotion a story and extrude is great. The findings

show that binding moral domain is overrepresented. Frequent exposure to

certain moral themes may increase players’ preference for the themes. And

although loyalty was the most frequently and positively depicted moral theme.

And that games are very morally heavy but they usually don't have a great effect

on if the decisions are right or not.