Affect, Responsibility, and How Modes of Engagement Shape the Experience of Videogames

Abstract

The experience of videogames is distinct from other forms of mediated storytelling because the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world due to dynamics within what Brendan Keogh calls the 'messy, hybrid assemblage' of videogame play:Games function through modes of engagement where people need to make decisions and take actions in order to proceed through a hybrid text, in a context that the player is affectively invested in, and which is personally relevant to both the player and their situation. A perception of responsibility grows out of that agency, since the player's decisions have a meaningful impact on a world and characters that they already invested in treating as if they were real.

“If anyone’s going to ruin your night, it should be you”: Responsibility and affective materiality in Undertale and Night in the Woods

“…'If anyone's going to ruin your night, Mae, it really should be you' One of the tools NITW uses to craft an empathetic and personally powerful storytelling experience is the lack of affective mediation found in playing video games compared to other media forms. As the player, you 2 are the one who responds to events both affectively and through choices, rather than a protagonist who the audience ideally sympathises with (Veale, 2011(Veale, , 2015. Christy Dena's concept of 'eureka discourse' is one example of a lack of affective mediation.…”

“…Her voice and identity within the storyworld are reinforced by caustic, clever observations about her environment and circumstances. As we explore the space with her, these simple interactions start building a feedback loop: because basic decisions like jumping and movement lead to predictable outcomes, we start investing in the idea that future decisions we might make will also have consequences, and consider them with affective weight as a result (Veale, 2015: 138–139).…”

Roman Cyborgs! On Significant Otherness, Material Absence, and Virtual Presence in the Archaeology of Roman Religion

“…Experiments with post-humanism and virtual environments are already being conducted sporadically, for instance in gaming and in exciting studies of digitally complemented zoomorphism (Appleöff Lyons & Brown Jaloza, 2016), or in the study of the digital sensoriality of artefacts to emphasize multi-sensorial and embodied interactions (Papadopoulos et al, in press). Some contemporary gaming initiatives have shifted focus from hand-eye coordination to a full-body immersive experience, and experiments are being conducted concerning their empathetic capacity as they foreground the affective experience of others rather than focusing solely on the construction of the self (Swink, 2009; Veale, 2015). The post-human body is diffracted into multiple post-humanities, multiple realities, and multiple pasts, thereby changing the humanist into a range of possibilities that are also non-human.…”

‘Friendship isn’t an emotion fucknuts’: Manipulating affective materiality to shape the experience of Homestuck’s story

“…Misha Kavka frames affect as ‘potential emotions – emotions that have not yet been perceived as such and thus constitute a “primordial soup” of feeling’ (2008: x ). 3 Affect requires investment on behalf of the person involved, and that investment is contextual in that it reflects what is relevant to both the individual and the situation in which the investment takes place (Veale, 2015: 3). For example, the experience of someone watching a television series they enjoy is going to be different and distinctive when watching it to relax than it will be when they’re studying it for an assignment.…”

“…Initially these games are very simple, 14 but they still change the labour and mode of engagement of the person engaging with the text, and later these games rapidly expand in depth and relevance to the storytelling experience. The modes of engagement which set the experience of games apart are grounded in the fact that it is the players of videogames who progress through the text, and come to feel responsible for the outcomes of their decisions and actions in the process (Veale, 2015, 2016). Making meaningful decisions with sensible consequences within the space of the game makes the player aware of a timeline of their own decisions and frames the experience as happening now.…”