Why We Play Games – The Player Experience

To create more emotion in innovative future games, we at XEODesign want to know more about the role of emotion in games and identify ways to create emotion other than story cutscenes. In improving over 40 million Player Experiences during twelve years of research and design we have seen people get angry, excited, and on occasion even cry. These reactions make us wonder how many emotions do games create? What makes failing 80 % of the time fun? Do people play to feel emotions as well as challenge? If emotions are important to play, where do they come from? Do people modify games to feel differently? Is it possible to build emotions into games by adding emotion-producing objects or actions to game play rather than cut scenes? To what extent are game developers already doing this? Pioneers in Player Experience Research and Design methods XEODesign conducted an independent cross-genre research study on why people play games and identified over thirty emotions coming from gameplay rather than story. Our results revealed that people play games not so much for the game itself as for the experience the game creates: an adrenaline rush, a vicarious adventure, a mental challenge; or the structure games provide, such as a moment of solitude or the company of friends. People play games to create moment-tomomen