Affect During Instructional Video Game Learning: Story\u27s Potential Role

Games have been linked to provoking a wide variety of emotional reactions, from fear (Therrien, 2009) to joy (Malone, 1981). While some of the authors in this volume have reported on the variety of emotional interactions that games can provide, such as mirroring of emotions (Humphries & McDonald, 2011), this chapter will examine how the presence of a component of a computer game, namely the story, may have had an impact on the link between emotions and learning. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the component of “story” in a game, and how the inclusion of a story may have both an emotional and subsequent learning impact. To explain this relationship, this chapter is separated into three sections. First, there is a discussion on the previous literature surrounding the potential links between story, emotions, learning, and games. Second, this chapter leverages this literature to introduce a study, which will investigate the potential role that story has in games, learning, and student emotions. Finally, the chapter will discuss the unexpected results from this study, further analyzing the potential links between emotions and learning, and grounding this analysis with the research literature.https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/soecs-facbooks/1005/thumbnail.jp