Pathos in Play: How Game Designers Evoke Negative Emotions
PPathos in Play: How Game Designers Evoke Negative Emotions
Tom Blount
University of SouthamptonSouthampton, [email protected]
Callum Spawforth
University of SouthamptonSouthampton, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Much in the same way that people enjoy, from time to time, thepathos of consuming a tragic film or piece of literature, designersof digital games are increasingly including elements within theirgames that evoke uncomfortable or negative emotions in theiraudience, allowing players to introspect and explore “adult” themesand topics, including loss, regret, powerlessness, mental-health, andmortality. In this paper we examine a number of recent games ascase studies and explore the way in which they use their mechanicsto evoke feelings of discomfort in their players, and the way inwhich pathos serves play. Through this, we highlight a numberof different techniques used by game designers and conclude byproposing further work in this space to determine exactly whyplayers are drawn to these types of games, and to explore the waysin which research in this field could be used to drive yet moreemotive and empathetic games.
KEYWORDS digital games, game design, mature games, empathetic design, pathos
Many people enjoy, from time to time, the pathos from consuminga tragic film or piece of literature; the so-called “sad film paradox”centres around the seemingly contradictory, yet eminently observ-able, fact that people enjoy partaking in something that causesthem to be sad [7, 13]. Equally, the notion that games have to be“fun” to have value has long been disputed [6, 8, 12, 16, 18]; gamesas a medium are able to fill a similar niche of embracing tragedyfor the purpose of enjoyment and catharsis. Jørgensen describesthis gratifying experience of negative emotions as “positive discom-fort” [9].However, as an interactive medium, games offer the unique abil-ity to place their audience at the heart of the emotional core oftheir story, allowing developers to build a player’s empathy forcharacters through the use of organic exploration and dialogue,place players in ethical quandaries that they will (hopefully) neverbe forced to encounter in real life, and even making the player com-plicit in the immoral actions of the story’s characters, by enforcingtheir participation (rather than their passive observation) in theevents of the story.In this paper we consider a number of popular games that fulfilthis role, examine the techniques the developers utilise to evokenegative feelings in their audience, and discuss the merits of thesetechniques, as well as areas of further research in this space.
In this section, we explore some of the techniques used by gamedesigners to deliberately evoke feelings of sadness or discomfort in the audience. Specifically, these are not games aimed as a meansof education or therapy to survivors of loss or trauma; these aregames aimed more generally at mass-market entertainment.
Horror games are perhaps one of the more traditional ways thataudiences allow themselves to experience a negative emotionalstate – fear, in this instance – in a safe environment.
Soma [4] isone example of a psychological horror game designed to give theplayer a persistent sense of dread; in this case, as they explore theunderwater facility of PATHOS-II. The player is faced with a varietyof experiences designed to scare them using classic film tricks suchas jump-scares and disquieting audio-visual design – for example,distorting the player’s view when they look directly at a monster,which is in itself uncomfortable and helps prolong their fear of theunknown.This is particularly effective with combined with the interactivityinherent to games. Any action the player takes such as pushing abutton, opening a door or walking forward, risks triggering oneof these experiences. The result is a tense atmosphere, in whichtaking any action is both uncomfortable and exciting. Notably, noneof these actions allow the player to harm or delay the monstersthey come across, leading the player to feel powerless against them.Reinforcing these feelings is the game’s soundscape, in which theirregular clang of machinery or distant footsteps of monsters serveto remind the player of their fragility of their safety.
Figure 1: “Did something just move?”
Soma discourages play-ers from taking a close look at the monsters
Depression Quest [14] is a choose-your-own adventure game createdusing Twine. In the game, the protagonist suffers from depression;the player guides them through their day to day life, in which theywrestle with dissatisfaction at work, relationship issues, and theircompounding symptoms. a r X i v : . [ c s . C Y ] S e p rXiv Preprint, Sept. 2019, Tom Blount and Callum Spawforth Throughout the game, the player is presented with a number ofchoices of how to act. However, as the player progresses, the more“positive” options (such as spending time with friends, or talkingabout their feelings with their partner) may become “locked off”due to their worsening illness. These choices can still be viewed,but are inaccessible (struck through with bold red). This serves asa metaphor for what the protagonist is experiencing, and instils afeeling of hopelessness and powerlessness in the player; they areable to see what they would like to do — or what they “should” do— but are unable to take action towards it, without having carefullyand deliberately shepherded their limited resources.
Figure 2: Some of the choices presented in
Depression Quest
Doki Doki Literature Club! [15] is, at first glance, a typical anime-style dating-sim, in which the protagonist joins their high school’sliterature club in order to deepen their relationship with their class-mates. However, events quickly take a subversive turn when Sayori(the protagonist’s childhood sweetheart), reveals she is depressedand, shortly afterwards, hangs herself. At this point, the gamerestarts, with the player’s previous saves erased, and Sayori notablyabsent from the game, the other characters having no memory ofher existence.This pattern ultimately repeats itself, with the game appearingmore and more corrupted each time (such as in Figure 3), untilonly one character, Monika, is left. In this playthrough, Monikareveals herself to be the game’s ultimate antagonist who has beenmanipulating the files of the other characters after she became self-aware within the confines of the game. She confesses her love forthe player — not the protagonist, but the player — and the playeris only able to progress by exiting the game and manipulating thegame’s files directly (mirroring the way Monika manipulated theother characters).While this might shatter the player’s immersion in one sense, inanother it heightens it by creating a new narrative that acknowl-edges the existence of the game itself, while deliberately blurringthe lines between fiction and reality.
Figure 3: As the narrative of
Doki Doki progresses, realitybegins to warp around the protagonist
This War of Mine [1] puts the player directly in control of the plightof a group of civilians caught in an ongoing civil war. The playermust help them build and maintain their shelter during the day,and scavenge for resources (such as food, medicine, and buildingmaterials) during the night.While
This War of Mine never explicitly coerces the player intomaking an immoral choice, the game is rife with the opportunity,and circumstances often lead the player to take actions that makethem feel uneasy. As an example, while out scavenging, the playermay stumble across a soldier threatening to assault a young woman;the player is often ill-equipped to intervene, and has the choiceto simply walk away and pretend they saw nothing. As anotherexample, as the game progresses, and winter draws in, suppliesbecome more and more scarce, subtly reinforcing more and moredesperate behaviour from the player, potentially culminating inviolently robbing an elderly couple for their supplies (Figure 4), tosave their own group from starvation [3].
Figure 4: Stealing from an elderly couple to avoid starvationin
This War of Mine
Some games are able to evoke feelings of discomfort just fromtheir premise alone (and so much so that, while writing this paper, athos in Play: How Game Designers Evoke Negative Emotions arXiv Preprint, Sept. 2019, we had to draw straws to decide who would play this particularexample). As the name suggests,
That Dragon, Cancer [5] describesthe true story of a couple, raising their son who was diagnosedwith terminal cancer at the age of twelve months. The story is toldthrough small vignettes of their experiences over the next fouryears, using point-and-click exploration and puzzle-solving. Whilethe mechanics of this game do not inherently convey the emotionalcontent of the game, we feel that this title merits inclusion to ourcase study purely down to the raw emotional force of the narrativeas presented through interaction; the game encourages players tocontemplate both their own mortality, and how they may have tocope with the mortality of the ones they love [17].
Figure 5: One of the many moving scenes captured in
ThatDragon, Cancer
Spec Ops: The Line [19] has, on the surface, all the appearancesof a fairly standard gung-ho, war-glorifying, third-person-shooter.However, as with
Doki Doki , this initial appearance is quickly sub-verted. The protagonist – Walker, a special-forces soldier sent intoa disaster-ravaged Dubai to aid the rescue of the civilian populace– finds himself drawn into conflict with “friendly” American forceswhich continues to escalate, partly due to circumstance and mutualmiscommunication, and partly due to the choices Walker makes.One of the pivotal moments of the game has the protagonistuse white phosphorus — a controversial incendiary weapon — onAmerican troops (shown in Figure 6). This is a desperate and deeplydisturbing act in itself, but is worsened all the more when (unin-tentionally, and unavoidably) a group of refugees are caught inthe crossfire. After this moment, and throughout the rest of thegame, Walker begins to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stressdisorder, suffering from hallucinations, and delusions.In fact,
Spec Ops has so many of these well-designed, explicitlyuncomfortable and disquieting moments of gameplay, that an entirepaper could be dedicated to critiquing their meaning and impact.Fortunately, Keogh has already done just that [10].Despite the more explicitly disturbing elements that the playerexperiences through gameplay, perhaps one of the most effectivetechniques to evoke a response in the player within
Spec Ops is theuse, and evolution of, the game’s loading screens. Initially, they con-tain tips for playing the game, such as how to take cover, or how to use certain weapons. However, as the game goes on, these graduallybecome more disturbing ( “Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortablefeeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously,” “TheUS military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. Butthis isn’t real, so why should you care?” , or “To kill for yourself ismurder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainmentis harmless.” ) until finally, they begin to outright blame and chastisethe player for their part in the events of the game: “This is all yourfault.” “Do you feel like a hero yet?” “If you were a better person, youwouldn’t be here.”
By using influences outside of gameplay (in con-junction with the gameplay itself) the player is directly compelledto feel uncomfortable not just at the actions of the protagonist, butat themselves for allowing those actions to happen. In a game thatfrequently examines the themes of choice, and choicelessness, theonly real choice left to the player is to be complicit in immoralactions, or not to play at all.
Figure 6: The aftermath of a white phosphorous attack in
Spec Ops: The Line
While the games presented above represent a tiny fraction of thegames that evoke negative emotions in their players, we can alreadysee a number of generalisable techniques beginning to emerge.
Depression Quest and
Soma both render feelings of hopelessnessand powerlessness in their players by presenting the players withchallenging situations, then removing the player’s ability to addressthose challenges. These games do this in stark contrast to standardgame design philosophy, in which more interactivity and choice isbetter; they sacrifice these in order to deliver a greater emotionalblow to the player. This effect is only amplified by contrasting itwith the power-fantasy prevalent in games.
Spec Ops and
Doki Doki share a number of similar traits in theway in which the evoke a response from their players. Firstly, bothpresent themselves as typical examples of a particular genre, beforegoing out of their way to subvert the established norms of thatgenre. Another technique common to both
Spec Ops and
Doki Doki is breaking the fourth wall and addressing the player directly, albeitin different ways.
Doki Doki directly addresses the player, throughdialogue and by “threatening” their save file, while
Spec Ops forcesthe player to reflect on their actions in the game. In both cases, thegames seek to erode the wall between the safe environment of thegame and reality, leaving the player more vulnerable to the game’semotional payload than they otherwise might have been. rXiv Preprint, Sept. 2019, Tom Blount and Callum Spawforth
In the case of
Spec Ops , this may have been necessary; manygames (such as
Grand Theft Auto , Infamous , or
Star Wars: Knightsof the Old Republic , to name a few) allow, and even encourage, theplayer to not only take unambiguously “evil” actions, but to revelin them. These games do not evoke that same visceral level ofunease that, for example,
Spec Ops creates (Jørgensen’s “positivediscomfort”), instead allowing the player to experience a sense ofcatharsis through subverting common social taboos.Finally, a game’s premise or theming alone may be enough toevoke a sense of discomfort in the player, such as in
That Dragon,Cancer , by forcing the player to address difficult topics frequentlyavoided in day-to-day life. Other narrative-focused games suchas
The Beginner’s Guide , Gone Home , or
Dear Esther use environ-ments and exploration to convey their story and instil a sensationof melancholy and nostalgia in their players. This can be compared(and contrasted) with games which use deliberately shocking mate-rial and imagery that do so to generate outrage in the popular eyeas a means of marketing, rather than providing the player with anysort of deeper emotional experience.
In this paper, we have examined a number of techniques usedby game designers, such as manipulating the player’s sense ofperception, limiting the choices available to the player, encouraging(and outright forcing) them to commit actions that they wouldotherwise choose not to, and “meta-game” elements which toy withthe accepted norms of games, such as breaking the fourth wall ormanipulating loading screens and save files.Our intention is that this discussion inspires new and interest-ing avenues of research. For example, although we discuss severaldifferent techniques used by designers, in this work we only dis-cuss our own anecdotal experiences of how these games affectedus. A broader study could aim to do further this work twofold:firstly, to construct a complete taxonomy of the design techniquesused to evoke negative emotions in games, and secondly to thor-oughly deconstruct the range of players’ emotional responses tothese techniques. In addition, it may be beneficial to seek a betterunderstanding of what draws players to these games in general,and whether there is an overlap with similar media such as filmsor literature.Another avenue in this direction of research is exploring howthe level of immersion [2] affects the level of emotional impact,both in terms of empathy with non-player characters, and with thewillingness (and ability) to perform particular acts. For example,are players more impacted when witnessing events from a first-person perspective, than they are from a third-person perspective(despite maintaining the same ability to interact with the virtualworld around them). This could be further extended to investigatevirtual reality, and they ways in which players react to some of thetechniques described above – as well as more “traditional” actionsencountered in games, such as the application of violence – in awholly immersive environment. Taking this to the extreme, thistype of research could be extended further to encapsulate the genreof “Alternate Reality Games” [11] in which the lines between gameand reality are blurred even further. However, the findings from work such as this may not be applicable to more traditional gamesmedia.Overall, we aim to reiterate that games do not have to be “fun” tobe absorbing or engaging; there is clearly a desire for a wide rangeof games that allow players – or give players the opportunity toallow themselves – to explore an equally wide range of emotions,both positive and negative.
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