Psychological examination of audience engagement in video game play: identification, enjoyment and role-playing

Christopher Michael Bingham

As we read stories, our minds index character emotions in order to comprehend the story. This holds true regardless of format: be it a novel, film, or television program, the emotions of the characters are always important to us as readers. Researchers have examined the ways in which character emotions affect our understanding of and engagement in the story. However, one must question the purpose and effects of character emotions in videogames since their interactive nature may fundamentally change the processes through which an audience member experiences the story. In this thesis I posit that since audience members have agency within the story world, character goals and emotions are not as important to the player as her own goals and emotions. I hypothesize that removing character emotion from a film will decrease audience enjoyment of and emotional engagement in a story to a greater extent than removing the same content from a videogame. To test this position I have conducted an experiment to measure whether, and to what extent, the removal of character emotion affects audience engagement with a story across both media types (non-interactive films and interactive videogames). The experiment was a two (presence or absence of character emotion) by two (media type: film or videogame), between subjects factorial design. The results of this experiment were inconclusive, with some statistical tests supporting the hypotheses while other tests did not. In general, removing character emotions from a videogame did not affect audience enjoyment of or emotional engagement in a story significantly less than removing the same content from a film. However, among males, removing emotional content from a film did effect emotional engagement more than removing the same content from a videogame. Additionally, reported enjoyment correlated highly with emotional engagement and identification regardless of the media type. Further research is suggested to help determine the nature of the relationship between character emotions and audience experience of a story across media types. The limitations of this study are incorporated into the discussion on character emotion in videogames in order to foster a greater understanding of this topic.

Psychological examination of audience engagement in video game play: identification, enjoyment and role-playing

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