Pedro Cardoso
ABSTRACT
Games are generally designed to be comfortable. Commonly accepted game design practices focus on providing clear affordances, on implementing mental models that are adequate to conventions and target audiences, on avoiding boredom or even steep learning curves. Such game design philosophies have proven to be conducive to the development of games that are enjoyable. However, they also encourage routine and conformity with familiar experiences, genres, and mechanics. They feed the player's ego and create a hedonistic loop: a positive feedback guided by pleasurable and familiar experiences.
New and meaningful experiences are often the result of being placed outside of one's comfort zone. These new and unfamiliar experiences encourage reflection and the development of new meaning. So, if the hedonistic loop excels at immersing players in gameplay, it may also take precedence over what could be the source of meaningful experience. With this in mind, breaking the hedonistic loop means seeking for alternative ways to be expressive and communicative through games, but also to design for something other than pleasure, for something even beyond discomfort, for what we may call aesthetic friction. By designing towards aesthetic friction, we may reclaim player's attention, forcing a moment of analysis that purposefully and intentionally breaks with the experience of flow in favour of meaning.
Starting from the analysis of a selection of case studies, this paper introduces the concept of aesthetic friction in interaction design, focusing particularly in its occurrence and relevance in game design, and discusses strategies for its development.
- S. R. Holiwell. (2015) A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II. Gamasutra. https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_Maze_of_Murderscapes_Metroid_II.php.Google Scholar
- M. Csíkszentmihályi. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York. Harper.Google Scholar
- A. Rollings, and E. Adams. 2003. Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on game design (1st ed.). Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders.Google Scholar
- Fullerton, T., C. Swain, and S.S. Hoffman, 2008. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. (2 ed). Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
- Schell, J.(2008) The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses, Amsterdam; Boston: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
- Hunicke, R., M. LeBlanc, and R. Zubek. (2004) MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. in AAAI-04 Workshop on Challenges in Game AI. Nineteenth National Conference of Artificial Intelligence. San Jose, CA.Google Scholar
- Koster, R. (2005) A theory of fun for game design. Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Srauy, S. (2019). Professional Norms and Race in the North American Video Game Industry Games and Culture, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 478--497, doi:10.1177/1555412017708936.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Boluk, S. & P. Lemieux. 2012 Stretched Skulls: Anamorphic Games and the memento mortem mortis. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 6.Google Scholar
- Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google ScholarDigital Library
- De Wildt, L. (2014) Enstranging Play: Distinguishing Playful Subjecthood from Governance. Philosophy of Computer Games Conference 2014.Google Scholar
- Dunne, A. (2005). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
- Pötzsch, H. (2017) Playing Games with Shklovsky, Brecht, and Boal: Ostranenie, V-Effect, and Spect-Actors as Analytical Tools for Game Studies. Game Studies the international journal of computer game research, volume 17 issue 2 December 2017 ISSN:1604-7982.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Breaking the Hedonistic Loop: Meaning before fun in videogames
Recommendations
Defining grief play in MMORPGs: player and developer perceptions
ACE '04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technologyIn current literature, grief play in Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) refers to play styles where a player intentionally disrupts the gaming experience of other players. In our study, we have discovered that player experiences ...
Playful Game Jams: Guidelines for Designed Outcomes
IE2014: Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interactive EntertainmentGame jams are social events involving the integration of various game making disciplines (e.g. programming, art, design) to make games under constraints, such as a short fixed time. Game jams are emerging in areas such as research, education, and ...
The Gameplay Loop: a Player Activity Model for Game Design and Analysis
ACE '16: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment TechnologyTo describe the task of the game designer, the literature on the subject often refers to rules and systems. But the main objective of the game designer's work is to create a specific kind of experience: gameplay. Based in both literature and diverse ...
Comments