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Do Gamers Enjoy Dying in First-Person-Shooters?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Brandon Erickson has an interesting post about an experiment on players' emotional reactions to killing and being killed in a first-person shooters (FPS) with a group of students who played James Bond 007: Nightfire while their facial expressions and physiological activity were tracked and recorded moment-to-moment via electrodes and various other monitoring equipment. The study found that "death of the player's own character...appear[s] to increase some aspects of positive emotion." The authors believe this may result from the temporary "relief from engagement" brought about by character death. "Part of this has to do with the intriguing aesthetic question of precisely how the first-person-shooter represents the player after the moment of death," says Clive Thompson. "This sudden switch in camera angle — from first person to third person — is, in essence, a classic out-of-body experience, of exactly the sort people describe in near-death experiences. And much like real-life near-death experiences, it tends to suffuse me with a curiously zen-like feeling." An abstract of the original article, "The psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic emotional responses to violent video game events" is available on the web." Obnoxiously this alleged scholarly research is not available for free, so we'll just have to speculate wildly what it says based on the abstract.
Perhaps they enjoy the emotional transaction that takes place at time of death? I enjoy making small bets often and challenging other people to tiny competitions for no reason, simply because of the "Awwww, I lost and you won" transaction that takes place. I don't know if other people feel this, but I know that I do. For small things that don't matter, I am not terribly concerned with winning or losing.
When you loose it makes you the underdog, so your final victory will just be that much more glorius when fate smiles on you once again.
I don't know about first person shooters but I must say that in WoW I get a certain satisfaction from dying 'in the name of the cause', like causing an alliance wipe in AV on Galv with a last ditch fear or dropping from the cliff onto the GM to keep the flag from getting capped.
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Because there's an interesting study of psychology here, and finding out how the brain works is one of the most important things that we can do this next century. It's an interesting result because death is usually considered bad in these games, so why would gamers enjoy them? Is it to get a respite from the action? Is it because they feel they've achieved something by their death? Is it because that segment of action is done and they feel the fulfillment of everything that happened that life? There are applications beyond gaming and, honestly, even if it didn't, it's pretty damn interesting.
The former Walt Disney World attraction, "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride," ended with the car breaking through railroad crossing gates and heading down the railroad tracks, apparently directly toward an oncoming train. In reality, all that is there besides the sound effects is a dazzlingly bright headlight, making it almost impossible to see that you are heading toward a doorway in the black-painted room.
As you emerge after your "collision," the final scene in the ride show numerous devils with tridents.
If Walt Disney, always a good judge of such things, thought that kids would enjoy the virtual experience, not merely of dying, but of being consigned to eternal damnation, it does not seems a far stretch to assume that gamers may enjoy it as well.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
TFP mentions that they use a few metrics for determining 'arousal' or interest. Mind, I did not read through the whole thing, nor can I post the whole thing here, but, I think this is a reasonable excerpt:
"The facial EMG is an
established index of hedonic valence; that is, increased activity over corrugator supercilii, which
draws the brow down and together into a frown, is associated with negative emotions, whereas
increased activity over zygomaticus major, which pulls the corners of the mouth back and up into
a smile, is associated with positive emotions during affective imagery and when viewing pictures
(for 6 s) or other media stimuli [e.g., 15, 19, 29]"
I'm wondering if those are valid measures considering that in order for some people to say the word 'SHIT,' I would think they would have to use the same muscles which pull the corners of the mouth back into a smile.
Can anyone who knows anything about anatomy confirm that?
How does the feeling of exasperation come across on those sensors?
They also talk about using skin conductivity as a measure of excitement.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
it seems to me that the psyche knows the difference between phases of a video game and actually facing mortality. I find it hard to believe that "video game death" can in any way be related to real world psychological patterns surrounding death - for one, there are actually no consequences in the video game world, thus no real fear nor moral struggle.
You should give Natural Selection www.unknownworlds.com/ns/ a try. When I played it was based on the HL engine and gave you two options, marines or aliens for a team.
One person on the marines was the 'commander' and had a top down C&C style view. He could give orders, set waypoints, hand out weapons, and progress through an upgrade tree. The rest of the marines were just plain old FPS style, but relied on the commander to keep them supplied as they fought.
The aliens on the other hand, had no leader, but information was shared between them (If one alien saw an enemy, the rest of the players could 'sense' that enemy, and you would receive notification that an area was under attack, etc. Just no central leadership mode)
It was a game that I greatly enjoyed. I remember it when it was fairly beta, had a few chats with Charlie Cleveland (he likely won't remember, but I did appreciate his discussions about building up Unknown Worlds). I sincerely hope that it grows since it got a lot of things 'right'.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Yeah, I'm not sure why Valve thought it would be a great idea to let you take screenshots every time you die. Is that *really* what people want to record during a FPS?
I agree. A couple of my favourite deaths:
From a nice wee sniping spot, I zap Lerc into oblivion at long range with a railgun as he's running across my field of view. While I'm giggling like a maniac, I failed to notice that he's launched a rocket at me an instant before he snuffed it. Three second later, I'm staring right into the nose cone of a rocket that appeared to grow out from the crosshair, wondering what on Earth could the strange, symmetrical object be. "Hey, isn't that a..." (Shades of The Noah's Ark Principle)
Lerc and I are fighting on an elevated, moving conveyor belt. He knows I have a BFG so he hides in a small room off to one side of the belt, depriving me of a line of sight. I step off the belt and onto the rail and bounce a grenade from the far wall and into the room in which Lerc is cowering.
I turn to gain some extra distance from the imminent explosion and find a big crate in my face. Although I'm not actually on the moving belt, the crate (being carried by the belt) has caught the edge of my body and is pushing me in Lerc's direction. "Arrrgh! No! No! Stop it!"
Shortly there was Lerc and me standing in a small space with a grenade on the floor between us. Sheepishly, I manage to say "Hi!" just before the grenade performs its giblet-making function.
This is one of the reasons I like physically oriented games. Stuff happens that the programmer never explicitly coded.
Blancmange
You don't believe in reincarnation, now do you? Nor do you feel like a part of something grater, where your life holds no special value. Joy of death is nothing new. I don't talk about spawn kills (that is how infants in India must feel like), I am talking about a) honourable death; b) natural death.
a) Dying in battle for greater good is quite a popular theme. Freedom fighters with suicidal tactics comes to mind. And Valhalla is not always necessary.
b) Not everybody thinks of the death as the ultimate horror. Maybe for some the thought of respawning seems natural (And who knows, maybe they do), in this frame of mind death is soothing.
Self test: if you were sure you would reincarnate and would find yourself in tough battle for something you hold valuable, would you not "enjoy" it?