Emotions In Play: On the constitution of emotion in solitary computer game play olli tapio leino This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) at IT University of Copenhagen. Title: Emotions in Play: On the constitution of emotion in solitary computer game play. Candidate: Olli Tapio Leino Ben Websters Vej 14-2-7 2450 Copenhagen SV Denmark +45 266 32705 [email protected] Supervisor: Espen Aarseth Abstract Computer games contribute to their players' emotions in diverse ways, ranging from sheer exhilaration to anger and disillusion. Our ability to enjoy computer game play that involves genuine intense emotions which in other contexts would be easily deemed as \negative" suggests that there is something in the ways in which we make sense of computer games that separates gameplay from other activities we engage in. Focusing on single-player computer games and situating within the emerging field of computer game studies, this dissertation starts from the assumption that emotions are always already intertwined with the experience of play and proceeds to describe, not any idiosyncratic emotional experience, but the means by which games can ensure their contents to be involved in players' emotions. Emotions are taken as intentional, as always about something. From this premise follows that to understand an emotion it is necessary to understand the reasons the subject has for relating to the object of the emotion in the particular way. Building on game studies, existential phenomenology, and philosophy of technology, this dissertation postulates a first-person perspective from which to describe solitary computer game play and the emotions it involves in terms of their experienced significance. From describing the freedoms and responsibilities imposed by the materiality of the computer game artefact on its voluntary player, the gameplay condition emerges as an intersubjective baseline for the players' judgements about events, objects, and states of affairs in the game, potentially surfacing as emotions. Rather than being explained in terms of their rules, computer games appear as technological artefacts which simultaneously extend the concrete limitations against which their human players are free to realize their projects, and shape the ways in which human mind can be directed at aspects of the world. However, this can go on only as long as long as the player fulfils the requirements of which the gameplay condition comprises. Based on this condition, game artefacts can be described as standing out from among all other technological artefacts which co-shape human intentionality. By the conduct of emotional investment, the dissertation describes how voluntary players can end up experiencing emotions about aspects which would most likely seem trivial from a non-player's perspective. Finally, the dissertation postulates an experiential ontology of computer game content, distinguishing between game content that is undeniable: crucial in terms of fulfilling the gameplay condition, and deniable: game content whose taking seriously is mostly voluntary. Thus, undeniable game content can be safely assumed as being involved in the emotions' of all players. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Seppo Kuivakari at my alma mater, the Faculty of Art and Design of University of Lapland, who challenged and encouraged me to pursue the path of critical and scholarly inquiry into computer games. I am indebted to Seth Giddings, Iain Hamilton Grant, Thomas Malaby and Patrick Crogan, who have read parts of this dissertation and helped me shape the ideas with their constructive feedback. Discussions with my colleagues at the Center for Computer Games Research were crucial for identifying developable ideas and the prevailing paradigms needing shaking up. I wish to thank especially my co-conspirators: Sara Mosberg Iversen, my long-time office mate, and Miguel Sicart. Input from Gonzalo Frasca, TL Taylor, Julian Oliver, Amyris Fernandez, Jessica Enevold, and Georgios Yannakakis has encouraged me to look at directions I had previously not thought about. I thank my supervisor, Espen Aarseth, for the advice and sparring (and sometimes consenting to play the role of a straw-man) along the way. I am grateful to Helen Kennedy from the School of Creative Arts of the University of the West of England for inviting me to spend six nice months as a member of the Play Research Group in Bristol, UK. While in Bristol, I enjoyed the creative buzz of Pervasive Media Studio and had the opportunity to participate in the PhD seminar of UWE's Digital Cultures Research Center, instigated by Jonathan Dovey. Seminar afternoons and evenings with Dan Dixon, Sam Kinsley, Bjarke Liboriussen, Shirin Packham and Hanna Wirman were constructive and entertaining. I thank Nils Rydh, Markku Eskelinen, Rune Klevjer, Graeme Kirkpatrick, Hector Rodriguez, Jesper Juul, Katherine Isbister, Andreas Gregersen, Marc Hassenzahl and Grant Tavinor for pivotal exchanges. Finally, I wish to thank Hanna, my partner, a fellow PhD student and a computer game researcher, for her unfailing support and the persistence with which she has engaged in our debates on computer games. I hope these discussions have been as beneficial for her work as they were for my own. I dedicate this work to my parents Pirjo and Tapio. v Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation and contribution . 3 1.1.1 The \emotional revolution" . 3 1.1.2 Understanding games as played . 6 1.2 Approach . 6 1.2.1 Emotion as an experience . 6 1.2.2 Game studies and the player's experience . 7 1.3 Outline of this dissertation . 8 2 Emotions and experienced significance 13 2.1 Approaching emotions . 15 2.1.1 Context, behaviour and experience . 15 2.1.2 Surpassing ambiguity . 19 2.2 Describing and explaining emotions . 20 2.2.1 Intentionality as a fundamental structure of emotion . 21 2.2.2 Addressing intentionality { \objects as experienced" . 23 2.2.3 On the cause of emotion . 27 2.2.4 Goal, motivation and purpose of emotion . 29 2.2.5 The biological \purpose" . 31 2.2.6 The human condition as a baseline for descriptions . 34 2.3 Enjoyable fear as a methodological challenge . 36 2.3.1 On enigmatic premises . 37 2.3.2 Encountering a barnacle . 38 2.3.3 Genuine emotions in play . 41 2.3.4 Two fallacies concerning emotions in play . 43 2.4 Beyond human condition: on the necessity of a baseline shift . 49 2.4.1 The confusing \world" of Half-Life 2 . 51 2.4.2 Towards an experiential perspective to gameplay . 53 3 Approaching gameplay 55 3.1 Unpacking gameplay: a conceptual analysis . 60 3.1.1 On the necessity of there being a player . 60 3.1.2 Deconstructing a curious coupling . 62 3.1.3 Play as an activity and an attitude . 64 3.1.4 On calling something a 'game' . 70 3.1.5 Articulating determinism and solipsism . 79 3.2 Accessing gameplay: methodological considerations . 82 3.2.1 Studying games vs. studying players . 82 3.2.2 Articulating the third-person perspective . 85 3.2.3 Explanatory gap in the third-person perspective . 90 vi Contents 4 Gameplay from the player's perspective 95 4.1 Seaching for an invariant stucture: materiality and its contenders . 102 4.1.1 Towards describing possibilities, not properties . 103 4.1.2 Processuality . 105 4.1.3 Transmediality . 111 4.2 Gameplay upon materiality . 120 4.2.1 The ambiguity of computer game materiality . 121 4.2.2 Playing with vs. playing: the gameplay condition . 126 4.2.3 The gameplay condition and goals . 134 4.2.4 'Transcendent' goals, enjoyment and resistance . 143 4.2.5 An experiential definition of gameplay . 151 4.2.6 On the desire to play . 159 4.3 Single-player games as technological artefacts . 163 4.3.1 On intentional relations . 166 4.3.2 Hybrid intentionality in play . 174 4.3.3 The single-player game artefact . 178 4.3.4 Let cyborgs be cyborgs . 181 5 Game world as a metaphor 185 5.1 Objective ontology and the \spatiality" of game worlds . 188 5.1.1 Spatial representation and the experience of playing Railroads! 190 5.1.2 Playability over spatiality . 200 5.1.3 On the potentiality of metaphor . 205 5.2 Facticity in gameplay . 211 5.2.1 Facticity and world . 212 5.2.2 The project of freedom in GTA IV . 216 5.2.3 Game artefacts as extensions of facticity . 219 5.2.4 Facticity and virtual realities . 228 5.2.5 On the non-relativity of the extension . 235 5.2.6 Imagination and extended facticity . 238 6 Emotions in play as interpretations of game worlds 243 6.1 Describing emotions in play . 247 6.1.1 Gameplay as a subset of human phenomena . 248 6.1.2 The principle of relative intensity . 253 6.1.3 Emotional investment in Civilization IV . 255 6.2 An experiential ontology: the deniable and the undeniable . 262 6.2.1 (Un)deniability and finitude . 268 6.2.2 Transgressive play: denying the undeniable . 272 6.2.3 Emotions about the deniable and undeniable . 280 7 Conclusions 283 7.1 Future perspectives . 287 7.1.1 On single-player game artefact studies . 288 7.1.2 Aesthetics of computer games as played . 289 7.1.3 Simulating a (speculative) condition . 289 8 References 291 vii Chapter 1 Introduction Wim Wenders' movie Wings of Desire (1987) depicts two angels who have dwelled as immortals in the city of Berlin since the beginning of time. They wander around freely and provide comfort to individuals burdened by hardships in their everyday lives. One of the angels, however, is not content with the lack of human reality in his immortal life.