Atmosphere & Challenge An Exploration of Dissonant Player Experiences by Giovanni Ribeiro A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2019 © Giovanni Ribeiro 2019 AUTHOR’S DECLARATION This thesis consists of material all of which I authored or co-authored: see Statement of Contributions included in the thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii STATEMENT OF CONTRIBUTIONS This thesis consists of two papers that were co-authored by myself, my supervisor, Dr. Lennart Nacke, and three others: Towards a Physiological Profile of Rage Quitting By: Giovanni Ribeiro, Rina Wehbe, and Lennart E. Nacke Atmosphere: The Effect of Thematic Audio Fit on Player Experience By: Giovanni Ribeiro, Katja Rogers, Thomas Terkildsen, and Lennart E. Nacke Dr. Nacke, Rina Wehbe, Katja Rogers, and Thomas Terkildsen provided research guidance, advice, and proofreading. Ms. Rogers and Ms. Wehbe were invaluable in the experimental design and research ideation process of their respective projects and Mr. Terkildsen contributed to the evaluation and statistical analysis of physiological data. Surya Banerjee (Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science) helped me decide what the most appropriate statistical tests to run were. iii ABSTRACT Dissonance means an unusual combination of any two things. Two dissonant experiences in video games which could lead to undesirable player states are thematic dissonance and difficulty dissonance. Thematic dissonance potentially annoys players by breaking the atmosphere, and difficulty dissonance by preventing players with low skill from progressing past unbalanced challenges, resulting in rage-quits. This thesis seeks to deepen the understanding of dissonant experiences in video games through two experiments measuring the player experience as affected by different audio and practice conditions respectively. Results indicate that the experience colloquially referred to as a rage-quit is directly affected by avatar death events and game-specific skill and is related to lower levels of heart rate variability (HRV) and higher levels of electrodermal activity (EDA), which implicates feelings of stress. This project successfully advances the definition of video game atmosphere as the level of subjective thematic fit or association between the audio and visual components of a game’s setting, and indicates that musical thematic dissonance may lead to higher intensity negative valence facial events. KEYWORDS: atmosphere, game design, games user research, mixed methods, rage-quit iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Lennart Nacke for the support and guidance of my research. His passion, wisdom, and insight were constant sources of inspiration. His mentorship was invaluable to the success of my work. I would also like to thank my additional thesis committee members: Dr. Mark Hancock, and Dr. Shi Cao. Their comments and questions helped me polish the final version of this work. I thank my colleagues at the Games Institute for the welcoming environment and stimulating conversation. I also thank the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Discovery Grant and the Engage Grant with Red Meat Games (Studying atmospheric engagement with horror game audio) for funding my research. Thank you to Dr. Regan Mandryk and Dr. Mark Hancock without whose vision this ground-breaking program would never have materialized. I would like to thank my family, Jose Libanio Ribeiro Jr, Mary Lucy Sant’Ana, and Brunna Caroline Sant’Ana Ribeiro, who have always supported me in pursuing my passion. Thank you to my partner, Sophie Bond, for her love and encouragement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... xiii List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... xv Part I. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Dissonance and the Player Experience ............................................................................... 1 Measuring Difficulty Dissonant Player Experiences .......................................................... 2 Measuring Thematically Dissonant Player Experiences ..................................................... 4 Thesis Structure................................................................................................................... 7 Understanding Dissonant Player Experiences .................................................................... 8 Part II. Towards a Physiological Profile of Rage-Quits .................................................... 9 Related Work ...................................................................................................................... 9 Frustration and Games .................................................................................................. 10 Physiological Measures of PX and Frustration ............................................................. 12 Questionnaire Assessments of PX and Frustration ....................................................... 14 Mixed Methods Assessment of PX and Frustration ..................................................... 15 Predicting Discontinuation of Play .............................................................................. 15 vi Research Design ................................................................................................................ 16 Independent Variables ................................................................................................... 17 Dependent Variables ..................................................................................................... 18 Moderating Variables .................................................................................................... 19 Participants .................................................................................................................... 21 Method .............................................................................................................................. 22 Practice-Phase ............................................................................................................... 23 Testing-Phase ................................................................................................................ 24 Results ............................................................................................................................... 26 “Why you stopped playing the game” .......................................................................... 26 Testing Hypotheses 1 to 5 with ANOVA ..................................................................... 26 Hypothesis One – Practice Time and Skin Conductance ......................................... 27 Hypothesis Two – Practice Time and Test Session Duration .................................. 28 Hypothesis three, four and five– Gaming Time per Week, Challenge Preference, Frustration, and Play Session Duration .................................................................... 29 Multiple Linear Regressions ......................................................................................... 30 Predicting Time to Quit ............................................................................................ 31 Predicting Normalized SC Increase .......................................................................... 31 Predicting Normalized HRV Increase ...................................................................... 32 vii Exploring Correlations .................................................................................................. 33 Part III. Atmosphere: The Effect of Thematic Cohesion on Player Experience .......... 34 Related Work .................................................................................................................... 34 Atmosphere in Games ................................................................................................... 35 Horror Game Audio Research ....................................................................................... 36 Music and the Player Experience .................................................................................. 38 Physiological Measures of Horror ............................................................................... 41 Research Design ................................................................................................................ 43 Study 1: Online Video Experiment ............................................................................... 44 Study 2: In-Lab Gameplay Experiment ........................................................................ 45 Baseline and Training ............................................................................................... 46 Testing Phase ............................................................................................................ 49 Moderating Variables ...................................................................................................