Frustration and its effect on immersion in games A developer viewpoint on the good and bad aspects of frustration Adam Nylund Oskar Landfors Department of informatics Human-Computer Interaction Master thesis 2-year level, 30 credits SPM 2015.09 Abstract Frustration has been present throughout gaming history and is often considered to be negative. However, there’s been a lack of significant studies focusing on frustration and how it affects the game experience. This lead us to a qualitative study, based on nine semi- structured interviews with game developers, focusing on the effect of frustration in games. Results indicate that frustration encompass both positive and negative aspects that differ from each other in how they appear in game. Positive frustration is desirable for developers due to it improving the immersion and motivation in games and comes from players learning through frustration whereas negative frustration is undesirable and affects the game experience negatively and comes from aspects, such as technical issues, outside of the players influence. Keywords: Frustration, immersion, game experience, motivation 1. Introduction Frustration is often considered to have a negative effect in games but as there's often some part of a game that is frustrating and as the focus on game experience grows with the technical development and what can be done in games it’s important to keep players coming back to that experience. This is why it’s also important to understand frustration in games and keep it on a good level because players that get frustrated have a higher chance of quitting the game (Canossa, Drachen & Sørensen, 2011). However games that are considered to be challenging can get the players motivated to continue because of the sense of satisfaction when he or she overcomes a challenging task (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005; Jennett, Cox, Cairns, Dhoparee, Epps, Tijs & Walton, 2008), games that are considered difficult can also facilitate a good gaming experience if it’s done right. The majority of research regarding games concerns the topics immersion, presence and flow. Immersion is an important factor for game enjoyment (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Nacke & Lindley, 2008; Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett, Cox & Cairns, 2009; Hoi & Cho, 2012) and is an outcome of a good game experience (Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett et al., 2009). When immersion is achieved, the player get immersed in a game and he or she focus their attention into the game world ( Takatalo, Häkkinen, Kaistinen, Komulainen, Särkelä & Nyman, 2006 ; Jennett et al., 2008) resulting in lack of awareness of time (Jennett et al., 2008; Qin, Rau & Salvendy, 2010) as well as lack of awareness of the real world (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005; Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett et al., 2009; Qin et al., 2010; Hoi & Cho, 2012). Even though the terms immersion and presence sometimes are used interchangeably (Hoi & Cho, 2012), presence is more connected to the field of Virtual Reality (VR) as it concerns the sensation of be in a different location than the person involved actually are (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Bayliss, 2007; Weibel, Wissmath, Habegger, Steiner, & Groner, 2008 ). Another cornerstone revolving around immersion is the flow method (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) which concerns the 1 concept of the optimal experience in different activities. That the challenge level of the activity matches the level of ability making it an enjoyable experience. However we could see a lack of research regarding the impact of frustration in games, which motivates our research and framing of the question: How do game developers view frustration and its effect on immersion and motivation in games? 2. Related research 2.1 Immersion Immersion is considered to be a critical factor for game enjoyment (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Nacke & Lindley, 2008; Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett et al., 2009; Hoi & Cho, 2012) and is an outcome of a good game experience (Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett et al., 2009). Game characteristics can either make or break the experience of immersion (Brown & Cairns, 2004) and whilst it can evoke an enjoyable gameplay experience for some gamers immersion can also evoke an unattractive gameplay experience for others (Örtqvist & Liljedahl, 2010). Gameplay with strong immersion does not directly result in a good game experience but it’s more likely to at least result in a powerful game experience (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). Even though they are connected, gameplay and immersion are two separate constructs in the gaming experience (Örtqvist & Liljedahl, 2010). There have been three different levels identified concerning player immersion: engagement, engrossment, and total immersion (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005; Nacke & Lindley, 2008; Jennett et al., 2008). The first level of immersion is engagement which is the lowest level of involvement with a game that a player has to go through before moving to the next level. This level involves the players’ preference; that the game is something that the player actually wants to play, that the game controls and feedback corresponds in an appropriate manner. As well as investment which refer to the time that the player invest in the game, the more immersive the game is the amount of time, effort and attention that is required from the player increases. When the player becomes more involved in the game he or she become engrossed, which leads to the player to be emotionally affected by the game and its features. At this level of immersion due to emotional investment, the player becomes less self aware and less aware of their surrounding. The last level is total immersion where the players are only impacted by the game, cut of from reality. This sensation is also known as presence (Brown & Cairns, 2004; Nacke & Lindley, 2008). Similar to these levels of immersion Davidson (2003) identifies three levels of involvement; it begins with initial involvement where the players have the first experience of the game. When players become comfortable with the gameplay they move to the second level, immersion. The last level is investment , when the players have mastered the gameplay and are comfortable within the game world. When a player is immersed in a game they focus their attention into the game-world (Takatalo et al., 2006; Jennett et al., 2008) which often leads to two features of immersion; lack of awareness of time (Jennett et al., 2008; Qin et al., 2010) and loss of awareness of the real world (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005; Jennett et al., 2008; Jennett et al., 2009; Qin et al., 2010; Hoi & Cho, 2012). Immersed players may be less aware of their environment but they 2 can still be aware of some aspects of it, filtering out irrelevant distractions (Jennett et al., 2009), not excluding everything but still being immersed which differs from flow (Jennett et al., 2008). When a player encounters a task with clear goals and feedback that has a proper difficulty level, the player feel control over the task that leads to a feeling of total immersion (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005). When the player is immersed and has to change their attention between two different interaction spaces the immersion is broken and the player has difficulty in switching focus (Jennett et al., 2008). The immersion can also be broken if the interface is in more focus than the task at hand ( Gilleade & Dix, 2004), which makes Heidegger’s (1996) idea that the controls or tools should be invisible, or “ready to hand”, important. Even though a task in a game, such as a boss fight, is too hard for a player who loses that fight it can still be an immersive experience, however, it would not qualify as flow. Some aspects of immersion also overlap with the concept of Gameflow (Jennett et al., 2008). Games with a fast pace can become more engaging for the player because the challenge of keeping up with the game can make the player get more emotionally involved, afraid of failure the player would focus more which would lead to a more immersive experience (Jennett et al., 2008). If the game is too slow the player will have trouble getting immersed because of lack of challenge and not enough to concentrate on (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005). Overcoming a difficult task or obstacle results in a sensation of joy or satisfaction because they have accomplished something challenging (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005; Jennett et al., 2008), this can also be referred to as challenge-based immersion (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). Games that cause an emotional response are considered as immersive (Sweetser & Johnson, 2004), both positive and negative emotions plays a big part of immersion, which differs from flow (Jennett et al., 2008) whereas the players needs to be in a serene state of mind (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Frustration is sometimes used to evoke an emotional response and heighten the game experience, but it’s important that the designer don’t overdo it, as it can have a negative effect on the game experience (Gilleade & Dix, 2004). The avatar in games play an important part for immersion, it’s important that the player relates to the avatar (McMahan, 2003) and to immerse themselves into the game world where the players become the game character (McMahan, 2003; Grimshaw, Lindley & Nacke, 2008). To get fully immersed the players need to care about the character and the situation (McMahan, 2003; Takatalo et al., 2008) and feel that their actions have an impact on the environment and gameplay (McMahan, 2003; Grimshaw et al., 2008). Avatars that can be customized to look more like the players increase the sense of immersion because it’s easier for the players to relate to a character that are similar to them (Hoi & Cho, 2012). Interacting with the game world should be intuitive (Sweetser & Johnson, 2004) and it should be clear which artefacts that the players can interact with, which door can or can not be opened (Bayliss, 2007).