Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. Color and games The effect of colors in the video game multimodality Master's Thesis in Digital Culture Spring 2021 Supervisor: Daniel Jung University of Bergen Candidate no: 109 DIKULT350 Page i Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. Acknowledgment This study was completed at the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen. I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor Daniel Jung for giving me great and valuable feedback and pushing me to make my goals even clearer. His feedback did help me to get a goal that was better than my original. I will also thank the whole Faculty of Humanities and the professors at Digital culture. This also includes Fulbright, Professor Chris Ingraham, since he helped me to form my master ideas at the start. After that, I will also thank my brother Joakim Andersson and my great friend Malin Jakobsen since they helped a lot with proofreading and helping me with valuable feedback. Thanks to Simon Dreetz Holt for helping me catch all Pokémon's and inspire me to make changes to my text. I will also say thank you to Sunnhorldand folhøgskole and Markus Lange. Thanks for letting me lecture your students. Also, thanks to det Akademiske Kvarteret for free coffee. Solveig Møster gets a special thanks for the interview that is in this thesis. Thanks for giving me your time and knowledge. My last thanks will go to my close friends called "the lads." Thanks for helping me through the time with this and giving me feedback Finally, I want to thank every person who helps me with my project. Page ii Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. This master thesis builds on my own research I did in the semester assignment at Digital Culture 303. Color effect. A look at the color use in the Legend of Zelda. I have used the assignment ideas and bibliographic as a starting point for this thesis. I have also taken several text parts from the assignment and used them in this thesis to build upon. There is some work taken directly from the assignment and used in this thesis. This will be mention and referred to when used. Henceforth referred to as "Andersson 2018". Abstract: In the world of video games, several different elements have an effect on the player. The primary motivation for this study was to see what role colors have in creating affection to the player, as well as exploring how colors create a mood to the player and to what degree colors play in this multimodality. The goal was to identify the different aspects of mood and emotion in videogames, and how colors are used to create a potential mood and emotion to players, and the role of colors in the multimodality. The different aspects in focus are semiotics, affordance, HUD, tropes, UI, music, action, shape, and form. This is to see how these aspects of the multimodality works together with colors to create mood and affection. The method used in this thesis is combining both academic theories and analysis of different mainstream games. The main theories about colors related to mood, emotion, and affection are by Richard Coyne and combined with Plass and Kaplan theories. To explore the different parts of the multimodality, Gibson's theories concerning affordance and Peirce's semiotics tools were used to see how they related to games. These theories are combined with an analysis of different games to highlight what role colors have when alone and how they influence different parts of the multimodality. A survey was conducted that put different videogames figures and shapes combined with colors to see the reaction of the survey takers. The result was that colors combined with a shape and a form could create a reaction and affection in different players. An interview with a game designer was also conducted to see how game designers are using colors to create the mood and understanding to the player. The result was that game developers are designing games with colors in mind and using color as a tool to help the player, but the meaning of color and mood is not a fixed element. Combining the presented theories, survey, interview, and the analysis, an argument can be made. The argument is that when it comes to mood, affect, and emotion in videogames, colors Page iii Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. does not have a real effect on its own, but combined with something else in the multimodality it can. In games, the focus is the gameplay, characters, world, actions, and not necessarily the colors. Color is a helpful tool to tell the player about the game by indicating something or to help amplify the mood. Color use are essential to make the player understand the game, but it is not completely necessary. Colors in itself cannot create mood, but can help amplify an action, object, settings, the mood, or emotion in the multimodality. Page iv Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. Table of Content Acknowledgment ................................................................................... Feil! Bokmerke er ikke definert. Abstract: .................................................................................................................................................. iii Table of Content ....................................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. The motivation for this study ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 The research question ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1.3 Method used to explore the research questions ................................................................... 2 1.1.4 Data that are being used ........................................................................................................ 3 1.1.5 Academic theory ..................................................................................................................... 3 1.1.5.1 Plass and Kaplan ................................................................................................................. 4 1.1.5.2 Semiotics tools .................................................................................................................... 4 1.1.5.3 Affordance .......................................................................................................................... 4 1.1.5.4 Other academic theory ....................................................................................................... 5 1.2 History of color production ........................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Video game color evolution .......................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2: The role of the color ............................................................................................................ 17 2.1 Affordance in video games ......................................................................................................... 21 2.1.1 The Non-Diegetic design ...................................................................................................... 24 2.1.2 Affordance in game mechanics ............................................................................................ 27 2.2 Color as an indicator ................................................................................................................... 29 2.2.1 The User Interface design .................................................................................................... 29 2.2.2 Digital color semiotics .......................................................................................................... 31 2.3 Index in games ............................................................................................................................. 34 2.3.1 The HUD and color index in Overwatch .............................................................................. 34 2.3.2 Color index of Hearthstone .................................................................................................. 38 2.4 Color Tropes ............................................................................................................................... 44 2.5 Color connection to emotion ...................................................................................................... 48 2.5.1 Color as emotional traits ..................................................................................................... 48 2.5.2 Color symbolism in Fire emblem .......................................................................................... 53 2.5.3 Lighting and mood ............................................................................................................... 54 2.6 Journey ........................................................................................................................................ 56 Page v Spring 2021 DIKULT350 Candidate no: 109. 2.7 Chapter summary ........................................................................................................................ 59 Chapter 3: Mood and affection ............................................................................................................