Pathos in Play: How Game Designers Evoke Negative Emotions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how game designers intentionally evoke negative emotions like loss and regret through mechanics, using case studies to analyze techniques that foster introspection and emotional depth in players.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of recent games that evoke discomfort, highlighting design techniques and proposing future research to understand player attraction to such emotional experiences.

Findings

Games use mechanics to evoke discomfort and introspection.

Design techniques include narrative and gameplay elements that induce negative emotions.

Future research can enhance emotive and empathetic game design.

Abstract

Much in the same way that people enjoy, from time to time, the pathos of consuming a tragic film or piece of literature, designers of digital games are increasingly including elements within their games that evoke uncomfortable or negative emotions in their audience, allowing players to introspect and explore "adult" themes and topics, including loss, regret, powerlessness, mental-health, and mortality. In this paper we examine a number of recent games as case studies and explore the way in which they use their mechanics to evoke feelings of discomfort in their players, and the way in which pathos serves play. Through this, we highlight a number of different techniques used by game designers and conclude by proposing further work in this space to determine exactly why players are drawn to these types of games, and to explore the ways in which research in this field could be used to drive yet more emotive and empathetic games.