The Emotional Impact of Game Duration: A Framework for Understanding Player Emotions in Extended Gameplay Sessions

TL;DR

This study investigates how game duration influences player emotions, proposing a framework for emotion detection and finding that extended gameplay significantly affects emotional responses, suggesting shorter games to mitigate negative impacts.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel framework for detecting player emotions and provides empirical evidence on how game length impacts emotional states during extended gameplay sessions.

Findings

Player emotional expression increases from 20 to 60 minutes.

Extended gameplay significantly influences player emotions.

Shorter games are recommended to reduce emotional impact.

Abstract

Video games have played a crucial role in entertainment since their development in the 1970s, becoming even more prominent during the lockdown period when people were looking for ways to entertain them. However, at that time, players were unaware of the significant impact that playtime could have on their feelings. This has made it challenging for designers and developers to create new games since they have to control the emotional impact that these games will take on players. Thus, the purpose of this study is to look at how a player's emotions are affected by the duration of the game. In order to achieve this goal, a framework for emotion detection is created. According to the experiment's results, the volunteers' general ability to express emotions increased from 20 to 60 minutes. In comparison to shorter gameplay sessions, the experiment found that extended gameplay sessions did significantly affect the player's emotions. According to the results, it was recommended that in order to lessen the potential emotional impact that playing computer and video games may have in the future, game producers should think about creating shorter, entertaining games.