Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/Role-playing games, motivation, and emotion

Role-playing games, motivation, and emotion:
What are the motivational and emotional characteristics of role-playing games?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. A group playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), a role-playing game.

Gaming grown into a widely popular pastime. Some use it as a stress reliever after a long day of work, some play games for entertainment when socialising, and some simply play games because it's fun. As gaming has slowly become more involved in society, games themselves have developed into different genres such as role-playing games, virtual reality games, first-person shooters, and even more. The more games have developed, in both quality and genre, discussions on whether gaming was a good or bad thing came to light. Do games have a negative influence on people and their emotions? This chapter looks into that argument in more detail, focusing on what positive emotions are, what negative emotions are, and how these relate to gaming.

This chapter also discusses the motivational aspects of gaming, such as why people game, why people continue to game, and how gaming can help with an individual's psychological needs. To bring everything together, a discussion on ways that gaming can be used to improve our lives via emotional and motivational avenues to try and close out our three main focus questions: what are the emotional characteristics of gaming?; what are the motivational characteristics of gaming?; and how can we apply gaming to real life?

Focus questions What are the emotional characteristics of gaming? What are the motivational characteristics of gaming? How can we apply gaming to real life?

Emotional characteristics

A significant aspect of gaming culture revolves around the emotions experienced both within the game and those felt by players during gameplay.. Many of the large, successful games in society often have very emotional scenes that can draw in the audience and enhance the overall gameplay experience. Below, is an expanded look at positive and negative emotions and emotional attachment to characters.

Positive emotions

Before we delve into what positive emotions we can experience from games, we need to establish what positive emotions are in the first place. Most people think of joy and happiness when they hear the words “positive emotions”, which isn't necessarily wrong, but positive emotions can also be more obscure. They can also include emotions such as surprise, interest, pride, triumph and so much more, it is arguable that any emotion that can induce dopamine or has the capacity to induce dopamine can be called a positive emotion, as stated in the Handbook of Emotions (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008).

Some positive emotions can come from simply seeing other people display a positive emotion, for instance seeing someone can influence us to smile, something that we call “mimicry” or, in some cases, the chameleon effect (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). This effect can also come from fictional characters within a game, meaning that through mimicry we can be influenced to feel what the characters are feeling, whether it be our own custom-made character, or a Non-Playable Character (NPC).

To further expand on that, however, the positive emotions that we gain from gaming don't necessarily come from what the characters are feeling. Our personal emotions and characters' emotions are not mutually exclusive, as we can feel joy, pride, and triumph from certain achievements or actions that surround a game, such as beating that one really hard boss fight, earning a really rare trophy or rare item, to even just finishing the game itself. Sometimes, characters can also just say and do things that we find funny, encouraging us to laugh and enjoy the game further.

Negative emotions

Just as we can experience positive emotions, we can experience negative ones as well. Negative emotions can seemingly range from anger and rage to envy and contempt to disgust and embarrassment, but interestingly, it is difficult to find what exactly a “negative emotion” is as most people tend to allocate disorders such as depression and anxiety as the root causes of “negative’ moods and emotion (Kristjánsson, 2003). This is partly due to the fact that emotions themselves aren't necessarily just either negative or positive, this is followed up later.

Negative emotions can also be experienced from playing games in many different ways. To begin with, mimicry plays a role in experiencing emotions, just as it does with positive emotions. Alongside mimicry, however, is our ability to feel sympathy and empathy, for instance, if we see a character that is upset because a close friend or family member died, then we are able to sympathise with them and feel sad. To move away from the characters and plot-related emotions, frustration and anger can be experienced from gaming as well, in the form of not being able to complete a quest, continually dying from a fight, fear and shock can also be experienced often when playing horror games.

Negative emotions tend to get a bad reputation simply because of the word ‘negative’, but are they really all that bad? Emotions are too complex to really group together as Negative and Positive, they can be either, or even both at the same time in some weird circumstances. In fact, when it comes to gaming, it has been widely reported that when a game is able to induce negative emotions from a story or plot-line based perspective, it enhances the overall enjoyment of a game (Bopp et al., 2016). Having negative emotions being portrayed in media such as games, specifically role-playing games that follow a storyline allows us to become attached to become attached to characters from a sympathetic standpoint. The ability to invoke any emotion, positive or negative is a sign of a well-done literature and/or game.

Figure 2. Different kinds of character attachment

Emotional attachment to characters

A large reason that we can become so emotional towards games is because we can become emotionally attached to the characters or the game itself on an emotional level. Emotional attachment is typically defined as “the emotional bond connecting an individual with a specific target” (Jiménez & Voss, 2014), that target in the case is games and their characters. Emotional attachment can range from having a bond with a character that you made and designed, this type of character being coined the term “customisable character”, or “ custom character” for short. A connection is often formed with these types of characters because, as a player, you spend time creating and shaping them to look and feel how you want. In some games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, Baldur’s Gate 3, and others, you also create and develop the past of a character as well. In other games, like The Sims, for example, you create a character to your liking, and then watch them grow old, and can then even play as their future generations creating a bond with the family you have made rather than a singular character.

Quite often, people will also form an emotional attachment to pre-made characters, including both the main character and the supporting cast. Sometimes, this is simply due to time playing the game and growing fond of the character, but it can also be because a player may see themselves in the character, or in other words, they feel as if they relate to this character and the hardships they have been through or the way they handle different situations.

It is important to differentiate between an emotional attachment to a character that stems from fondness and relatability and an emotional attachment born from obsessions. Attachments from fondness and relatability tend to be seen as “healthy attachments”, whereas one born from obsession is “unhealthy” and in some extreme cases and create delusions that the character is real and has feeling towards the player, platonic or otherwise. Figure 2 shows different kinds of attachments and emotions associated with characters and character types that are often viewed as “healthy”.

Motivational characteristics

To engage in a game, an individual must first feel motivated to start and then maintain that motivation to continue playing. Without motivation, there is no drive and want, there is no interest. An individual can have family members who play games that can influence them, and that alone might be able to help motivate them to start a game but not necessarily to continue. Below is a closer look at what can motivate an individual to play games.

Self-determination theory

One of the most renowned motivational theories known to date is Ryan and Deci’s Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Self-determination theory surrounds the idea that an individual's motivational drive stems from their need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is typically regarded as one’s ability and perceived ability to make a choice and decision, competence is the ability to complete an action and tie in with self-efficacy, and relatedness is the need to feel connected with others on a social level. Below will expand on these three motivational characteristics in relation to gaming.

Autonomy

Autonomy in gaming comes in the form of being able to take control of certain aspects of a character. This can be what they look like and their past if they are a customisable character, or simply just being able to control the actions that said character has. Many games let you choose which direction to take the plot with multiple different endings, they allow different dialogue options. Games such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2 are all games that we categorise as “open-world”, meaning that you can explore anywhere on the map of the game that you choose, raising an individuals sense of autonomy and personal agency. Autonomy is still rather associated with customisation characteristics of gaming in an overall view (Kim et al., 2015)

Competence

Competence in gaming contains a broader range of aspects compared to autonomy. Where autonomy focuses on personal control, competence focuses on the area of personal ability. For gaming, this can be the belief of finally getting past that one boss fight, winning that really rare achievement, and simply finishing the game. People inherently love to be challenged, and challenging sections of games, whether it be confusing puzzles, different plot choices, or tough boss fights, all feed that love of challenge which is rather consistent with the theories surrounding competence and thus enhance the overall enjoyment of a game (Boyle et al., 2011).

Most gaming platforms also have an Achievement system which is known as Trophies. These achievements are rewards that are given when you complete certain tasks, sometimes these are plot-related and sometimes they are battle or item-related. Most platforms have a percentage-based aspect of these achievements, showing the percentage of players that have been able to gain or unlock the achievement, allowing for competitive motivation to complete these achievements as a show of competence.

Relatedness

There are two ways that the need for relatedness expresses itself in gaming, but they both center around the need for connection, typically socially. There is a wide genre of games called Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, MMORPG for short. These games allow you to follow a storyline or plot while also interacting with other players in a social aspect. MMORPGs facilitate the formation of new relationships, often through team collaborations. This format not only provides social connections but also enhances teamwork and development.

Another way that gaming can influence the need for relatedness is the above-mentioned emotional attachment. Sometimes, when a person becomes attached to a character, they feel motivated to play their game more as a way of feeling connected to someone, despite being fictional, on a more personal level. Or alternatively, if they have yet to find a character that they are fond of or are attached to on a personal level due to feelings of relatedness, they might be more motivated to play more games until they find that character for themselves.

Real world application

As much as we can talk about why people play games, specifically from an emotional and motivational standpoint, there has been much debate on whether games are a negative or positive influence. To a degree, this may be true, as children can learn through modeling and observation, and many games have violent actions, which can then influence children to be violent themselves. Gaming’s influence, however, is not simple enough to simply label as positive and negative, below is a look at some of the positive ways that gaming can help improve our lifestyle.

Emotional and cognitive training

Many people often struggle to identify what they're feeling, and sometimes other people as well, especially if it is a negative emotion. Many plot-based games have emotional conflict, whether that be character death, relationship fallouts, betrayal, to simply reactions of stress. As spoken before, many people can relate to characters on an emotional level, and sometimes this identification can help people identify how they feel about a personal issue in their life.

Studies have shown that gaming can actually help influence emotional stability and cognitive training depending on the genre. A review was done of recent literature in 2018 that compiled all the testing that had gone into research on emotional and cognitive training. They found that action and adventure games helped produce a higher processing speed, reaction time, general memory, and multitasking. They also discovered that specifically relating to horror games, the influence of the stress-induced moments helps those with trait anxiety symptoms to, in the future, have better behavior performance in anxious-related stress tasks (Pallavicini et al., 2018).

Positive character relation and the positive influence that gaming has on cognitive abilities and emotional stability is overall a very positive aspect of gaming. These aspects show that gaming can be used as an educational tool when it comes to emotion.

Gamification

Gamification is a learning tool that has been developed from a gaming structure. It is important to note that games and gamification are two very different things. Gamification is a learning system that has game-like qualities, such as “side-quests” or “objectives” rather than a simple “to-do list” (Kapp, 2012). Gamification is used for professional environments, more in organisations, whereas game-learning is less professionally structured and more aimed for children and developmental learning, so it focuses more on actual games and game qualities over gamification.

Possible therapy tool

As mentioned above, certain game genres are able to influence anxiety and stress behaviours. There have been studies that have shown that gaming can be beneficial for specific phobia types and traumatic situations, such as certain animals and insects to situations such as driving after being in a car accident (Walshe et al., 2003). Gaming can be used as a form of in vivo exposure therapy and a good example of this is the Hogwarts Legacy game released in 2023. In Hogwarts Legacy, there is an option to turn on settings for those who have arachnophobia, a phobia of spider. This setting changes all spiders within the game to change appearance. This setting could allow an individual with arachnophobia to slowly ease into their fear without actually being in the presence of a spider, as the option can be turned on and off.

Conclusion

Closing out this article let's circle back to emotional characteristics. You can experience a wide variety of emotions from gaming, both negative and positive such as sadness, anger, pride, joy, triumph, contempt, and disgust, through a game's storyline, or different gaming aspects such as achievements. Motivation for gaming very much centers around the self-determination theory and an individual’s need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness which can all be achieved via gaming. Lastly, gaming can be used to help with cognitive training and developing emotional stability as well as a form of in vivo exposure. It can also be used within businesses and organisations through forms of gamification and game-learning to help enhance learning and involvement.

Generally, games can still have a negative effect on people, the death of a favourite character can cause emotional stress, and children can learn bad and violent behaviour through modeling and observation, but gaming still also has a very positive influence on our lives that many people don't consider, and more often than not, outweigh the negative influence it can have.

See also

• Self-determination theory (Wikipedia)
• Gamification (Wikipedia)
• Video games and emotion (Book chapter, 2015)

References

Bopp, J. A., Mekler, E. D., & Opwis, K. (2016, May). Negative emotion, positive experience? Emotionally moving moments in digital games. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 2996-3006. https://10.1145/2858036.2858227

Boyle, E., Connolly, T. M., & Hainey, T. (2011). The role of psychology in understanding the impact of computer games. Entertainment computing, 2(2), 69-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2010.12.002

Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction. Journal of personality and social psychology, 76(6), 893. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893

Fredrickson, B. L., & Cohn, M. A. (2008). Positive emotions. Handbook of emotions, 3, 777-796.

Jiménez, F. R., & Voss, K. E. (2014). An alternative approach to the measurement of emotional attachment. Psychology & Marketing, 31(5), 360-370. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20700

Kapp, K. M. (2012). What is gamification. The gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods and strategies for training and education, 1-23. Research Gate.

Kim, K., Schmierbach, M. G., Chung, M. Y., Fraustino, J. D., Dardis, F., & Ahern, L. (2015). Is it a sense of autonomy, control, or attachment? Exploring the effects of in-game customization on game enjoyment. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 695-705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.011

Kristjánsson, K. (2003). On the very idea of “negative emotions”. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33(4), 351-364. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1468-5914.2003.00222.x

Pallavicini, F., Ferrari, A., & Mantovani, F. (2018). Video games for well-being: A systematic review on the application of computer games for cognitive and emotional training in the adult population. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2127. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02127

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68

Walshe, D. G., Lewis, E. J., Kim, S. I., O'Sullivan, K., & Wiederhold, B. K. (2003). Exploring the use of computer games and virtual reality in exposure therapy for fear of driving following a motor vehicle accident. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 6(3), 329-334. https://doi.org/10.1089/109493103322011641

External links

• The emotional effect of video games (YouTube - Wes Keltner)
• Your brain on video games (YouTube - Daphne Bavelier)
• Mental health benefits of role-playing games (Website, Fantasy grounds academy)
• Video games and mental health: how gaming affects your mental health - (Website, Game Quitters)
• The impact of gaming on mental health - (Website, Well Beings)
• Are there mental health benefits of video games? - (Website, WebMD)
• Why gaming is better for your mental health than you might think - (Website, Barnardo's)
• Video game quotes with deep meaning - (Youtube, Brian Diaz)
• Top 10 speeches in video games (Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo, and More!) - (Youtube, Vain'sVids)