How Games Move Us How Games Move Us
Playful Thinking

How Games Move Us

Emotion by Design

    • 33,99 лв.
    • 33,99 лв.

Publisher Description

An engaging examination of how video game design creates strong and positive emotional experiences for players—with examples from Journey, Train, Little Big Planet, and more.

This is a renaissance moment for video games—in the variety of genres they represent, and the range of emotional territory they cover. But how do games create emotion? In How Games Move Us, Katherine Isbister takes the reader on a timely and novel exploration of the design techniques that evoke strong emotions for players. She counters arguments that games are creating a generation of isolated, emotionally numb, antisocial loners. Games can actually play a powerful role in creating empathy and other strong, positive emotional experiences; they reveal these qualities over time, through the act of playing. She offers a nuanced, systematic examination of exactly how games can influence emotion and social connection, with examples—drawn from popular, indie, and art games—that unpack the gamer’s experience.

Isbister describes choice and flow, two qualities that distinguish games from other media, and explains how game developers build upon these qualities using avatars, non-player characters, and character customization, in both solo and social play. She shows how designers use physical movement to enhance players’ emotional experience, and examines long-distance networked play. She illustrates the use of these design methods with examples that range from Sony’s Little Big Planet to the much-praised indie game Journey to art games like Brenda Romero’s Train.

Isbister’s analysis shows us a new way to think about games, helping us appreciate them as an innovative and powerful medium for doing what film, literature, and other creative media do: helping us to understand ourselves and what it means to be human.

GENRE
Arts & Entertainment
RELEASED
2016
4 March
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
192
Pages
PUBLISHER
MIT Press
SIZE
5.4
MB

More Books by Katherine Isbister

Other Books in This Series

Run and Jump Run and Jump
2024
The Rule Book The Rule Book
2024
The Stuff Games Are Made Of The Stuff Games Are Made Of
2023
Mainstreaming and Game Journalism Mainstreaming and Game Journalism
2023
The Beauty of Games The Beauty of Games
2023
Repairing Play Repairing Play
2023