Posted by Shelly on Feb 28th, 2008
That’s apparently the response that gamers have, according to a study by the American Psychological Association’s journal Emotion.
Instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent may elicit high-arousal negative affect (anxiety), with high Psychoticism scorers experiencing less anxiety than low Psychoticism scorers. Although counterintuitive, the wounding and death of the player’s own character may increase some aspect of positive emotion.
Ars Technica’s view seems to echo my own thoughts on this issue, as they described…
One obvious interpretation of these results is a difference in game mechanics. Success, in terms of a kill in a first person shooter, often leaves the player with the tension of identifying the next threat in the game. Death, in contrast, relieves them of this concern, an aspect of gaming the authors themselves noted. In many nonviolent games, achievements and threats are not directly linked.
Which makes perfect sense for anyone’s who’s played a first person shooter. Baddies rarely show up as singles, unless that one individual is, say, a giant demon with a rocket launcher for an arm.
But we’re talking 007 here…
What’s most interesting is that, while dying can sometimes make me feel more relaxed for a bit of time — nothing usually attacks you at the spawn points, unless it’s a player-vs-player type of encounter — the more often it happens, the more frustrated I become.
Which certainly seems normal enough — in the end I’m playing to win and experience a story. I wonder if the researchers didn’t note this aspect, since the study was on anxiety/stress, or if those playing it didn’t become frustrated…
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