An engaging examination of how video game design can create strong,
positive emotional experiences for players--with examples from popular,
indie, and art games.
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, Isbister shows us, 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.
