Francesca Foffano
University of York
Francesca Foffano is an academic, currently involved as PhD researcher at the University of York. She specializes in player research, in particular understanding what part of game design enhances or diminishes the emotional player experience. Her work has focused more generally on player difficulty, in particular, what causes players to get stuck in games. Previously, she collaborated with AbleGamers in understanding the use of video games in occupational therapy and working on player perception of adaptive game managers (AI directors) for the University of Reykjavik.
Francesca Foffano is speaking at the following session/s
Player Emotional Design
When it comes to emotion in video games, the player should feel the experience, not just be a spectator. Being able to create a game that makes you deeply mesmerized, bittersweet, or sentimental is every creator's dream, but the danger is that you end up forcing the player to feel something. Sometimes this can actually ruin the experience for the player, or worse, hurt them if the experience is too overwhelming.
This talk will present a recent study in which we asked players which games they generally recognize as emotional, and what they are looking for when they choose an emotional experience. We then use 10 games from our list of top emotional games to explore the commonalities from a design perspective that make these games so memorable.
Finally, we talk about another type of memorable experience, the one that puts players' sensibilities at risk. It may be easy to conclude that violent scenes should be discarded as suicides, phobias, or controversial moral choices. Warnings are not the answer, as they prevent the player from playing the game at all, so we will present options for making the design of emotionally charged content more manageable without sacrificing the player's experience. Dealing with a difficult emotion is not an excuse for not creating an accessible experience.
Session Takeaway
- Understand what players seek when searching for emotional experiences and which games are more commonly recognized as emotionally impactful
- Understand which are the common design traits that make a game emotional and how this can inform better design
- Identify which experiences can be overwhelming for players and how to design to make them accessible without excluding certain topics (e.g. suicide/phobias)
Session speakers
