If you're a fan of first-person shooter games, then you probably think there's nothing more annoying than seeing your character get killed. Actually, part of you might secretly enjoy the experience.That's what a team of researchers from the Helsinki School of Economics, who studied the emotional state of gamers in real-time, believe. They attached numerous psychophysiological sensors to gamers and monitored their moods as they played the first-person shooter game James Bond 007: Nightfire.
Outwardly, players might seem to hate seeing their character get shot or killed, but their facial twitches, brain activity, heart rate, perspiration and respiration told a different story. Players often showed signs of positive emotion when they character got wounded or killed off.
Similarly, many players showed signs of anxiety, or "high-arousal negative affect", while wounding or killing an enemy. "Instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger, or both," they write. The research appears in an article published in the February issue of the journal Emotion.
It certainly adds an interesting dimension to the discussion of the negative impact of computer games. It would be especially interesting to know if prolonged gameplay changes a player's emotional response to killing and being killed on-screen.
Via: Wolves Evolve. Will Knight, online technology editor . Labels: games :.
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