[NetBehaviour] FPS players feel better after dying than after killing others, say researchers.

marc garrett marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Wed Feb 27 01:20:09 CET 2008


FPS players feel better after dying than after killing others, say 
researchers.

By Brandon Erickson.

An article in the February issue of the journal Emotion presents some 
strange findings regarding players' emotional reactions to killing and 
being killed in a first-person shooter (FPS). In the experiment, a group 
of students played James Bond 007: Nightfire (Super Monkey Ball II was 
used as a control) while their facial expressions and physiological 
activity were tracked and recorded moment-to-moment via electrodes and 
various other monitoring equipment. Conventional FPS wisdom would 
suggest that players like shooting enemies and dislike getting shot. The 
research findings, however, paint a different picture.

 From the article: "instead of joy resulting from victory and success, 
wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger, or both." In 
addition, "death of the player's own character...appear[s] to increase 
some aspects of positive emotion." This latter finding the authors 
believe may result from the temporary "relief from engagement" brought 
about by character death. Whatever the underlying basis, however, the 
results seem highly counterintuitive.

http://tinyurl.com/2vr4y6



More information about the NetBehaviour mailing list