[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
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