A Cognitivist Theory of Affordances for Games

This paper presents a cognitivist theory of affordances for games, arguing that a useful framework for analyzing games must account for cognition rather than treating affordances as purely environmental properties in the manner of ecological psychology. The authors contend that prior uses of "affordance" in game research lack a shared formal definition, and they position their theory as a synthesis drawing on ecological psychology, interaction design, and human-computer interaction. The contribution is primarily theoretical, offering a set of concepts and definitions intended to aid both the design and analysis of games rather than an empirical study.

The framework rests on three manipulable entities: real affordances, which are the actions a game's underlying computational model actually supports; perceived affordances, which are the actions players believe are possible, shaped by their experience, memory, and expectations from similar games; and feedback, the perceptual information designers introduce to advertise real affordances and elicit accurate perceptions. The authors argue that designers should focus primarily on what players perceive they can do, since an unsupported perceived action can still shape player expectations, while an unadvertised real affordance may go unnoticed. The theory also reconciles existing accounts by Mateas on material and formal affordances and by Linderoth on exploratory and performatory actions with this three-part model.

The paper's illustrative case analysis examines a non-quest sequence in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in which a player may jump from a cliff into a pool below, a real affordance that appears to be fatal from the cliff's apparent cues alone. The game supplies feedback in the form of a discovery message triggered at the cliff's edge, which, interpreted through cooperative discourse reasoning, signals the hidden affordance and leads to a narrative reward and a skill increase. The authors conclude that the theory offers practitioners guidance for aligning perceived affordances with design goals and gives scholars a vocabulary for understanding how games shape perception, problem-solving, and player action.