Eight Ways Videogames Generate Emotion

Key insights

7 takeaways

01
Frome's paper proposes a conceptual model crossing two player roles (observer-participant and actor-participant) with four emotion types (game, narrative, artifact, ecological), yielding eight categories of emotion inputs videogames can present.
02
The model is descriptive rather than predictive: it offers vocabulary and a guide for future empirical research but does not claim to forecast individual player responses, given variability in backgrounds and cultural contexts.
03
The ecological emotion category captures responses to represented events as if they were real, such as jumping at a sudden ghost or feeling vertigo on a virtual cliff, which Frome links to mental processes that do not distinguish representation from reality.
04
Artifact emotions concern aesthetic evaluation of the game as a crafted object, such as admiration for graphics or frustration with an interface, and Frome argues these are often overlooked in existing scholarship.
05
A single artwork can blend all four emotion types in varying combinations, and there is no fixed relationship between how many areas a game engages and the intensity of the emotion it produces.
06
The paper's scope is limited to individual single-player experiences rather than multiplayer emotional dynamics, and it uses a modern third- or first-person action game as its prototype.
07
The framework draws on Damasio's broad definition of emotion and Wittgenstein's concept of "seeing-as" as theoretical foundations.

Summary

Jonathan Frome's paper "Eight Ways Videogames Generate Emotion" proposes a theoretical model for understanding the emotional responses players have to single-player videogames. Frome argues that existing scholarship either focuses on a narrow range of emotions or fails to distinguish among emotion types, and he offers a framework built on two player roles, observer-participant and actor-participant, crossed with four emotion types: game, narrative, artifact, and ecological. Drawing on Damasio's broad definition of emotion and Wittgenstein's notion of "seeing-as," the model yields eight categories of emotion inputs that a videogame can present to a player.

The paper explicitly limits its scope. It addresses individual play rather than multiplayer emotional dynamics, and it treats videogames generally while acknowledging that not all titles exploit every area of the model equally. Frome uses a modern third-person or first-person action game as his prototype and illustrates the framework with examples drawn from many titles, including Halo, Fatal Frame, Splinter Cell, and Fight Night Round 2. The model is conceptual rather than empirical, and it does not claim to predict individual responses, given the variability of player backgrounds and cultural contexts. Frome instead presents it as a source of descriptive vocabulary and a guide for future empirical research.

The central analytical contributions are the ecological and artifact emotion categories. Ecological emotions arise when players respond to represented events as though they were real, illustrated by jumping at a sudden ghost or experiencing vertigo on a virtual cliff face, a response Frome links to aspects of the mind that do not distinguish representation from reality. Artifact emotions concern aesthetic evaluation of the work as a crafted object, such as admiration for graphics or frustration with an interface. Frome argues these categories are often overlooked, and that a single artwork can blend all four emotion types in varying combinations, with no fixed relationship between the number of areas engaged and emotional intensity.