This week, Alexa, Emily, and I will be leading a discussion on emotions and gaming. We will be looking at how games are able to manipulate players into feeling certain emotions. One genre that does this is horror games. They are able to use different aspects of play in the game to make the player feel anxiety and fear. One horror game that does this is the PS4 game Until Dawn. In until dawn the player controls a handful of different character in a snow cabin who are being hunter by monsters. The game creates anxiety and fear in the player a few ways. One way is that the game implements jump scares so the player is always waiting for things to pop out at random and scare them. Another way they game designers create anxiety is by requiring players to quickly hit button on the controller. This will usually happen when a character is being chased by a monster. The player will have a few seconds to hit a series of control buttons or else their character will die. This creates anxiety in the player because they are always waiting for this to happen and are pressured to quickly hit the correct buttons. They also use sound effects to their advantage in the same way that horror film do, in that the music will get faster the closer you get to a jumpscare.
