Video games can have a variety of intended and unintended effects on players, making the impacts of games and the role that individual design elements play in causing those impacts a valuable area of research. This study explored the social and cognitive effects on players of two “art games” (Depression Quest and Actual Sunlight) by analyzing player-generated discussion board posts, focusing on (1) what real-life social and cognitive effects the games had on players and (2) what elements of the games made the players consider them “good” or “bad” games. Players reported or demonstrated that the games led to understanding and empathy, self-evaluation, lessons learned, clinical discussion of depression, encouragement to others, a sense of community, and opening dialogue with friends and family. Discussions of game quality centered on realism, game endings and message, and player agency.
BacklundP.HendrixM. (2013). Educational games—Are they worth the effort? A literature survey of the effectiveness of serious games. 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES), IEEE, Poole, England. doi:10.1109/VS-GAMES.2013.6624226
BogostI. (2011). How to do things with videogames. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
6.
BondM.BealeR. (2009). What makes a good game? Using reviews to inform design. Proceedings of the 23rd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Celebrating People and Technology,British Computer Society, pp. 418–422. Seattle, WA: ACM. Retrieved fromhttp://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1671065
7.
BradnerE. (2001). Social affordances: Understanding technology mediated social networks at work. Extended Abstracts of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Cardona-RiveraR. E.YoungR. M. (2013). A cognitivist theory of affordances for games. In Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies. Atlanta, GA: Digital games Research Association.
10.
Checa-RomeroM. (2016). Developing skills in digital contexts: Video games and films as learning tools at primary school. Games and Culture, 11, 463–488. doi:10.1177/1555412015569248
11.
ChenJ. (2007). Flow in games (and everything else). Communications of the ACM, 50, 31–34.
12.
CohenJ. (2001). Defining identification: A theoretical look at the identification of audiences with media characters. Mass Communication & Society, 4, 245–264.
DabbaghN.DassS. (2013). CATS: A tool for identifying the cognitive affordances of learning technologies. 36th Proceedings of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Anaheim, CA. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aect.org/pdf/proceedings13/2013i/13_10.pdf
DíazC. M. C.TungtjitcharoenW. (2015). Art video games: Ritual communication of feelings in the digital era. Games and Culture, 10, 3–34. doi:10.1177/1555412014557543
18.
DickeyM. D. (2005). Engaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53, 67–83.
19.
DickeyM. D. (2006). Game design narrative for learning: Appropriating adventure game design narrative devices and techniques for the design of interactive learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 54, 245–263.
20.
FrimanU. (2015). From pixel babes to active agents: How to fix the lack of diversity in female digital game characters. Well Played, 4, 11–25.
21.
GibsonJ. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
22.
HartsonR. (2003). Cognitive, physical, sensory, and functional affordances in interaction design. Behaviour & Information Technology, 22, 315–338. doi:10.1080/01449290310001592587
23.
KallioK. P.MäyräF.KaipainenK. (2011). At least nine ways to play: Approaching gamer mentalities. Games and Culture, 6, 327–353. doi:10.1177/1555412010391089
24.
KlimasC. (2009). Twine: An open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. Retrieved February 25, 2017, fromhttps://twinery.org/
25.
LinderothJ. (2012). Why gamers don’t learn more: An ecological approach to games as learning environments. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 4, 45–62. doi:10.1386/jgvw.4.1.45_1
Marinescu-NenciuA. P. (2015). Collaborative learning through art games: Reflecting on corporate life with “Every Day the Same Dream.”Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, 6, 195.
28.
Marinescu-NenciuA. P.RughinişC. (2015). Every day the same dream? Social critique through serious gameplay. eLearning and Software for Education, 2, 65–72.
MateasM. (2001). Expressive AI: A hybrid art and science practice. Leonardo, 34, 147–153.
31.
McMahanA. (2003). Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video games. In WolfM. J. P.PerronB. (Eds.), The video game theory reader (pp. 67–86). New York, NY: Routledge.
32.
NardiB.HarrisJ. (2006). Strangers and friends: Collaborative play in World of Warcraft. Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ACM, pp. 149–158. Retrieved fromhttp://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1180898
33.
NormanK. L. (2010). Development of instruments to measure immerseability of individuals and immersiveness of video games (Technical Report LAPDP-2010-03, HCIL Technical Report 12-5-10). College Park, MD: University of Maryland. Retrieved fromhttp://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2010-33/2010-33.pdf
34.
OchsnerA.SaucermanJ. (2015). I choose you! Diversity in the design of Pokemon. Well Played, 4, 26–40.
OsmanovicS.PecchioniL. (2016). Beyond entertainment: Motivations and outcomes of video game playing by older adults and their younger family members. Games and Culture, 11, 130–149. doi:10.1177/1555412015602819
38.
PearceC. (2015). Introduction. Well Played, 4, 1–19.
RomeroM.UsartM.OttM. (2015). Can serious games contribute to developing and sustaining 21st century skills?Games and Culture, 10, 148–177. doi:10.1177/1555412014548919
SoutterA. R. B.HitchensM. (2016). The relationship between character identification and flow state within video games. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 1030–1038. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.012
SzentgyorgyiC.TerryM.LankE. (2008). Renegade gaming: Practices surrounding social use of the Nintendo DS handheld gaming system. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, pp. 1463–1472. Retrieved fromhttp://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1357283
WilliamsD.MartinsN.ConsalvoM.IvoryJ. D. (2009). The virtual census: Representations of gender, race and age in video games. New Media & Society, 11, 815–834.
