The INDCOR member and chair of Working Group 3, Elisa Mekler, has got a funded project by The Academy of Finland. “Establishing a Model of Aesthetic Game Experience” is 4 years project to empirically study how games can create emotionally impactful and thought-provoking experiences, and develop new theoretical tools and methods for design and evaluation.
As the project underlines, the aesthetic game experience challenges existing notions of desirable player experience. While player experience research traditionally focuses on the experience of fun and empowerment, it cannot explain the appeal of game experiences that make players feel sad, guilty, or tense. A conceptual model is needed to facilitate systematic research into the aesthetic game experience; to articulate under what circumstances games will impact players emotionally and stimulate reflection. In addition, no suitable methods currently exist to reliably measure the aesthetic game experience, which further obstructs evaluation of these experiences’ impact on players.
Relation with INDCOR
“The grant reviewers positively highlighted the project’s links to INDCOR” and “this work continues several threads outlined in the encyclopedia draft entry “Transformation”, co-authored by Christian Roth” said Mekler.
Image: Matti Ahlgren / Aalto University.
