Session Information
| Title | Games that Move Us: Designing More Powerful Emotional and Social Play Experiences |
| Presenter(s) |  Katherine Isbister has a joint appointment in Digital Media and Computer Science and Engineering at NYU's Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. She also maintains an affiliation with the IT University in Copenhagen's Center for Computer Games Research. Isbister directs the Social Game Lab, is an investigator in the Games for Learning Institute, and serves on the Advisory Committee for the NYU Game Center. Her research focuses on designing games that heighten social and emotional connections for players, toward innovating design theory and practice. She keeps a blog, Game Empathy, with ruminations on this challenge. |
| Time | Friday, October 22, 9:00a-10:00a |
| Location | Ballroom |
| Format | Keynote |
| Description | Digital games, for the most part, offer players challenges involving strategic thinking and quick reflexes. And so games excel at evoking the powerful emotions that arise from struggling with such challenges - fear, frustration, exultation, triumph... Designers have learned to walk the 'flow' line between boredom and frustration with exquisite grace, to reliably deliver thrilling (but not too overwhelming) experiences.
But these emotions are a fraction of what we can feel - other media have gone far further in evoking a broader and more complex range of feelings. If we believe media (including games) are doing their job when they lead us to insights about ourselves and the world in addition to providing an excellent thrill ride, then finding ways to explore and expand the emotional range of games is vital. In this talk, I'll present to you some powerful techniques game designers already have at their fingertips; innovations that are core to the medium and the way it's consumed. I'll discuss why it is that game designers haven't taken better advantage of these techniques, and how you can make use of them in your own work. |