“Horror, guilt and shame” – Uncomfortable Experiences in Digital Games

Gameplay frequently involves a combination of positive and negative emotions, where there is increasing interest in how to design for more complex forms of player experience. However, despite the risk that some of these experiences may be uncomfortable, there has been little empirical investigation into how discomfort manifests during play and its impact on engagement. We conducted a qualitative investigation using an online survey (N=95), that focused on uncomfortable interactions across three games: Darkest Dungeon, Fallout 4 and Papers, Please. The findings suggest games create discomfort in a variety of ways; through providing high-pressure environments with uncertain outcomes and difficult decisions to make, to the experience of loss and exposing players to disturbing themes. However, while excessive discomfort can jeopardize player engagement, the findings also indicate that discomfort can provide another facet to gameplay, leading to richer forms of experience and stimulating wider reflections on societal issues and concerns

Interaction Aesthetics In and Beyond the Flow

Although almost two decades have passed since the term aesthetics of interaction made its appearance in design-oriented Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the actual understanding of the concept remains fuzzy and focused on the description of qualities of what constitutes an aesthetic experience. However, by trying to describe specific aesthetic qualities emerging from technology encounters, we risk offering endless definitions of potential aesthetic traits, mostly fixated on pleasurable interactions. This approach may discard other interactive expressions that could potentially lead us to meaningful insights. Drawing on the similarities between John Dewey's aesthetic experiences, Eugene Gendlin's process model, and Martin Heidegger’s analysis of tool use, this article offers a theoretical framework towards a broader, systematized view of aesthetics of interaction. To do so, the discussion exemplifies a series of phenomenological experiences ranging from transparency to breakdown: two opposites in the understanding of how technologies reveal themselves

The Relationship Between Fun And Learning: An Online Embodied Ethnography Of Coaches Across Continents

In a time when learning is often reduced to skills acquisition and outcomes, this inquiry provides a sensory exploration of the concept of ‘fun’, showing that ‘fun-ing’; a state of attentiveness and becoming, can spark an experiential attitude and practice, through embodied learning. This transdisciplinary, socio-cultural-material ethnography, of fun and learning, took place within an educational charity that uses the concept of ‘Purposeful Play’, Coaches Across Continents (CAC). It considers how CAC pivoted, during the COVID-19 pandemic, towards synchronous online learning experiences. This ethnography explores how fun is socially constructed; how it relates to online learning; and whether fun is a meaningful concept within CAC and beyond. Findings show that fun-ing is an embodied, creative phenomenon associated with themes including vibrant embodiment and embracing contradictions. By opening possibilities of knowing, through the body, not just the mind, findings also convey participants’ and researcher’s sensations and feelings: by introducing the ‘laughter critical incident’, as an entry point for discussions on roles of fun; and a spoken poem, which strives to capture the non-verbal, felt moments. Ultimately, this inquiry develops an innovative model for fun-ing, bringing together how types and roles of fun, embodiment, and socio-cultural-material learning interact alongside Six Principles: practical guidance to cultivate fun learning. These consider learning spaces; novel ways of relating; spontaneity; verbal and non-verbal communication; online-offline capabilities; and alternative concepts for measuring learning. The Six Principles and model, both generated from this research, show that simultaneous online and offline embodied experiences are equally important, through conceptualisations of presence, movement, and mediating artefacts. Focusing upon ways of knowing through the body, together they catalyse activities that generate qualities of experience, often associated with being well. Furthermore, they encourage the use of the imaginary (often unfamiliar), alongside material experience, which can disrupt, bracketing and transforming future educational experiences