Empirical evidence has supported the idea that eSports players\u27 emotions could be reflected in their mouse usage. Still, findings from IS literature on the exact relationships between users\u27 mouse usage patterns and their emotional states have been mixed. Possible causes include adjustment effects and offsetting effects. To address these problems, this study proposes a self-developed game named Hearth, which supports non-intrusive and concurrent tracking of players\u27 emotions and mouse usage. The game design supports the examination of the two possible effects. Results show that negative emotion was positively associated with the total mouse movement distance in a game turn, average task-level distance, and average task-level speed. Moreover, the open-source game proposed in this study facilitates further data collection from natural experiments due to its triadic design that addresses reality, meaning, and play
