There is new (peer review) journal out there, which publish articles on live-action role-playing: Journal of Interactive Drama. First two issues are out. Curiously journal contains also larp scenarios.

Papers on neuroaesthetics seem, at first glance, seem to be interesting. I need to take more detailed look on these:

• Zeki, S. & Kawabata, H. (2004). The neural correlates of beauty. Journal of Neurophysiology 91: 1699-1705. At http://www.neuroesthetics.org/research/pdf/neurobeauty.pdf.
• Zeki, S. (2002). Neural concept formation and art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner. Journal of Consciousness Studies 9, 53-76. At http://www.neuroesthetics.org/research/pdf/unfinished.pdf.
• Art and the Brain. S. Zeki. Dædalus 127, 71-103 (1998). At http://www.neuroesthetics.org/research/pdf/Daedalus.pdf.
• Zeki, S. & Lamb, M. (1994). The Neurology of Kinetic Art. Brain 117, 607-636. At http://www.neuroesthetics.org/research/pdf/kinetic.pdf.

Note for myself: remember to check this one:

• Tavinor, G. Video Games, fiction, and emotion. At http://webmail.ltu.edu.tw/~miguel/ie2005/32_p201-tavinor.pdf. In Second Australian Conference on Interactive Entertainment.

Petri Lankoski
University of Art and Design Helsinki

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Mette Hjort and Sue Laver notes:

It is generally assumed that art and emotion are inextricably linked, as is shown by even the most cursory account of the history of critical thinking about music, painting, literature, or theatre. [1]

The same goes with games, whether one see games as art or not: aesthetics and affective experience of a game are connected. Affects are the basic building block of experience. Furthermore, the important function of affects in games is to guide decision-making and attention. [2] In this sense, goals are vital part of games as they give basis for decision-making: The goals give means to reason and decide which outcome is more advantageous in a given situation. Without preferred outcome, the decisions are meaningless. Affects are also important in social domain�when we are interacting with others. [3] It seems that affects, especially empathy with characters, are also crucial in engaging with film and literary fiction. [4] As a starting point, I assume that this is also a case with games with anthropomorphic characters, entities that get categorized as persons. (Typical features that trigger categorizations as a person include: discrete human body, intentional states like goals, affects, persistent attributes or traits, self-impelled actions, and self-awareness and self-interpretation.) [5]

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• N=15, Three random groups (N=5), 11 male, 4 female, aged between 18 and 26.
• They were evaluating two Alan Wake trailers in the study with different types of music.
• Study was about comparison of affects when viewing of the clip with different music (group1: silence, clip 1, and fearful, clip 2; g2 sad and aggressive; g3: happy and fearful).
• Participants labeled their affects and study indicates that background music influenced labeling in statistically significantly.
• Skin conductivity,heart rate, and pupil-range indications measured corresponded to the reported affects.
• Study was also addressing to the question whether music influenced player’s thinking: especially aggressive music made participant infer situation differently (question used here was something like: “Alan Wake have gun in his coat pocket, agree-disagree).
• They state: “An inappropriate piece of music can kill the experience for the player”, which seem intuitively correct.
• However, the study does not address whether playing the game would change the results; there might be differences between concentrating on clip and concentrating on making decisions (especially if cognitive load of playing is high).

Moffat & Kiegler. 2006. Investigating the Affects of Music on Emotion in Games. Presented at Audio Mostly Games, Piteaå, Sweden (October 11 – 12). Available http://wood.tii.se/sonic/images/stories/amc06/amc_proceedings_low.pdf.