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Cited by 68Digital Games and MediaEducational Games and GamificationFlow Experience in Various Fields

Thinking and Doing: Challenge, Agency, and the Eudaimonic Experience in Video Games

Open access
Cole, Tom, Gillies, Marco·2021·Games and Culture
DOI 10.1177/1555412019881536
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Abstract

The nascent growth of video games has led to great leaps in technical understanding in how to create a functional and entertaining play experience. However, the complex, mixed-affect, eudaimonic entertainment experience that is possible when playing a video game—how it is formed, how it is experienced, and how to design for it—has been investigated far less than hedonistic emotional experiences focusing on fun, challenge, and “enjoyment.” Participants volunteered to be interviewed about their mixed-affect emotional experiences of playing avant-garde video games. New conceptions of agency emerged (actual, interpretive, fictional, mechanical) from the analysis of transcripts and were used to produce a framework of four categories of agency. This new framework offers designers and researchers the extra nuance in conversations around agency and contributes to the discussion of how we can design video games that allow for complex, reflective, eudaimonic emotional experiences.

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  • Cole and Gillies's findings do not provide a sufficiently detailed and comprehensive account of which individual design elements and specific factors players associate with narrative agency.

    “However, their findings do not provide a sufficiently detailed and comprehensive account of which individual design elements and specific factors players associate with narrative agency, which is the primary goal of this work.”

    From ”Naked and on Fire”: Examining Player Agency Experiences in Narrative-Focused Gameplay (2021) · cites this paper as [10]

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Research works printed but not linked: 16

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  10. Jenkins, H. (2004). Game design as narrative archi- tecture. In P. Wardrip-Fruin N & Harrigan (Ed.), First person: New media as story, performance, game. MIT Press.
  11. Lazzaro, N. (2009). Understand emotions. In C. Bate- man (Ed.), Beyond game design: Nine steps toward creating better videogames. Cengage Learning.
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  13. Plantinga, C. R., & Smith, G. M. (1999). Passion- ate views: Film, cognition, and emotion. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  14. Salisbury, J. H., & Cole, T. (2016). Grounded theory in games research: Making the case and exploring the options. In Proceedings of the 1st interna- tional joint conference of digra and fdg.
  15. Surman, D. (2007). Pleasure, spectacle and reward in capcom's street fighter series. In B. Atkins & T. Krzywinska (Eds.), Videogame, player, text. Manchester University Press.
  16. Wardrip-Fruin, N., Mateas, M., Dow, S., & Sali, S. (2009). Agency reconsidered. Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009.

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Authors
Cole, T., & Gillies, M.
Affiliations
Goldsmiths University of London (GB)
Corresponding author
Cole, Tom
ORCID
Venue
Games and Culture
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2019-10-23
Volume
16
Issue
2
Pages
187-207
ISSN
  • 1555-4120 (ISSN-L)
  • 1555-4139
DOI
10.1177/1555412019881536
OpenAlex
W2982198273
Cited by
68
References
40
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 9
FWCI
9.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Games and Culture (publishedVersion)
  • Greenwich Academic Literature Archive (University of Greenwich) (acceptedVersion)
  • Goldsmiths (University of London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Flow Experience in Various Fields
Keywords
video games, agency, challenges, game design, player experience

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