Visual Delegates - Enhancing Player Perception by Visually Delegating Player Character Sensation

Abstract

While a player character in a game can experience all perceptual modalities, player senses are often limited, especially to the visual channel. As a result, many video games apply visual delegates that function as a substitution to enhance player perception and intensify the relation between player and player character. For instance, in first-person actions games, red colored edges on the screen layer visually inform the player of being hit and, to some extent, this visual feedback delegates the character's affect (i.e., pain) to the player's perception. Existing games apply such delegates in various forms. Yet, there is no systematic investigation or classification of these visual delegates resulting in a lack of understanding how to appropriately assign visual delegates to perceptual events in game design. Using a grounded theory-based approach, we systematically analyzed 102 character-centered video games. We collected 67 visual delegates and derived 12 associated groups of five basic perceptions. As a first, our work provides a systematic classification and collection that allows game designers to find appropriate visual delegates for character perceptions they want to trigger in players.