Co-breeding between cognition and emotion in a location-based game

Abstract

This study addresses cognitive and emotional processes in hybrid physical-digital spaces. It describes how emotional experience, cognitive processes, and coupling with technology play an important role in the production of narratives relating to gaming practices. As an empirical basis, workshops were held in which participants explored a digital game based on location. As indicators of analysis we observed the emergence of two levels of meaning production in the narratives: one related to the descriptions of the programming and another related to the performance of the player-his/her way of being present and of acting in said context. It is argued that game performances constitute narratives that allow us to observe singular forms of experimentation in space. Such forms are dependent to emotion and tension, reconfiguration and maintenance of the structural coupling that a subject-player establishes with his/her game world-context.