Emotional design for games: A framework for player-centric approach in the game design process

Abstract

This paper elaborates a conceptual framework of emotional design for games and explains how it could assist game designers in designing immersive games. Player-centric approach is identified as the core of the framework which signifies the roles of emotion in the game design process particularly at the pre-production stage. Since emotion and perception are biological process of human beings, players are prone to choose digital games which offer immense pleasure and enjoyment experience. In game playing process, players are mostly dominated by perception which leads their behavior to act. Perception is driven by immediate emotional response at visceral level. This phenomenon emerges from the integration between three domains of learning and three levels of emotional design. This integration would contribute to the establishment of study into player-centric emotional design for games.