Ontology of Pleasures in games

Ontology of Pleasures in games

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE

Tamara Roep

10782826

MASTER INFORMATION STUDIES

GAME STUDIES

FACULTY OF SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

August 21, 2016

Ontology of Pleasures in games

T.M.S. Roep

University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Informatics

Science Park 904, Amsterdam tamararoep@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT

In order to facilitate players judging beforehand whether they will like a game or not we propose an ontology of pleasures experienced in the game. We constructed the system through related literature works and player reports. We then validated this system through the use of three questionnaires. Our results showed that certain pleasures in the system need future research and that players felt that they could describe their game experience with help of the system better than they could understand the game experience from a description from the system. The majority of players preferred a combination of a description using pleasures and gameplay genres in order to understand the game experience. Results also showed that subsets of pleasures are related to each other.

Keywords

Games, Pleasures, Categorization

1. INTRODUCTION

Steam is the most popular digital distribution platform for games on PC. According to steamdb[1] the platform contains 9284 games. In 2014 The Steam Global Stats Project[2] used the global achievement statistics of 80 STEAM PC-games of various genres, budgets and publishers and release dates between 2007 and 2014 and showed that consumers have an average of 22,2% purchased games that they have not played. They also concluded that 42,7% see half of the content of the game and only 29,6% finish the game. On the 2nd _{of July in 2015 Steam added a refund system[3]} allowing users to request a refund for any reason provided it has been less than 14 days since purchase and they have spent less than two hours playing.

Shop pages of games contain screenshots, trailers, description, genres, user defined tags and user reviews that help consumers decide whether to buy a game or not. Yet the statistics and the event depicted above show that even with all that information it happens that a player dislikes the game they have purchased. That is the problem that we would like to address.

2. LITERATURE

To find out what is relevant to the aspect of liking a game we take a look at literature revolving players, consumers of games. In the paper "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who Suit MUDs”[4] Richard A. Bartle writes that the question “What do people want out of a MUD?” sparked a debate. The debate was summarized and according to Bartle a pattern emerged; people habitually found the same kinds of thing about the game “fun”, however, there were four sub-groupings into which opinion divided and players tended to have some particular preference. Bartle’s research showed that what people wanted out of MUDs was enjoyment. Various definitions of the word enjoyment included ‘pleasure’: “Use or possession of something beneficial or pleasurable.”, “Something that gives pleasure: Classical music

was her chief enjoyment.”, “a feeling of pleasure caused by doing or experiencing something you like” et cetera. We hypothesize that pleasures in games will adequately address the problem of judging whether we will like a game or not.

Bartle’s research showed that different players can enjoy different aspects of the same game. In “The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses”[5, p108] by Jesse Schell he mentions the following:

“But it is certainly true that people have their pleasure preferences.”

In the same section Schell mentions that there are many pleasures in the world, that no person seeks just one kind and also that we can trace back the motivation for every human action to some kind of pleasure seeking. Besides listing eleven examples of pleasures Schell states that there are many more pleasures, confirmed by Bartle and Leblanc who list pleasures of their own. In order to answer the questions “What makes a game “fun”? How do we know a specific type of fun when we see it?” Leblanc[6, p2] created a taxonomy of ‘more directed vocabulary’ and/or ‘aesthetics goals’ to describe games. Leblanc stated that the taxonomy helps describing games and answering the question why different games appeal to different players, or to the same players at different times.

From the literature we see the following pattern: - There are multiple pleasures to games - Players have a preference in pleasures

We want players to judge whether they will like a game or not based on the pleasures they can experience from the game. We want any type of player to be able to describe their game experience in terms of pleasures. We want any type of player to understand these descriptions. Therefore, the system that we will construct relies on a standardized list of pleasures.

Our main research question is as follows:

- Can we construct a system of standardized game experience in pleasures?

In order to validate this system, we have two sub-questions: - Can players use this system to describe the experience

of a game?

- Can players better understand the game experience through a description in pleasures?

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Constructing the system of standardized

game experience in pleasures

We limit the scope of our research to video games, our audience to people who play games, and the game experience we describe will focus on the single-player aspect of games.

In order to construct a system of standardized game experience in pleasures we need to explore what pleasures there are in games. As the system needs to be used by players we need to add descriptive keywords/ definitions for each pleasure as necessary. We will explore what game pleasures exist using literature and player reports. We will use literature that has a focus on player psychology and motivation as Schell stated that every motivation could be traced to a pleasure. Players are our target audience, they experience pleasures in games and we expect them to be able to report about the pleasures experienced. Not only can players report about what pleasures they have experienced but also how important these pleasures were for their enjoyment of the game. From the literature we can see that there is a difference in scope in the pleasures mentioned by Schell[4] and Leblanc[6]. Schell mentions the pleasure of ‘purification’ which can be explained of experiencing pleasure through cleaning/ clearing et cetera. Leblanc’s Taxonomy contains ‘Fantasy’: games as make-belief, the pleasure of the imaginary world, and the pleasure of imagining yourself as something that you are not. Experiencing the pleasure of make-believe can be passive, brought to you by the game through realistic graphics, story-telling et cetera while the pleasure of purification might need to be actively sought by the player through gameplay. The pleasure of purification might last as long as a player is experiencing the effects of cleaning/clearing while fantasy might last as long as the player is engaged with the game or even outside of it.

While players might have a preference, the scope of a pleasure will also affect how much enjoyment one can experience from it. One pleasure with a large scope experienced throughout the entire game may have a larger effect on the likeability of that game compared to five smaller scoped pleasures experienced in the same game. So not only do we have to explore what pleasures players can experience in games, we also have to include/exclude pleasures from our system based on their quality of impact to us liking a game or not.

We continuously need to ask whether players understand the vocabulary of our system. If players do not understand the vocabulary they will not be able to understand the description of the game experience or be able to construct this description themselves. We can ask them directly, ask them to describe a game using the proposed pleasures or ask them to give examples of a pleasure in a game. Asking players to describe games in terms of pleasures also allows us to find out what pleasures are being used and which are not. Those that are used frequently can be included in the final system.

Summary of sub-questions and methods:

- Question: What pleasures are there? Method: Player reports and literature on pleasure psychology.

- Question: Which of these pleasures should be included

in our system?

Method: Player reports on importance of pleasure. Validate which pleasures are used in examples/ descriptions and which are not.

- Question: Do players understand the vocabulary of the system?

Method: Asking players directly whether they do or not understand the pleasures, letting players describe games

in terms of pleasures and/or asking players for examples of pleasures experienced in games.

The end-result will contain a list of pleasures and their description.

3.2 Validation of the system: describing the

experience of a game

In order to validate our system, we will ask players to describe their game experience using the pleasures we listed. We will also ask players directly whether they can describe games using our system. We will construct a survey for this purpose.

3.3 Validation of the system: understanding

the experience

In the second step of validating our system we will expose players to the previously constructed descriptions of game experiences. We will then ask them whether the description helped them understand the game experience better. We will construct a survey for this purpose.

4. BACKGROUND

In order to better understand pleasure in gaming we review literature involving player psychology/ pleasure. In “The Neuroscience of Happiness and Pleasure”[7, p636] in an effort to link pleasure and happiness (state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy) to each other Morten L. Kringelbach at least concludes that a lack of pleasure is a formidable obstacle to happiness. Furthermore, he mentions[7, p674]:

“Thus, one way to conceive hedonic happiness is as “liking” without “wanting”. That is, a state of pleasure without disruptive

desires, a state of contentment (Kringelbach 2009). Another possibility is that moderate “wanting,” matched to positive

“liking,” facilitates engagement with the world.”

We hypothesized that pleasures would help in the judgement of liking a game and Kringelback’s paper conveys that liking might be the cause of happiness, a similarity with Bartle’s paper who showed that MUD players were looking for enjoyment, a synonym for happiness.

Schell mentioned that we can trace back the motivation for every human action to some kind of pleasure seeking. Kringelbach’s[7, p666] demonstrates the importance of rewards in reaching a state of happiness:

“Major processes within reward[…] consist of motivation or wanting (white), learning (light gray), and – most relevant to

happiness – pleasure liking or affect (gray).”

In “The Motivational Pull of Video Games: A Self-Determination Theory Approach”[8, p1] the self-determination theory is applied to the investigation of motivation for computer game play and the effects of gameplay on well-being. Results showed that SDT’s theorized needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness independently predict enjoyment and that for a subset of players those exposed to a certain game, the game experience had a short term positive effect on their well-being (happiness).

Arousal (the physiological and psychological state of being awake) is crucial for motivating certain behaviors (in example: the fight-or-flight response) and important in regulating

consciousness, attention and information processing[9]. Games are well-known for being able to produce the fight-or-flight effect

and the latter two regulations are often required during gameplay. Games are known as a form of entertainment also defined as a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight. Engagement, attention and wanting are all previously mentioned by the literature. These terms all include the concept of intentionality which according to Kringelbach[10, p5] is a necessary ingredient for the experience of pleasure:

“Our subjective experience of pleasure is rather extraordinary. […] The experience of pleasure involves intentionality and at least four distinct stages: engagement, acceptance, continuation,

and subsequent return.”

According to Ernest W. Adams[11] and Staffan[12] an important part of holding attention is immersion and its association with suspension of disbelief and/or secondary belief.

Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is the concept of the audience ignoring the reality in which they live and accepting a medium as the new reality. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to be entertained, else the audience will have to make a conscious effort to suspend disbelief instead to hold attention.

In Schultz’s[13, p853] analysis of concepts for reward functions he mentions dealing with learning, approach behavior and decision-making and pleasure. On multiple occasions Schultz touches on the subject of desire which he links to motivation, intentionality and that it may even be pleasant in itself[13, p855].

“Desire requires a prediction, or at least a representation, of a

reward and constitutes an active process that is intentional[in being about something(529)].”

A summary of what we have learned about pleasure: - It is closely tied to happiness/ well-being

- It involves intentionality, attention, engagement and/or interest

- It involves motivation, ‘wanting’ and/or desire During our explorative research we will keep an eye out for pleasures that are related to happiness, the self-determination theory, arousal and entertainment/ immersion.

5. EXPLORATION OF PLEASURES

THROUGH THE LENSE OF GAMING

First of all we can list pleasures that are mentioned in the literature works of Bartle, Schell and Leblanc. We will seek patterns in the pleasures mentioned or relations with the concepts mentioned in the previous section.

Bartle:

- Achievement within the game context. - Exploration of the game.

- Socializing with others. - Imposition upon others. Schell: - Mastery. - Competition. - Destruction. - Emotion. - Nurturing.

- Real world knowledge gain. - Anticipation.

- Delight in another’s misfortune. - Gift giving. - Humor. - Possibility. - Pride in an accomplishment. - Purification. - Surprise. - Thrill.

- Triumph over adversity. - Wonder. Leblanc: - Sensation/Sense-pleasure. - Fantasy. - Narrative. - Challenge. - Fellowship. - Discovery. - Expression. - Submission.

Schell states that a definition for fun might be: Fun is pleasure with surprises. It seems surprise is a crucial factor to the enjoyment of a game through pleasures. Similarities with surprise are discovery (games as uncharted territory) and exploration of the game. However, the pleasure of experiencing something unexpected seems the cause of the latter two and thus the main pleasure.

There are some similarities between these lists. The first similarity is Socializing with others, Gift giving (making someone happy) and Fellowship (game as social network). We believe the cause of these pleasures, the main pleasure in itself is relatedness[8, p3] as defined in the self-determination theory.

“Relatedness is experienced when a person feels connected with others”.

We observe another similarity that relates to the self-determination theory[8, p3]. Achievement within the game context, Mastery (…it only has to be challenging), Pride in an accomplishment, Triumph over adversity, Challenge (game as obstacle course) are mentioned. The terms include achieving, being challenged and overcoming which coincide with the definition of competence.

“Competence within SDT concerns a need for challenge and feelings of effectance.”

The last psychological need/motivation mentioned in “The Motivational Pull of Video Games: A Self-Determination Theory Approach”[8] is Autonomy.

“Autonomy within SDT concerns a sense of volition or willingness when doing a task.”

Bartle describes that players with a preference for Achievement within the game context give themselves game-related goals. Schell elaborates on Leblanc’s Expression that often the “expression” in a game does little to achieve the goals of the game. Schell’s Possibility (This is the pleasure of having many choices and the knowledge that any one of them could be picked) correlates with the example that provisions for choice enhance autonomy[8, p3].

Another similarity is Imposition upon others and Delight in another’s misfortune (we feel this when some unjust person

suddenly gets their comeuppance, schadenfreude). It can be seen as the inverse of relatedness: the pleasure of feeling unconnected with others (who are viewed negatively). In games this imposition upon others is commonly known as grieving and/or trolling. Another similarity that we can find is Wonder (feeling of amazement/awe), Fantasy (game as make-believe), Narrative (game as drama) and Submission (games as pastime). The terms include suspension of disbelief and engagement.

Besides the previous papers the works of Ernest W. Adams[11] and Staffan[12, p206] both incorporate suspension of disbelief and constructed different categories of immersion:

- Tactical immersion: tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile operations that involve skill. Players feel “in the zone” while perfecting actions that result in success.

- Strategic immersion: […] associated with mental challenge.

- Narrative immersion

- Spatial immersion: occurs when a player feels the simulated world is perceptually convincing. The player feels that he or she is really “there” and that a simulated world looks and feels “real”.

We have already touched on the patterns of immersion and challenge. Tactical immersion coincides with two concepts that we have touched on before. Being “in the zone” is a synonym for flow a concept that is often touched upon in the world of gaming. In “Beyond boredom and anxiety” Csikszentmihalyi writes about flow[14, p1]:

“Flow is a state of peak enjoyment, energetic focus, and creative

concentration experienced by people engaged in adult play, which has become the basis of a highly creative approach to living.”

Csikszentmihalyi[15] constructed a flow model that contains the pleasant states of Arousal, Flow, Control and Relaxation. With the concept of tactical immersion and flow we acknowledge the relation between immersion, flow and arousal.

Tactical immersion also mentions ‘tactile operations’. Schell[5, p108] argues that Leblanc’s ‘sensation’, the pleasures of sensation involve using your senses and thus also involve touch, will mainly be delivered by the game’s aesthetics (not to be confused with the concept of aesthetics in the MDA model).

Our initial list of pleasures so far includes: surprise, relatedness, competence, autonomy, schadenfreude, immersion, flow and sense-pleasure. All other pleasures were not involved in a pattern but can still be included in the system by player reports.

6. PLAYER REPORTS ON PLEASURES

We asked players what pleasures they experienced in games and received over 200 responses and engaged in over 10 direct conversations with players via chat. We also listed the pleasures that we had already explored and encouraged them to give examples of their experience with these pleasures during gameplay. Respondents were able to vote on suggestions. We used the vote system and the amount of examples for a pleasure as indicators that these pleasures would be used to describe games and thus should be included in the system.

We also constructed a pre-survey (see Appendix C) as validation of these pleasures. We interviewed five respondents and showed them the survey in which they would describe ten different games using the pleasures listed. We allowed them to report missing

pleasures. The pre-survey will be discussed in further length in the next section.

The following lists contain the pleasures 1) that were highly voted 2) were mentioned/ illustrated in (multiple) 3) that were utilized in the pre-survey. Sometimes pleasures could be placed under one umbrella term. Indicated inside hyphens are the responses that we believe fall under the term outside the hyphens.

The first online discussion (see Appendix A):

- Exploration (so highly voted that we separate this pleasure from surprise as it does not seem to be only about surprise/ uncharted territory but the combination with freedom/ autonomy)

- Exploitation - Anticipation - Immersion

- Relaxation (“Zen moments”, “messing around”) - Strategy (“min-maxing”, “prepatory optimization”,

“strategic decisions”) - Thrill

- Emotion - Surprise - Love

- Mastery (“having mastered the game’s mechanics”) - Autonomy (“didn’t care about winning or not”,

“freedom”, “customization”, “even if there is not much to do”, “if you let the player go back and forth as they please it is a lot nicer”)

- Control (“predatory sense of control”, “control over objects”, “having absolute control”)

- Dynamics (“gameplay smooth as hell, everything controls perfectly”, “fluid controls”)

- Aesthetics (“animations are […] (aesthetically pleasing)”, “smooth animations”, “color choice”) - Sensation/Sense-pleasure

- Music (“sounds are soothing”, “satisfying sounds”) - Excitement (mentions of being excited)

- Good feedback

- Relief (“successfully sneak looting”) - Humor

The second online discussion (see Appendix B): - Adrenaline rush

- Emotion - Knowledge gain - Thrill

- Progression

- Immersion

- Aesthetics (“looking at the graphics of the game”) - Relaxation (“relaxingly doing something”) - Destruction

- Excitement (another mention of being excited)

Outcomes from personal interviews (digital or in person) with players:

- Overcompetence/ Domination (“having a higher rank in League of Legends”)

- Progression (“being able to reach places you could not reach before”)

- Love/ Affection (“loving a character”, “loving a pet in Nintendogs”)

- The feeling of impact (controls)

7. FINAL LIST OF PLEASURES AND THE

PRE-SURVEY

In this section we will tread into further detail about the pre-survey that was used to validate the initial selection of pleasures. The survey had the following purposes:

- Changing labels/descriptions of pleasures if they were not understood.

- Validating that players are able to describe games using pleasures.

- Validation of the selection of games. - Validation of the selection of pleasures.

The pre-survey contained ten games that were either from well-known franchises or games that had generated a lot of media hype recently. Each of the respondents, five in total, had played at least half of the games selected. Respondents said they preferred more games and listed over 20 suggestions. Respondents also said they had trouble recalling pleasures from games they had not played recently. Lastly one of the respondents stressed that different games from the same franchise could evoke different pleasures. We concluded that a large selection of games would be needed. We also conclude that we want to ensure players only describe games they have played recently and that games should be listed separately and not under one label of the franchise they belong to. Therefore, we decide to use Steam’s top 99 played games for the larger survey. Steam’s top 99 played games features a list of games, updated daily, that highest amount of player activity. Four of the five respondents were able to describe all games that they had played using pleasures. One of the respondents was able to describe all games that he/she had played except for one. The game in particular was the Grand Theft Auto franchise which belongs to the sandbox genre (games that allow for a large degree of freedom and variability in gameplay). The respondent in question felt that almost all pleasures could be selected for this game and was unsure whether to write this down or not.

We hypothesize that games that fall into the sandbox or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game genres will nearly have all pleasures selected. In the second debate one of the respondents said that for the mmorpg EVE Online he/she could think of examples for nearly all pleasures listed. We conclude that for the

final survey we will explain players that they are allowed to choose as many pleasures as they like to describe a particular game. For now, we can conclude that players are able to describe games using pleasures and that a larger survey is warranted. For the pre-survey we constructed three sets of pleasures. The first set contained high level/broadly scoped pleasures (Sense-pleasure, Immersion) based on the related literature works. The third set contained more specific pleasures (Adrenaline Rush, Thrill) or pleasures that are derived from other pleasures/ high level concepts. The second set was a mix from both. After each set, in the order of the first, then the second and then the third set, respondents were asked that if they felt that a set did not sufficiently describe the game to pick pleasures from the next set. Results showed that most respondents picked pleasures from the second set and that for some games they tapped into the third set. Respondents preferred more specifically scoped pleasures to the broader pleasures. Using this data, we were able to construct a final set of pleasures to be used in the larger survey.

Respondents mentioned that some pleasures felt duplicate or could be combined into one label (we always name the label first): - Dynamics and Good feedback: respondents felt that good feedback was inherent to liking the feel of the gameplay.

- Progression and knowledge gain: respondents felt that progression is not limited to in-game rewards but also the manifestation of game mechanics and concepts in the mind.

- Relaxation and relief: respondents felt that relief has a specific cause (being endangered or experiencing tension beforehand) but arguably is the same pleasure as relaxation.

- Surprise and humor: respondents felt that the paradigm shift described by Schell[5, p110] as the explanation for the pleasure humor is actually the pleasure of experiencing something surprising.

We collected feedback on what pleasures were not understood: - Nurturing: when combined with the keyword

Care-giving the definition was clear to the respondents. - Thrill: when combined with Schell’s explanation the

definition was clear to the respondents.

- Impact: when combined with examples the definition was clear to the respondents.

- Relatedness: when combined with the definition from the Self-Determination Theory the definition was clear to the respondents.

- Emotion: when combined with an explanation similar to that of Thrill the definition was clear to the respondents. We also decided to use the highest level pleasures as categories to give the pleasures more context.

Now follows the final list of pleasures that we used for the larger survey (see Appendix D):

Category: Arousal - Adrenaline Rush - Anticipation

- Excitement - Thrill - Desire - Suspense Category: Entertainment - Surprise - Immersion - Flow - Exploration - Exploitation Category: Autonomy - Control - Destruction Category: Competence - Mastery - Progression - Strategy - Dominance (Overcompetence) Category: Sense-pleasure - Dynamics

- Aesthetics (the look of the game)

- Impact

- Music (the sounds and music of the game) Category: Happiness - Relaxation - Emotion - Love/ Affection - Relatedness - Schadenfreude/ Trolling - Care-giving (Nurturing)

In the larger survey we added the option of “A pleasure related to {insert category} but not listed here” to each category.

8. DISCUSSION OF SURVEY RESULTS

In this section we will discuss the data from the large survey (see Appendix D) that we conducted in which players could select a game and describe it in pleasures.

The survey contained a dropdown list with games. Respondents could select one game and then were exposed to the list of pleasures. They could tick the box of each pleasure that they had experienced in the game. At the end players could optionally leave behind feedback.

The purpose of the survey was to more accurately validate whether pleasures could be used by players to describe games. The pre-survey had only five respondents, the larger survey had 650 responses (respondents were allowed to enter the survey multiple times, the largest amount of entries for one person was eleven).

Of the 650 responses 16 were filtered as they were either test responses or duplicate responses. Through a give-away respondents were encouraged to enter the survey multiple times and we expected some respondents to cheat to improve their chances of winning which explains the duplicate responses. This leaves us with 634 responses in which respondents were able to describe their game experience in pleasures. Figure 1 displays the distribution of pleasures.

We identified two anomalies in the data set. We plotted the percentages and totals of the ‘Other’ options picked to find out if players felt that a pleasure was missing (see figure 2). The pick-rate for the option of “A pleasure related to {insert category} but not listed here” in the category Happiness was significantly higher

than for the other categories (see upper right dot in the following figure that has a large distance to the other dots).

Figure 2

From this we can deduce that respondents felt like a pleasure was missing in the Happiness category. The feedback from respondents seem to acknowledge the data. Respondents mentioned missing a pleasure like “Winning” or “Victory”. We hypothesize that this pleasure was missing in literature and player reports because achieving victory in games is an extrinsic motivation/goal set by games.

Extrinsic motivations can manifest in the mind. Schultz[13, p855] writes that once we have experienced a pleasure we may form a desire and thus motivation to obtain it again. Winning/victory is a well-known concept within games and the repeated exposure make this a crucial pleasure to add to our list.

The second issue that stood out was the pick rate of Control. It was picked in 77,92% of responses. We took a subset of games to investigate the impact of this high pick rate. Ten games were chosen 20+ times, five games were chosen between 15 and 19 times, five games were chosen between 9 and 14 times and the rest of the games had a lower pick rate and will not be used for this discussion. For each of the games we listed their top three picked pleasures. If there was a tie between pleasures, we unlimitedly added all pleasures that had the same pick rate. Then we calculated the standard deviation and the deviation of how many times each pleasure was included in the top three.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of deviations for pleasures. The horizontal axis contains the index numbers of pleasures. The blue graph denotes, on the vertical axis, the number of times a pleasure is in the top three highest picked pleasure for a game. For Control with index 7 this is 10 times. The orange bars denote, on the vertical axis, the deviation. Control with index 7 has a deviation of 5,2 and the standard deviation is 2,9.

Figure 3

We believe that the high pick rate for Control causes the pleasure to overshadow other pleasures that may be more typical to the game experience. In discussing the current survey results we take Control into consideration for a game under the fulfillment of one of the following two conditions:

- A pick rate of 95-100%.

- A significantly higher pick rate than other pleasures for that game.

Backtracking player reports allow us to split Control into lower level pleasures. The following player reports were assembled under autonomy: “didn’t care about winning or not”, “freedom”, “customization”, “even if there is not much to do”, “if you let the player go back and forth as they please it is a lot nicer”, “possibility”. We see two patterns. One is freedom relating to player’s own motivations and not being restricted by the game. The other is choice relating to the game facilitating customization/ choices.

For future research we argue splitting Control up into lower level pleasures:

- Freedom: the pleasure of being able to decide what to do based on your own motivations.

- Choice: the pleasure of having (a large amount of) choices in the game that are impactful and/or allow you to control the game.

Destruction, Exploitation, Love/ Affection, Care-giving (Nurturing), Relatedness and Schadenfreude have a pick rate of 40% for the entire dataset. A limitation of our dataset is that we can only discuss 20 games accurately and that more data from more games might see the increased usage of these pleasures. Therefore, we argue to keep the pleasures included in the system until larger research can decisively exclude them based on underuse.

Exploitation (41 votes for the first mention of it, Appendix A) and Relatedness (6 mentions in discussion 2, Appendix B) were highly valued in the player reports. We argue that there might have been a lack of games/ a lack of responses for games that contained these pleasure in the game experience.

For all pleasures we argue that at the minimum their scope should be broadened. We have adapted their labels/ descriptions to reflect this:

- Power (previously destruction): the pleasure of fulfilling a role/ responsibilities and/or having abilities of a far greater magnitude (than possible) in the real world.

- Exploitation: the pleasure of using bugs and glitches for your entertainment. Also the pleasure of breaking the game (and achieving more control over the game as a player).

- Love/ Affection: the pleasure of having a strong attachment to an object/ person in game.

- Care-giving (Nurturing): the pleasure of fostering or overseeing the (positive) development of something. - Relatedness: the pleasure of feeling connected to others.

Also the pleasure of being able to relate/ empathize with in-game characters.

For the label ‘Schadenfreude/ Trolling’ we argue the removal of the keyword ‘Trolling’ because the latter implies and active part of gameplay/ that the player is the actor/cause of this experience. This may have limited players in picking this pleasure when their experience from it may have been passive.

Player feedback showed that they still did not understand all pleasures, unfortunately some did not state which pleasure. The only pleasure that was indicated being misunderstood what Aesthetics. The respondent stated that their studies had taught them a different meaning of the word. So even when listing a definition and stating that is the definition of the pleasure that we mean by that word people can misunderstand. We argue that for even the most obvious of pleasures descriptions should be added. We updated all descriptions.

See the final list of pleasures resulting from the survey:

Category: Arousal. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of feeling alive/ being awakened.

- Adrenaline Rush: the pleasure of experiencing a fight/flight response.

- Thrill: the pleasure of experiencing terror but feeling secure in your safety.

- Anticipation: knowing a pleasure is coming which in itself can be a pleasure.

- Excitement: the pleasure of being enthusiastic and emotionally aroused.

- Desire: the pleasure of 'wanting' (having an object or outcome of desire in the game). One can experience a 'pleasant' desire.

- Suspense: the pleasure of anticipating an unknown outcome paired with curiosity.

Category: Entertainment. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of experiencing an activity that holds your interest.

- Flow: also known as being "in the zone", the pleasure of being absorbed in an activity and forgetting all sense of time.

- Exploitation: the pleasure of using bugs and glitches for your entertainment. Also the pleasure of breaking the game (and achieving more control over the game as a player).

- Immersion: the pleasure of believing the game world. The pleasure of becoming invested with the game narrative and/or feeling part of the physical simulation. - Surprise: the pleasure of experiencing something

unexpected. Also the pleasure of not being able to anticipate objects/outcomes.

- Exploration: the pleasure of being able to wander around in freedom or seeking out surprises/the unknown.

Category: Autonomy. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of controlling your own actions to your own benefit.

- Choice: the pleasure of having (a large amount of) choices in the game that are impactful and/or allow you to control the game.

- Freedom: the pleasure of being able to decide what to do based on your own motivations.

- Power: the pleasure of fulfilling a role/responsibilities and/or having abilities of a far greater magnitude (than possible) in the real world.

Category: Competence. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of being challenged and the feeling that your decisions/ actions are effective and impactful.

- Mastery: the pleasure of overcoming challenge and obtaining knowledge and/or skill to overcome (similar) challenges more easily/faster each time.

- Progression: the pleasure of being able to face newer/bigger challenges through feedback/rewards received for in-game efforts.

- Strategy: the pleasure of devising maneuvers/resource management and/or the successful execution thereof. - Dominance/Overcompetence: the pleasure of being able

to relax during a challenge and/or realizing your skill.

Category: Sense-Pleasure. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of having your senses (sight, touch, hearing, et cetera) positively stimulated. Also the pleasure of the experience itself.

- Dynamics: experiencing pleasure through direct interaction with the gameplay (and/or the controls). - Aesthetics: experiencing pleasure through the

visuals/looks of the game.

- Audio: experiencing pleasure through the music and sounds of the game.

- Impact: the pleasure of (mentally) experiencing a (physical) feeling of being/interacting within the game world.

Category: Happiness. Pleasures in this category are related to the pleasure of well-being and experiencing (pleasant) emotions.

- Winning/ Victory: the pleasure of achieving the highest end-result/goal in a game (over others).

- Emotion: the pleasure of experiencing (in any intensity) emotions in an emotionally secure environment.

- Relatedness: the pleasure of feeling connected to others. Also the pleasure of being able to relate/empathize with in-game characters.

- Schadenfreude: experiencing pleasure/delight in another's misfortune.

- Love/Affection: the pleasure of having a strong attachment to an object/person in-game.

- Relaxation: the pleasure of experiencing low tension and/or the absence of unpleasant/negative arousal. - Care-giving/Nurturing: the pleasure of fostering or

overseeing the (positive) development of something. Overall players were able to pick pleasures for games but does the data show cohesion or is there a random distribution of pleasures for each response which would invalidate our system?

Figure 4

Figure 5

We calculated whether there was a correlation between Exploration and Aesthetics using a chi-squared contingency table. We calculated a correlation between Exploration and Aesthetics with p = 3,6295E-13. Exploration and Aesthetics match more

often than we would like to give due to pure chance alone. This is

also backed up player reports in section 6 which mention looking around, enjoying the surroundings and discovering new territory. In figure 4 and 5 you can see that The Witcher 3, Borderlands 2, Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto V and Dark Souls III all have Exploration and Aesthetics as one of their highest picked pleasures.

Another correlation we calculated using the same method is that of Control and Relaxation with p = 2,72002E-05. Control and

Relaxation match more often than we would like to give due to pure chance alone. We see this for games like Civilization V, Stardew Valley and Terraria.

A correlation between some pleasures do not seem like a big surprise. For example, a positive correlation between ’Adrenaline Rush’ and ’Excitement’ or a negative correlation between ’Schadenfreude/ Trolling’ and ’Relaxation’ seem intuitive. We can reason that ’Adrenaline Rush’ and ’Excitement’ are both part of Arousal, the state of being awake. ’Adrenaline Rush’ makes your heart beat faster and represents a part of the physiological aspect of arousal. ’Excitement’ involves pleasurable anticipation which represents a part of the psychological part of arousal. ’Music’ and ’Love/ Affection’ have a positive correlation with each other but to reason about their correlation with each other we first might need to understand whether it mattered what type of music was used in these games. Is there a correlation between instruments used, the tempo, was the audio in major or minor, what was the length of the audio?

These patterns in the data show that there is cohesion and that certain games fall into subsets of pleasures (see Appendix E).

9. DISCUSSION OF POST-SURVEY

RESULTS

In this section we will discuss the data from the post-survey (see Appendix F). The post-survey had 43 respondents. The requirement was that respondents played games. The post-survey was an online questionnaire and was held one month after the larger survey from the previous section. Participants were not limited to people that had partaken in the previous survey(s). In the post-survey we exposed respondents to the final list of pleasures as seen from the previous section. After this list we showed the following statement to the participants: “Using this ontology I can describe the experience of a game.”

Players could respond how to felt about this statement using a Likert scale from “Strongly disagree” at 1 to “ Strongly agree” at 5.

We also showed examples (see figure 6 and 7 and their descriptions in italics) of pleasure pick rate for games and wrote down the game experience based on these pleasures.

Example 1 (short description): Overwatch

Figure 6

“A 100% pick-rate for Dynamics. Then we have a tie for second place between Flow and Excitement at a 95% pick-rate each.

Overwatch is a game which stimulates the senses and exhibits high entertainment value.”

Example 2 (longer description): Counter-Strike: Global offensive

Figure 7

“Most players reported experiencing an adrenaline rush while playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. A good amount of players reported having felt excited during the gameplay and also the pleasure of strategizing, just a smaller amount reported that the dynamics of the game are pleasurable in themselves. At least half of players reported that the game evoked emotion.”

After example 1 and 2 we showed participants the following statement:

“(The ontology of) pleasures help me to understand the experience of the game better.”

Once again, players could respond how they felt about this statement using a Likert scale from “Strongly disagree” at 1 to “ Strongly agree” at 5.

The last question was as follows:

“To understand the experience of a game I prefer” Which respondents could answer with:

- a description using pleasures. - gameplay genres.

- both. - none.

At the end players could leave behind feedback. The results for the survey were as follows:

- A total of 43 responses

- Using this ontology I can describe the experience of a game: 4,7% neutral, 60,5% agree, 34,9% strongly agree. - (The ontology of) pleasures help me to understand the experience of a game better: 23,3% neutral, 46,5% agree, 30,2% strongly agree.

- To understand the experience of a game I prefer: 4,7% none, 7% a description using pleasures, 9,3% gameplay genres, 79,1% both.

We can conclude that a majority of players agree or strongly agree that they can either describe or understand the game experience through pleasures. The combination of a description using pleasures and gameplay genres is highly preferred. We are limited in concluding whether the lesser picked options reflect a subset of users that prefer a specific way/none. For this we would need more responses to deduce variability.

10. CONCLUSION

From the post-survey results we can conclude that players can use the system to describe the experience of a game. From section 8 we can also see that there is a cohesion in the data and pleasures picked are not at random. From the same survey results we can also conclude that the systems aids in understanding the game experience through a description in pleasures but there is a significantly larger portion that feels neutral in this regard. We believe that this difference is what caused/ is compensated by the large majority of players preferring a combination of pleasures and gameplay genres to understand the experience of a game. Section 7 and 8 demonstrate the construction of a standardized game experience in pleasure outputting itself in the example in section 9 of which most players reported that they understood. We conclude for our main research question, the construction a system of standardized game experience in pleasures, has been achieved.

11. LIMITATIONS

The biggest limitations of the research were the limited responses. Distributions would have been more accurate of the amount of responses would have been more widely distributed over the different games. From the data and the feedback, it is highly likely that the pleasure of Victory/ Winning was missing as an option and this could have been a influence on the pleasures that were/ or were not picked. Some participants mentioned that not all pleasures were clearly defined or explained well enough. Bias was introduced with the Impact pleasure in Rocket League, as the game was used as an example in the explanation of the pleasure, however it is not in the top three of picked pleasures for that particular game. We did not collect demographical data and thus cannot compensate for demographic differences in responses.

12. FUTURE RESEARCH

With more games and more responses, a categorization using pleasures can be constructed from the patterns that emerge (exploration and aesthetics et cetera). Multi-player pleasures were not taken into account, the focus is on the experience of pleasures by a single player and further exploratory research is possible here. For future surveys on the subject we recommend a separate page with a list of all pleasures and their explanations that participants can put next to the survey for easy reference. With additional time we would have liked to also incorporate descriptive quantitative research, another survey. This survey could ask players to rate the list of Game Pleasures. Using this rating we could list games that we expect them to like. In the case a game is being recommended that they have already played we will ask them whether they liked this game.

13. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Frank Nack for his patience and help.

14. REFERENCES

[1] https://steamdb.info/genres ;2016 Aug 20

[2] http://gamer.nl/artikelen/achtergrond/the-steam-global-stats-project-we-spelen-22-van-onze-games-niet/

[3] http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds

[4] Richard A. Bartle. 1996. Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who Suit MUDs. (1996). http://www.

[5] Jesse Schell. 2008. The Art of Game Design: A Book of

Lenses. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco,

CA, USA

[6] Robin Hunicke, Marc Leblanc, and Robert Zubek. 2004. MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In In Proceedings of the Challenges in Games AI Workshop,

Nineteenth National Conference of Artificial Intelligence.

Press, 1–5.

[7] Morten L. Kringelbach, Kent C. Berridge. The Neuroscience of Happiness and Pleasure. Soc Res (New York)

2010;77:659-78

[8] Ryan, R.M., Rigby, C.S. & Przybylski, A. The Motivation Pull of Video Games: A Self-Determination Theory Approach. Motiv Emot (2006) 30: 344. doi:10.1007/s11031-006-9051-8

[9] John Archer, Barbara Lloyd (2002). Sex and Gender.

Cambridge University Press. pp. 85–88. ISBN0521635330. Retrieved August 25, 2012.

[10] Morten L. Kringelbach. 2008. The Pleasure Center: Trust Your Animal Instincts. ISBN: 9780195322859.

[11] Adams, Ernest. 2004. “Postmodernism and the Three Types

of Immersion”. Online article of Gamastura.

[12] Björk, Staffan; Jussi Holopaien. 2004. Patterns in Game

Design. Charles River Media. P. 206. ISBN: 1-58450-354-8

[13] Schultz W. Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From

Theories to Data. Physiol Rev. 1025 Jul ;95(3):853-931.doi; 10.1152/physrev .00023.2014.

[14] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 2000. Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco, CA, US: Jossey-Bass xxx 231 pp. [15] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1996. Creativity: The Psychology

of Discovery and Invention. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 0060928204

15.

APPENDIX

A. (1

_{Online discussion on Reddit, scraped from the website:}

_link

₎

I think the one I like the most is exploration. When you can just take your time and wander around, even if there's not much to do.

This is obviously the most important with Open World games, but also in stuff like linear RPG's as well. That's why time limits are pretty annoying especially in games that reward exploration with hidden items.

For me, the first point of OP pst, anticipation, kinds of sums that up for me. Unless you enjoy looking at the ground and trees and not just finding something interesting.

It's like scouting. It's a very natural pleasure, discovering and unveiling all parts of a land. It's one of my favorite things in a game. Placing interesting content, things to do, and items to find as a reward for exploring just makes it better, and items provide that extrinsic reward, but a small few games rely purely on the intrinsic satisfaction, like Shadow of the Colossus.

It has almost nothing to do with anticipation, outside of what comes from being about to do any gaming activity, and only a bit to do with aesthetic appreciation, because if that was all that was needed, the same thing could be accomplished by painting very pretty backgrounds. You ever play a game with an extraordinary background only to realize the disappointment that that's all it is; a background, and you can't go there?

No not even that. Even when you've beaten the game and know basically everything in it, just walking around and exploring is fun. This is a very popular one and top voted. I never thought about it because exploration in games where it matters as part of the core gameplay and it didn't seem like a 'subtle' game pleasure to me. Would you consider this to be a subtle game pleasure in game genres that do typically not feature exploration? Maybe I'm jusr thinking to tightly.

I'm talking about where exploration isn't the main point of the game. In many games you obviously need to explore to progress. For example, when I was a kid I loved to explore the world in Paper Mario. You obviously need to explore a lot to beat the game, but you never need to go back and revisit areas, that's simply for enjoyment of the player. "Backtracking" as an objective in a game is arduous because it's forced, if you let the player go back and forth as they please it's a lot nicer.

Thanks for the extra context, the note about backtracking is especially helpfull :)

I do this a lot with every game I play. Countless hours spent exploring the Halo game's campaign maps, going off limits feels so rewarding. And the occasional delightfully placed easter egg is the cherry on top! Dark Souls is also beautiful, every last corner of it.

This is why I really enjoy Roguelikes and 4X games, although that's a bit different since exploration *is* a core part of those. Still one of my favorite things to do in any game that allows it, though, especially when it leads to places the devs don't want you to get to, like outside the map or into test areas that were left in.

Related is absorbing a map. Like figuring out where everything is in the town or how remembering how to get through a dungeon passage. Good one, listed. For the first time in my life I've been playing CoD III with my little sister (her first time as well) and the maps finally click :P

One of my favorite moments in any game is NOT having to open the map to remember where to go. Windwaker was a special hell in that aspect...

I had a big dose of that playing Dragon's Dogma this year. There are only a few games that I had the exact same feeling of exploration, the closest being Dark Souls 2.

There was just so much world. Lots of stuff to see and go to.

Hell, I'd put 40 hours into the game and hadn't even *seen* the other half of the map by that point. I'm into the post-game phase now and *still* haven't seen the entire map.

I absolutely loved exploring in Dragon's Dogma. I wish it had a much bigger open world. If Capcom ever makes a Dragon's Dogma 2 (hopefully on PC as well) and it would be a day 1 purchase from me.

I didn't even get to Soulflayer Canyon until post game. Easily my favourite dungeon in any game. The sheer sense of "holy shit this place is fucking **massive**" blew me away.

Polish- aspects of the game that looks really well made, physics that dont clip on collision, smooth animations, satisfying sounds, color choice, etc. helps immersion and makes the game Feel premium even when nothing is going on. One example is battlefield 3 (or 4 if u like) where the guns look good with good and subtle textures, nice color design, where it doesnt stick out and pop in a realistic war sim, and the animations / sounds are soothing (asthetically pleasing) (both firing and reloading phases).

This also works in the opposite sense, large obnoxiously colored guns with clunky movements in a polarizing environment, works in borderlands, cuz it fits right in with the world.

One the reason why I love nintendo games, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 for example, the amount of polish is astonishing, the gameplay is smooth as hell, everything controls perfectly.

Lel I read what grayleikus said as well, oopsie. Great one, putting it on the list ^^ At first I thought, "How does any of this relate to Poland?"

polandball has ruined me.

Oh, my bad. Did i spell it wrong, or is it just two meanings tied to the same spelling? pole-ish VS paul-ish

Two meanings, same spelling. Yay, English :D

I think you've summed up why I love games by Naughty Dog so much. They are probably the most polished experiences I've ever had in gaming.

[This gif](https://giant.gfycat.com/GiftedFlawlessAmericanratsnake.gif) that has been going around lately is exactly what I'm talking about. A character bracing himself against a rock and rubbing his face looks like more care and polish was put into it than most games put into entire scenes.

Is that gameplay footage? Wow.

Judging by the camera angle, I'd say it's probably either an in-engine cutscene, or pre-rendered using in-game assets (the latter being ND's usual style for most long cutscenes).

UC4's cutscenes are supposed to all be in-engine but not pre-rendered, this time. But I suppose when the cutscene begins, all the assets are extremely high quality.

The early Halo games had the best exploitation by far. False walls, false invisible walls, resetable fall times, nade/warthog/turret jumps.

There's something uniquely satisfying about breaking the game just a little bit, and knowing that there's probably relatively few other people who have managed to do the same thing.

"Min-maxing" is another way of doing this.

Would you consider min-maxing an exploit or a deep mastery/knowledge of the mechanics? Both!

I first encountered min-maxing in tabletop rpg gaming. My observation of it then was that:

* players were making choices based not on their characters but on combat effectiveness.

* the GM did it too (a sort of gaming arms race, I suppose) meaning that the makeup of the world didn't reflect some great world crafting vision, but rather the 'physics of the world' were determined by the game mechanics.

It's not really an issue with computer gaming, I think, but the behaviour is still there. Players in both spheres take pride in crafting such a character - in part because it requires the deep knowledge of the mechanics you allude to.

Thanks for the extra explanation. Stats typically go over my head so I've never min-maxed except with pokemon :p

This one is great, I totally didn't think of it but it is perfect as a 'subtle' game pleasure (and one that is probably mostly not designed for). Thank you ^^

Battleblock Theater does a good job with this. It's designed to be completed without any special items, but the items you unlock can often be used to complete the levels in ways they weren't designed to be. The developers clearly made no effort to hinder this. The creative unintended exploits can be really freeing and satisfying.

Another classic example is the Metroid series, which has a history of exploits being used to speed run the game and get items out of order. Super Metroid was designed with this in mind, so that sequence breaking wouldn't break your game. Later games like Metroid Prime would carry on that legacy.

The most recent example of developers acknowledging this is probably the 3DS remake of Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. While the glitches and exploits in the original game could easily have been patched/avoided, the developers actually went out of their way to recreate all but the most gamebreaking of glitches because they recognized how much fun players had with them. It was a part of the classic experience.

I wouldn't dream of exploiting gameplay in World of Warcraft, but exploiting the physics engine to get into areas I shouldn't be? Always a good time. Examples include:

* running around in an area far too high for my level and only surviving because I know good hiding places and how to trick the aggro system

* taking shortcuts in dungeons by surviving deadly jumps or swimming through lava, and skipping a bunch of content that developers intended to be mandatory

* jumping sideways up mountains to get into areas that are not intended for players *at all*, like Ironforge Airport back in the early days Wallwalking and later walljumping were the two things that kept me going for so long in some boring timespans in WoW. Outlands had some places you could fly under the ground too, but there was very little interesting to see underground.

There's something about seeing something you're not supposed to, even in a game, that's so great. It actually helped keep me in the mindset of being a part of the world.

I should dig up my old screenshots. I had some crazy adventures back then.

Went into Ironforge Airport and also underneath the Ironforge throne room. Took a trip beneath Karazhan well before it was an instance. Broke into Caverns of Time before the area was open, too (although IIRC there were still swirly instance gates - they just didn't go anywhere.) I also remotely visited a ton of out-of-the-way or flyby-only locations, by chain-farsighting as a shaman. It was tough to get one's bearings in Farsight as you couldn't consult the map or minimap, but rewarding when it worked.

And I have to say I felt like the coolest guy on my server when I helped a successful Alliance raid on the Undercity by sending a small group through the front door as a distraction while I guided the rest of the raid through the relatively unknown (even to some Horde) backdoor that I'd previously explored. (It worked so well that we decided to move on to Thunder Bluff afterwards - an unsuccessful raid, but I escaped death by jumping off the ledge and popping my parachute cloak, then pissing myself laughing because a few of my pursuers jumped off, too.)

Sadly, I could never figure out how to get into vanilla Mount Hyjal, and I didn't find out about the trick for getting to beta Outlands from Deadmines until after they'd patched it. I never went under Stormwind either, because anybody could do that.

One time I remember I was really excited. I'd walljumped for about 30 minutes in Dun Morogh, just *knowing* I could get over that wall. I finally did, and I was thrilled to see some sort of ashen wasteland. I thought I'd found a secret area. An earth elemental 20 levels my senior quickly arrived and dispatched me. For all my labor, I'd only taken an elaborate detour into the Burning Steppes. Another time I spent two hours with a friend of mine who was convinced it was possible to get into the watery side of the Deeprun Tram and swim to Stormwind. Even with these failures, it was a lot of fun.

I have good-ish memories of raids and instances and getting new gear, but exploring, discovering, and shooting the shit with guild members was basically all that kept me there. Once the exploration became trivial, the discoveries became boring, and the guild had mostly left, there was nothing else to keep me around.

---

On a similar note, breaking the game and getting into places I shouldn't be gave me some level of enjoyment in Super Mario Maker, too. Same feeling. (This was before I traded it away - good concept, poor execution.)

Getting to that weird airport in Vanilla is one of the last things I made sure to do before I quit. I'm curious if they ever made it into an area you're actually meant to visit instead of set dressing for flights.

This may sound like first world anarchy, but I like to stand in the most awkward position for NPCs to talk to me. If I like them, I might grab a seat next to them and chat. If they are annoying or rude, I'll stand on their heads or try to make them snap their necks while I grind my dirty heels into their furniture.

I also like to open doors in mid jump. Take that, developers and dedicated voice actors!

I do like to foster immersion when I can though.

I love when games let you customize your face because if the system has any depth, you can usually manage to break the geometry a little bit. If not, you can usually still make a pretty hilarious looking face -- which brings me so much joy in melodramatic games. Cracking up when Shepard shows her face to deliver some serious and cliche line is something that made ME3 my favourite of the bunch.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, I made my character a giant Qunari woman whose teeth and gums protruded outside of her lips and negative chin. She looked like a horned turtle person with the world's most bizarre overbite or cleft pallet. Watching the playersexual companions swoon over my hideous, atheist, alien, with deformed and impossible teethclipping issues was fun and laid bare the shallowness of the typical romance systems in games. Watching other play through of the game by other people are always weird because their PCs always look super generic, like another random NPC.

The other things I like to do if a game gives you physics and control over objects is to just throw them around wildly. In Skyrim it was pleasing to stand on one of those wastefully stocked banquet tables full of plastic food nobody touches and just run across it causing shit to just fly everywhere in its awkward ragdoll way. It feels like being trapped in the matrix after you took the red pill, but you were still stuck in the simulation - so you're best way to say "fuck you" to your chains is to go nuts while the "sheep" continue without even noticing.

I think I'm going to list this as "to go nuts": the pleasure of being able to go all out in a game, letting all your inhibitions loose :D

I used to like to jump while opening doors. Morrowind had a glitch (feature!) where if you did this on a loading screen, the whole time the game loaded counted as fall timer, so when you finally appeared on the other side, you would instantly die from fall damage. Cured me of that habit pretty quickly.

I had a similar experience in Skyrim - jumped through a door, hopped on my horse, and began slowly glitch-hovering away. It was a magical moment.

I loved the static nature of Morrowind object placement. If you stacked things and then took away things under it, the other objects would still stay in place. I raided the crazy pillow lady to make a pillow fort/igloo in my Balmora home, inherited suspiciously when a local merchant went missing.

It's all about the 'Zen' moments! There are few games that can nail it, but when it's done right ...oh boy! When you get step back for a few moments to organise yourself. To walk to the top of a hill and survey your accomplishments. That feeling of 'seeing' and realising the changes you've made. Vonderbaa!!

Haha someone else called this an 'engineerboner', would you agree a bit with this humorous keyword? I'm asking because at first I thought you meant moments of zen as in moments of peace but then it felt like you were describing seeing what you've accomplished and I'm not sure if it is now more connected to pride or more connected to being at ease.

That ain't zen, son.

the spelling you're looking for is "wunderbar" Unless you're an illiterate German sheep. Noted!

When I get to name my town/village I always name it Vunderva > The Germans call it schadenfreude (pronounced shoddenfroyd )

FYI there's one more syllable. Maybe more like "shoddenfroyduh". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_DjiLLDfo

Lol, I love how I cite a book and get corrected, but don't worry kind sir/ ma'am I shall inform Jesse Schell as quickly as possible :D You could call it a syllable but I think it's just pronouncing the D. Try saying "d" on it's own and you get the same noise.

Also that video is madness. I don't know how Germans say it but I'm European and I'm pretty sure most people pronounce it "shad-den-froid" or "shad-den-froid-eh".

It's actually pronouncing the E, though not much (it's a reduced vowel). IPA: ˈfʀɔɪ̯də https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHTDUktFiOg&t=55m2s

You might drop the last syllable for certain poetic or musical purposes, but that's indicated by an apostrophe, e.g. [Mahler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur-3LrpgB0Y&t=8m07s):

> Ich hab' ein glühend Messer, Ein Messer in meiner Brust, O weh! Das schneid't so tief in jede Freud' und jede Lust. dank'