Eudaimonic Player Interaction

Games have become a conduit for more than passive entertainment. Game experiences considered groundbreaking allow players to explore emotional challenges, moral dilemmas, and even engage them in long-lasting reflection. For example, The Last of Us Part II challenges players to control different characters to get a glimpse of two sides of the story, blurring the (moral) line between being the protagonist or the villain.

These types of meaningful experiences have increasingly gained interest from the games research and practice community under the umbrella term “eudaimonia.”

Eudaimonic experiences are those associated with accomplishing personal goals, need fulfillment, and lasting meaning. In games, eudaimonia is conceptualized as game appreciation connected to self-reflective, meaningful, emotionally moving, and challenging experiences. Although this points toward a promising research landscape highlighting the use of games as a vehicle for emotional exploration and mixed-affect experiences, games are a powerful medium that allows players to assume an active role and agency by explicitly controlling the actions in the game.

Creating these experiences is challenging and requires careful design considerations, for instance, thinking about how game input and interaction could support the shaping of an eudaimonic experience.

Research on game interaction has primarily focused on exploring new ways of interacting with games and their value for entertainment, accessibility, and productivity. We, as authors, have contributed to this field by introducing novel input methods and interaction techniques that shape the future of computer-supported gaming. In our efforts to understand how players experience these innovative approaches, we have primarily focused on evaluating the hedonic aspects of enjoyment (i.e., whether it is fun and entertaining) and the positive emotions associated with it. However, there remain a lot of unanswered questions in this space as we aim to better understand the cognitive challenges to generate more profound meaning within eudaimonic player experiences.

For example, we need to investigate how game input fits in game narratives to create new meaningful player experiences and the role of “diegetic” interaction elements (i.e., player actions are integrated and exist within the game world, such as rolling the joystick to spin a wheel) to facilitate eudaimonic play. In contrast, with game controllers designed with the values of ergonomics and convenience to shape hedonic experiences, suppose we integrate the way we touch, look, hear, taste, and smell within the actions we perform in games. In that case, we might reduce the distance between us and the values the game wants to convey, which might impact the player’s sense of “belonging” to the game system and potentially lead to a stronger emotional connection with the experience. Integrating diegetic input is not new, as we can find examples that transform actions with “artificial” controllers into meaningful game interactions. For instance, in The Last of Us Part I, players need to hit their gamepad to fix their torch as it blinks in the game world. However, imagine if the pressure of your grip or the sound you make would influence the events in the game. After all, the game narrative invites us into a world where noise attracts enemies.

We know that players often feel a stronger connection to a game when their real-world actions are directly linked to what happens in the game. For example, in a walking simulator, walking can control the character’s movements. Similarly, actions like touching, looking, or speaking can be incorporated into the design of the game world, enhancing the player’s sense of immersion. New interaction methods open a space of opportunity to create a tangible connection between player actions and in-game events. Take the game Pac-Man as an example in which players control the character to eat dots on the screen. Imagine engaging your sense of taste and being able to control Mr. Pac-Man by chewing or triggering power-ups with ingestible elements. This diegetic way of interaction might lead players to actively reflect on game control conventions rather than blindly accepting them as their experience is augmented to create more immersive gameplay.

Let’s consider the game Papers, Please as another example. In this game, players take on the role of a border-crossing officer who must review immigrants’ documents to determine if they should be allowed into the country or arrested. However, the gameplay experience could be enhanced if, for instance, the player’s gaze behavior and the reactions of the person being investigated were captured within the game. This would make interpersonal interactions more meaningful and highlight the use of surveillance technologies (such as eye trackers) in real-world systems, thereby reinforcing the aesthetic values of the game experience through innovative input methods. Players can have a deeper understanding of a game’s meaning when their actions and game inputs align (and are diegetic) with the story and values of the game, thus engaging players as if they were inside the virtual world.

How we interact with games could impact our overall well-being, either through the delivery platform or the control interface. For example, using virtual reality technology offers players a first-person perspective and allows them to reflect on their experiences in a more immersive way. Additionally, the control interface can influence how players engage with the game world, resembling real-world interactions through natural user interfaces. Unlike previous examples that directly associate input with specific game design elements, this approach could focus on creating a more authentic and relatable interaction experience. Consider the game The Walking Dead as an example. In this game, players are faced with moral dilemmas and time pressure, where they have to make difficult decisions like choosing which non-player character (NPC) should die. While the game already provides an emotional exploration, we believe that integrating game input such as voice interaction (where players have to name the NPC out loud) could make the player experience even more meaningful. This integration could enhance player agency, as their voice becomes a part of the game world, giving them a stronger sense of control and involvement.

If we were to design games that are diegetic to novel ways of interaction, suddenly, we would move away from the parallel game and interaction design approach to welcome the exploration of opportunities for provocative and critical game design that puts the values of interaction up front; for example, the emergence of Playdate as a console integrating a crank as a new form of input for the sake of “fun.” Playdate released a call for games introducing the use of the crank, with results ranging from action control to motion in space and time and the awe of players hungry to experience new ways of input in play. Although the success of Playdate advocates for the introduction of new game interactions, the gimmick nature of the interface highlights the need to investigate its contribution to experiencing eudaimonia. Indeed, unique and provocative interactions might facilitate deeper meaning as players could be prompted to reflect on how they experience the world by interacting in new ways. However, how can we design interactions that promote eudaimonia?

We have the opportunity to create meaningful experiences that harvest the unique properties of sensors and analogue mechanisms to facilitate meaning. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the novelty of non-standard game interactions would hinder or contribute to the experience of eudaimonia.

This vision portrays an ambitious future of play in which player actions break the boundaries between the real and game worlds. Now we are left to ponder this question: Would designing diegetic interactions make game experiences more meaningful?