Researchers

Thomas Terkildsen

External PhD Student

Publications

Year 2020

Game Atmosphere: Effects of Audiovisual Thematic Cohesion on Player Experience and Psychophysiology

@inproceedings{10.1145/3410404.3414245,
author = {Ribeiro, Giovanni and Rogers, Katja and Altmeyer, Maximilian and Terkildsen, Thomas and Nacke, Lennart E.},
title = {Game Atmosphere: Effects of Audiovisual Thematic Cohesion on Player Experience and Psychophysiology},
year = {2020},
isbn = {9781450380744},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3410404.3414245},
doi = {10.1145/3410404.3414245},
abstract = {Game atmosphere and game audio are critical factors linked to the commercial success of video games. However, game atmosphere has been neither operationalized nor clearly defined in games user research literature, making it difficult to study. We define game atmosphere as the emerging subjective experience of a player caused by the strong audiovisual thematic cohesion (i.e., the harmonic fit of sounds and graphics to a shared theme) of video game elements. We studied players' experience of thematic cohesion in two between-subjects, independent-measures experiments (N=109) across four conditions differing in their level of audiovisual thematic fit. Participants' experiences were assessed with physiological and psychometric measurements to understand the effect of game atmosphere on player experience. Results indicate that a lack of thematic fit between audio and visuals lowers the degree of perceived atmosphere, but that while audiovisual thematic dissonance may lead to higher-intensity negative-valence facial events, it does not impact self-reported player experience or immersion.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play},
pages = {107–119},
numpages = {13},
keywords = {music, player experience, games, dissonance, audio, atmosphere},
location = {Virtual Event, Canada},
series = {CHI PLAY '20}
}

Game atmosphere and game audio are critical factors linked to the commercial success of video games. However, game atmosphere has been neither operationalized nor clearly defined in games user research literature, making it difficult to study. We define game atmosphere as the emerging subjective experience of a player caused by the strong audiovisual thematic cohesion (i.e., the harmonic fit of sounds and graphics to a shared theme) of video game elements. We studied players' experience of thematic cohesion in two between-subjects, independent-measures experiments (N=109) across four conditions differing in their level of audiovisual thematic fit. Participants' experiences were assessed with physiological and psychometric measurements to understand the effect of game atmosphere on player experience. Results indicate that a lack of thematic fit between audio and visuals lowers the degree of perceived atmosphere, but that while audiovisual thematic dissonance may lead to higher-intensity negative-valence facial events, it does not impact self-reported player experience or immersion.