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Suspense is an important emotion for the enjoyment of games. Various methods have been proposed to manage suspense in games. Most existing works focus on managing suspense via storytelling or artifacts, such as sound effects. However, little work has been done in studying how to use gameplay to manage suspense. In this paper, we present a study in which we developed a horror-adventure game with a built-in suspense manager based on adaptive gameplay. We conducted a small user study to evaluate the effect of dynamic suspense management on game players. Our results showed that gameplay could potentially be used to manage the level of suspense experienced by players, independent of the story and artifacts in the game. The work discussed in this paper will provide game designers with new tools for suspense management in non-narrative-based games.
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A Review of Game Design Techniques for Managing Suspense
Suspense is key to the enjoyment of games and interactive storytelling. Although suspense has been studied extensively in traditional media such as fiction and film, there has been relatively little research on managing suspense in games. As interactive media, games differ from traditional media in many ways. Although many conventional techniques for managing suspense still apply to games, certain suspense manipulation techniques are specific to games. In this paper, we discuss a framework for managing suspense in games and present a comprehensive study of various game design techniques for managing suspense. In particular, we focus on the use of game mechanics and game artifacts to manipulate suspense, which has not received enough attention in previous works. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive guide for game designers to explore different ways to manage suspense in their games or use it to analyze the suspense management techniques in existing games.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1852516
- PAR ID:
- 10423951
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Conference on ArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation
- Volume:
- 479
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 174-186
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28993-4_13
