Video games are big business. The value of the worldwide market is pushing the US$200 billion mark (£158 billion): greater than the music industry and Hollywood combined. But the gaming industry has also been facing challenges. The market is shrinking from its peak at the peak of the pandemic, and there was a rash of layoffs and studio closures.
In this uncertain environment, game developers are, greater than ever, seeking to create experiences that stick with their players. A terrific deal of effort goes into visual elements, including the looks and overt behaviour of characters, for instance. But at the extent of subjective experience, the inner worlds of gaming characters aren’t so often explored.
This is where the science is available in. My research during the last 30 years has been about inner experience: the things in our minds that we’re conscious of, comparable to thoughts, memories, inner dialogue, visual imagery, feelings and emotions. Traditionally considered unattainable to check due to its private nature, inner experience is becoming established as a vital field of cognitive science. And it has the potential to rework gaming.
In so some ways, video games just keep improving and higher. With the shift toward mobile gaming, the query for studios has develop into less about find out how to persuade people to purchase this product (they could be downloading it free of charge) but to maintain coming back to it.
Graphics have gotten ever more vivid and lifelike. What studios are doing with audio design is stunning. The player feels they are literally there in that medieval village or that rainforest or on that spaceship travelling between galaxies. And yet a standard criticism of many games is – still – that they’re identical to watching a movie.
That’s a puzzle, due to how gaming, greater than other media, creates a lot potential for a very interactive experience. You aren’t just watching that ship sailing across the galaxy; you’re captaining it. You can select your body shape and physical skills, and see them depicted there on the screen in astonishingly lifelike detail. But these qualities are totally on the surface, at the extent of appearance and overt behaviour.
How could gaming go deeper into inner experience? Here’s one example. Many people report having a silent, internal conversation with themselves for much of the time. Our research has shown that inner speech is available in several different forms and has varied functions in pondering, planning and emotion regulation. But when inner speech is depicted in video games, it tends to lack the qualities and variety that make the experience so different between people.
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Another example is the form of memory now we have for the events of our own lives. Autobiographical memory can take different perspectives, vary in vividness and show a spread of multisensory qualities. Memory doesn’t work like a video camera, but as a substitute brings together sights, sounds, smells and different kinds of knowledge in a dynamic, endlessly shifting way. We are even starting to grasp how these different qualities of memory are realised within the brain.
Opening the black box
Making a game is fundamentally about creating an experience – seeding an experience within the mind of its player.
When we do get to share a game character’s inner experience, it tends to lack the range and nuance that the science tells us is there: the several qualities of inner speech, the varied features of memory and visual imagination. The within a game character’s mind is commonly a black box.
There are after all exceptions to this rule. In , for instance, you possibly can play with the important character’s thoughts and mental attributes in an unusual way. This text-based game was, nevertheless, limited in what it could do to depict the subjective qualities of inner experience – the colorful pageant of the on a regular basis mind.
To give an example of a game I consulted on, is the multi-award-winning story of an eighth-century Pictish warrior, Senua, whose inner experience is distinctive in that she hears voices and has other unusual perceptions and beliefs. In the primary game, , and in its just-about-to-be-released sequel, , Senua experiences psychosis, and also you as player share these experiences along with her.
I feel the gaming industry can only profit from understanding inner experience higher. What I hope we’ll see is a more fluid, realistic, immersive gaming experience where the inner worlds of gaming characters live and breathe as much as their actions in the sport world.
As well as having the potential to create recent, interesting and memorable takes on the gaming experience, this work has real-world implications for accessibility, mental health, neurodiversity and sensory inclusion.
In fact, our place to begin is that there is no such thing as a such thing as a “normal” mind – we’re all different, and our own minds differ from moment to moment. Rather than simply taking your personal mind into the gaming experience, gaming provides an exhilarating opportunity to experience a special form of mind while you’re there.
Gaming has incredible potential to work for good. Most of all, it’s not about some worthy educational ideal. Games are – and ought to be – about having fun. Beyond opening up creative possibilities for game developers and players, I consider that knowing more about our own inner experience might be helpful, restorative, even therapeutic. Gaming is a strong option to push that ideal forward.