Video games, fiction and emotion

Abstract

Video gaming can be an emotional experience, as anybody who as torn their hair out over a particularly difficult game will know. In this paper I argue that various sources in cognitive science and the philosophy of the arts can be used to explain the role of the emotions in video gaming. Modern video games comprise a new and sophisticated type of fictional work. Video games involve a distinctly interactive form of fictive practice and because of this the role of the emotions in the playing of video games is distinctive to that fictive form. I argue that the emotions act to frame our interests in the fictions of video games, motivating and enabling the playing of those games