Chapter 15 Further Reading

Foundational Theory

LeBlanc, M., Hunicke, R., & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. Proceedings of the Challenges in Game AI Workshop, Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The original paper introducing the MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) and the eight aesthetics. Short and readable; the central contribution is the aesthetics taxonomy. Still the standard reference on emotional targets in game design.

LeBlanc, M. (2005-2009). Various GDC talks including "Game Design and Tuning Workshop" and "Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics." LeBlanc's talks are more practical than the MDA paper and include worked examples of using the eight aesthetics in specific design contexts. Available on the GDC Vault.

Isbister, K. (2016). How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. MIT Press. The best single-volume academic treatment of emotional design in games. Isbister integrates cognitive psychology, game studies, and practical design knowledge. Chapters on identification, character design, and social play are especially useful.

Ekman, P. (1992). An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6(3-4), 169-200. The foundational paper on the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust). Ekman's framework is over-simple for game design purposes but remains useful vocabulary; the limits of basic-emotion theory illuminate why game emotions (guilt, pride, the specific ache of loss) are harder to categorize.

Game Design Talks on Emotion

Chen, J. (2008). The Thatgamecompany Story. GDC. Chen discusses his early games (Cloud, Flow, Flower) and the design philosophy that would produce Journey. Available on the GDC Vault. The talk is short but captures Chen's core thesis that games are primarily a medium for emotion.

Chen, J. (2013). Designing Journey. GDC. Chen's detailed postmortem on Journey, including the design reasoning for removing voice chat, the mechanical incentive system, and the playtesting process. Essential viewing for any designer interested in multiplayer emotional design.

Pope, L. (2014). Papers, Please Postmortem. GDC. Lucas Pope's detailed breakdown of the design process for Papers, Please, including the early prototypes, the discovery of the moral-puzzle-as-mechanical-puzzle structure, and the deliberate choices about visual and audio austerity.

Cage, D. (Quantic Dream). Various GDC talks on emotional design, largely focused on his controversial approach to cinematic games. Worth watching even in disagreement, because Cage's work represents a clear alternative to the interactive-emotion approach advocated in this chapter.

Solomon, D. (2016). What Makes Games Feel "Literary"? GDC. Discusses emotional complexity in narrative-heavy games including Kentucky Route Zero.

Specific Games and Their Designers

Stoya, M. (The Brothers Chaps & Giant Sparrow). Various interviews on What Remains of Edith Finch. The game is an unusual hybrid of mechanical and narrative emotional design and the designers' reflections are useful for thinking about the integration.

Pajitnov, A. (1984). Discussions of Tetris in various contexts. Tetris is relevant to emotional design because its emotional effects (tension, relief, flow) are produced entirely mechanically; the game is a sort of control experiment for emotional design without narrative scaffolding.

Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun interviews. Ongoing interview content with indie designers working in emotional registers. The indie press has historically been more attentive to emotional design than mainstream games coverage.

Ludonarrative Dissonance and Harmony

Hocking, C. (2007). Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock. Click Nothing blog. The original post coining the term. Short, pointed, and essential reading.

Williams, L. (2019). Spec Ops: The Line and Ludonarrative Dissonance as Critical Tool. In Analog Game Studies, Volume VI, Issue II. Academic treatment of Spec Ops and its use of dissonance as deliberate critical maneuver.

Wolpaw, E. (Portal). Various talks on writing comedy and narrative in Valve games. Wolpaw's approach is a masterclass in ludonarrative harmony — the joke and the puzzle are the same content.

Horror Design

Perron, B. (2009). Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. McFarland. Anthology of essays on horror game design. Varying quality, but the essays on atmosphere and information deprivation are particularly useful.

Carpenter, R. & Fukunaga, C. Interviews with the Silent Hill 2 team (Team Silent) on the game's design philosophy. Most useful material is in Japanese but some English translations circulate.

Capcom design documents on Resident Evil 7. Publicly available materials on the decision to return to survival horror from action horror; the internal design arguments illuminate how a franchise can mishandle its emotional register across iterations.

Cozy Games and Positive Emotional Design

Short, T. (2016). The Game Design of Animal Crossing. GDC. Discussion of the emotional and behavioral design underlying the Animal Crossing series. The discussion of "no-loss-state" design is particularly valuable.

Barone, E. (Concerned Ape) (2016-2020). Various interviews on the design and development of Stardew Valley. Barone's five-year solo development is itself instructive; the interviews also contain useful reflections on designing for contentment rather than tension.

Thorson, M. (Maddy Thorson). Various talks and interviews on Celeste and emotional design for mental health narratives. Celeste occupies an unusual register — both challenging and tender — and Thorson's design process is well-documented.

Music and Interactive Audio

Collins, K. (2008). Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. MIT Press. Standard reference on interactive audio. The chapters on adaptive music and the relationship between sound and emotion are directly relevant.

Wintory, A. (2013). The Music of Journey. GDC. Austin Wintory's composer's perspective on scoring Journey, including the hooks the game exposed and the decisions about when the music should respond versus when it should rest.

Fontaine, L. (various). Interviews on scoring Red Dead Redemption 2. Detailed discussion of the dynamic music system and the composer-designer collaboration required to make it work.

Empathy and Games as Critical Media

Ruberg, B. (2019). Video Games Have Always Been Queer. NYU Press. Reframing of empathy-through-mechanics discussions from a queer studies perspective. Valuable corrective to the "empathy machines" rhetoric.

Brice, M. (various). Essays and blog posts on emotional design, representation, and the limits of the empathy-machine discourse. Brice's work is a thoughtful counterweight to overclaims about what games can transmit.

Keogh, B. (2018). A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames. MIT Press. Phenomenological account of what it is like to play, which connects to emotional design through the bodily experience of game interaction.

Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. MIT Press. The most rigorous available treatment of moral design in games. Sicart's taxonomy of ethical game content is useful for designers working on moral themes.

Going Deeper

Nussbaum, M. (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Press. Not a games book, but a major philosophical work on what emotions are and what cognitive work they perform. Grounds the question of what it would even mean for a game to produce a given emotion.

Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harvest. Neuroscience-grounded account of how emotions function in cognition. Useful background for understanding why embodied experience (what games provide) produces qualitatively different emotional responses than narrated experience (what film and literature primarily provide).

Juul, J. (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. MIT Press. Juul's treatment of loss, failure, and frustration in games connects directly to the emotional design questions of this chapter. His discussion of why players voluntarily subject themselves to pain in games is especially valuable.

Koster, R. (2004). A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press. Koster's broader theory — that fun in games is the pleasure of learning — applies to the aesthetic of challenge but also connects to the other emotional aesthetics through the question of what cognitive work the player is doing.

Practical Resources

Extra Credits YouTube series. Several episodes directly address emotional design in games, including episodes on ludonarrative dissonance, horror design, and the specific techniques of games like Papers, Please and Journey.

Game Developer Magazine archives (formerly Gamasutra). The postmortems archive contains dozens of first-person accounts of emotional design decisions from designers working on specific games. Searchable by game.

Play, Play, Play. Specific emotional targets are only fully understood by playing the canonical examples of each. For this chapter: play Papers, Please, Journey, This War of Mine, Spec Ops: The Line, Silent Hill 2, Animal Crossing, and at least one of Hades or Undertale. No amount of reading substitutes for the experience of the medium as a player.