Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
As a video game enthusiast, it can be disheartening to see so many scientific studies done on the negative effects of the medium, but a new paper published this week in Social Psychological and Personality Science looks at the positive aspects of storytelling through software.
In their study, University of Freiburg psychologist Daniel Bormann and Tobias Greitemeyer of the University of Innsbruck in Austria suggest that non-violent video games that allow players to play a role and make meaningful choices may benefit people with autism or similar disorders.
Probing the impact of video game storytelling on players
As Bormann explained in a statement, “The motivation to engage in and enjoy video games corresponds with principals that apply to human motivation in general… [and] successful game franchises offer players a spectrum of meaningful choices to shape the game’s narrative and environment, provide carefully balanced challenges, or encourage players to experience social connectedness and meaningful social interactions.”
In addition, previous research has indicated that satisfying those needs leads to an increase in the motivation to continue playing, as well as enhanced well-being and a more immersive experience overall. The authors set out to further investigate by determining whether or not storytelling was able to foster immersion and change how players could assess the mental states of others.
In order to test if storytelling in games could create the type of emotional bond characteristic of immersion, Bormann and Greitemeyer randomly assigned study participants to play one of two different titles. In the first, Gone Home, the gamer plays as a female US student who has just returned after spending a year overseas and must find out why her family vanishes. In the other title, Against the Wall, players climb an infinite wall and little narrative is involved.
For Gone Home, one group of players were given the game developer’s instructions and another was told to register, memorize, and evaluate various properties of the game. After 20 minutes of play, all participants were told to complete a task in which they assessed facial emotions, as well as to complete a survey to assess their sense of immersion and the level of need satisfaction that they experienced during their gaming sessions.
Playing story-rich video games could help people with autism
Bormann and Greitemeyer found that the narrative game elements contributed to creating a more immersive experience for the player, and that being immersed in a game’s story supports players in perceiving opportunities to make meaningful choices and establishing relationships. Furthermore, their research revealed that these types of games affected their ability to assess the mental states of others (a phenomenon also known as “theory of mind”).
“Although the effects regarding theory of mind were relatively small, we were excited to see initial evidence for the short-term enhancement through in-game storytelling,” said Bormann. “Importantly, this effect was specific to the condition in which participants actively engaged in the games narration, while the mere exposure to the narrative video game did not affect theory of mind, in comparison to playing a neutral video game.”
Their findings indicate that in-game storytelling contributes to a more immersive and satisfying overall gaming experience, and that playing these types of games can hone skills that can be used in real life on a regular basis. While more research needs to be done, Bormann believes that this type of research could ultimately used to develop tools to treat condition such as autism, which are characterized by impairments in social interaction.
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