Overview
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 our paper provides game designers with new tools for suspense management in non-narrative-based games.
My Role
I was one of the game developer, testers, and presenters for this project. This work involved many tasks such as:
- Designing and devloping a horror game
- Implementing our proposed suspense management system into the game
- Performing tests and collecting data on our system
- Putting together presentation material
- Writting research paper
- Presenting our findings at conventions
