A Research Of Emotional Communication In Digital Games

The essence of the multi-modal interaction by game players is emotional communication. Gameplay elements constitute the code of emotional communication in video games. According to the proposition above, this dissertation tends to find an answer for the question ’how to have emotional communication in digital games?’ This question orients a new direction of digital game studying, exploits a new field of communication researches, and give important theoretical support to the exploration of the significance of digital games and the design of future gamification.First of all, the author collected related total sales data of digital games in European market, and in the general classifying method classified these digital games into12types, each of which has10digital games in the order of their market shares from high to low, which gives120samples in total, and analyzed one sample which was picked by systematic random sampling from each type of its game elements. Second of all, this dissertation gives a full play to a variety of means as interviewing, observation, and analysis of cases, combines the related theories of symbol interaction, media semiotics, and interactive rituals, and focuses on analyzing the characteristics of interactive rituals formed in digital games in terms of organizational method and restrictive rules.There are some researches show that the complete emotional communication is made up of micro-emotional and macro-emotional communications. Micro-emotional communication is communication of gameplay elements, while macro-emotional communication is communication of emotional ritual. On the micro-emotional level, the constitutional basis of gameplay elements is the ’triple semiotic system’, which is composed of the semiotic systems of the real world, gameplay elements and emotional semiotic units. Gameplay elements are demonstrated in five types, which are visual, aural, temporal, special, and multiplex elements. On the macro-emotional level, the interactive ritual is made up of four rituals, which are virtual group gathering, excluding outsiders, paying mutual attentions, and sharing emotions; the way that interactive ritual works is the’four emotional tendencies’, which are group unity, individual emotional energy, social relationship symbol, and moral sense. Micro-emotional and macro-emotional communications complete the process of emotional communication by digital games. Emotional communication in digital games is also the tie to the understanding of the classification of game players, and the behaviors of game players, and to improve the efficiency of the future gamification designing.This dissertation is divided into six chapters. The introductory chapter considers some basic issues for the study, and gives the questions to be answered. Chapter2gives important notions and related literature review home and abroad. Chapter3establishes the analyzing model of gameplay elements, and exposits the relation between game elements and emotional communication. Chapter4presents the collection of interactive rituals in digital games, and discusses the relation between interactive rituals and emotional communication. Chapter5introduces the way of accomplishing the designing of gamification based on emotional communication. Chapter6is the concluding chapter, whereby a conclusion of the whole dissertation is presented, and a further discussion is made on the future study of digital games.