Serenity: The Emotion

In the emotional wheel, serenity is in the peaceful quadrant. Serenity is the quality of being calm, comfortable or tranquil.

The Games

In Melody’s game, Breathe | Light, players simply press or release the space key to guide a spot of light across a wave. The wave simulates the rhythm of natural breathing, so players would unconsciously synchronize their breath to the one in game and slow down their pace. The hypothesis behind the game is that players will feel serene slowing down their breathing and absorbing the scene as it slowly unfolds under the spot of light.

In Mac’s game, Transition, players would experience both stress and release in different phases of the gameplay. As players are moving forward, more and more aggressive elements show up, blocking players’ ways, until they are not able to proceed. In order to go on with the game, players need to stand still for a few moments, execute a pose, and close their eyes before the level resumes its original tranquil appearance. The hypothesis in this game is that serenity will be evoked by closing eyes and keep static body gestures.

Joseph introduces a beautiful summer night scenario as his game,Under the Starlight. Players would try to jump and draw circles to catch stars from the sky. The experience aims to capture the feeling of a peaceful night under the stars. The hypothesis in this game is players will feel serene in a cohesive environment with everything moves slowly, and player’s action of mouse control and keyboard are also slow and simple.

Gazing is the primary mechanic of Rahul’s game, Space Watch. The idea of it based on the experience of looking throughout the window while people feel stressed. Focusing on an object in game makes it come closer to simulate the zoom-in effect in our brain when we concentrate on an object to relax.

Here are some of the lessons we got from our prototypes.

1. Simple gameplay works, but there is a higher risk of incurring boredom.

The simpler the game mechanics are, the more likely it is that players feel serene, simply because a more complex mechanic would require players’ concentration, and might incur frustration as it cannot be mastered easily. Yet, if players find the task of the game is way too easy to accomplish, they might lose interest in playing it since there is no challenge for them and therefore, no point in continuing to play. A way we found to overcome this is to have variance in both the gameplay and environment so that the game does not seem static, but not so much that players are alarmed.

Breathe | light has a simple mechanic where players only have to press and release the space key. Visual changes retain players’ attention as they are absorbed in seeing what unfolds as they progress. The variance in the amplitude and frequency of the wave also maintains interactivity so that players do not go into autopilot mode. We observed players who would even pause in their motion just to soak in the ambience before moving on. From these instances, we saw that players enjoyed determining the pace at which they progressed, and felt comfortable enough to pause and smell the roses, so to speak.

However, the simplicity of the mechanic in Space Watch backfired as players did not feel that they were contributing anything to the gameplay. We observed that players would play around with the mechanic for a while before stopping and asking, “Is there a point to the game?” Players wanted to feel that they were affecting something within the game; in that sense, the game did not enable enough interactivity for them.

When the mechanic is not intuitive enough, or there is a lack of feedback, players are unable to relax and enjoy themselves within the setting of the game. In Under the Starlight, we observed players struggling with the jumping mechanic as there was no feedback for how high the jump would end up being after the charging process.  Those players also felt frustrated trying to draw a well-rounded circle using the mouse in order to catch the star, especially after failing for several times.

2. Introducing stress followed by its release enables players to feel serene in contrast.

In Transition, we observed that players felt serene after experiencing stress in the first half of the game. Contrast helps to evoke emotion because it defines a spectrum with specific ends. That is, the farther players go towards one end (which is stress and tension in this case), the more intensely players would feel the emotion at the other end (serene) after the twist.  

In addition, we also learned that the contrasting emotions should not appear in the same stage but appear sequentially in different stages. If the game mixes up two emotions at the same time, players feel confused about how to feel and being completely lost in the game. They experience something similar to cognitive dissonance. In Under the Starlight, even though the setting and the action within the game are generally viewed as tranquil, the execution of the action induces stress from its difficulty, causing players to experience this dissonance.

3. Having a mechanic that influences players to adjust their body rhythm calms players down.

We saw that when players adjusted their body rhythm to match that within the game, they adjusted their mental state to follow that rhythm as well. In Breathe, we observed some players subconsciously breathing according to the frequency of the waves, and, as a result, slowing down their pace. When asked how they felt during the game after the experience, most of them recalled that they felt serene or calm while playing the game.

4. The lack of a defined ending makes it easier for some players to soak in the atmosphere of the world.

When there is no clearly defined ending, some players are more likely to feel at ease with repeating the same action, lulling them into a sense of tranquility especially when the setting of the world facilitates that feeling. In Under the Starlight, some players reported that they felt calm because of the endlessness of the game. It was as though any overall objective of a game would render the action within the game as a means to an end, but when the objective is removed, players could carry out the action for itself. This is subject to the type of player – some players want something to work towards, and feel bored when they do not see the point of an action.

Final Thought   

A simple game mechanic, balanced by some variance, and a slower pace are more likely to induce serenity within the player. Introducing a contrasting emotion, stress, in a previous stage is also a good way to bring about serenity with its release. The lack of a clearly defined game objective allows players to perform an action for its own sake, reducing pressure to achieve a goal and easing the player into the atmosphere of the world.