Gamers Thrilled when Death Approaches

Halo 3? Counterstrike Source? Call of Duty 4? I’m pretty sure that every single one of us have at least heard (if not played first-hand) of these games. Wired has recently published an article on the research done by Niklas Ravaja on “The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events“. After reading direct from the Wired article, I decided to post some of my own thoughts and reflections on such a discovery.

Source: http://www.videogames.net.au/images/halo-3-explosion1.JPG 

To summarize, Ravaja has discovered that gamers experience pleasure in dying but don’t enjoy shooting their opponents, contrary to what the general public thinks of video games robbing humans of such a sense of shame. I must say that this is relieving to know, as there was not a chance that I would’ve given up first person shooters. What’s surprising is the enjoyment in death though, and as I thought about it the more I began to understand.

Logically speaking, it makes sense. Dying in video games isn’t exactly the same as real life, as you impart your virtual life with the knowledge you’ll be back a few minutes later at most. Also, running around in an office with a bunch of terrorists hot on your tail and a host of civilians following you and giving away your position isn’t exactly the most mentally-healthy or stress-free activity in the world, so the mind does naturally feel relieved of such stress when death takes over your character.

Source: http://worldofpwnage.com/images/cs_office0043.jpg

However, like Clive Thompson discovered, I also found the thought of dying in certain games more appealing than others. The first person shooters are fine with me, as I know that I’m hardly robbed of anything but a little dignity, but dying in Super Mario Galaxy really presses my cider as I need to re-start the level and get a hard-earned one-up taken away. My own common sense conclusion was that dying sucked even virtually when you’ve got something to lose – and it could be anything.

A little short of a psychological revelation, and certainly a ground-breaking approach to analyzing the effect first person shooters have on video games, hopefully this research leads to more proof that we as humans don’t get desensitized at people’s deaths (perhaps speculation about the player’s death is more at risk) after playing video games.