Factors Affecting the Design of Emotionally Engaging Games

As yet games have not achieved the engagement factor seen in the movie industry, the holy grail for any games designer is to engage, excite and attract their players without running into the downside of addiction. There are two major factors to achieving this goal that need to be considered: Does the player “Believe” the game The emotional “roller-coaster” ride experienced by the player If these are achieved then the game becomes a XXX game. This paper seeks to investigate the factors affecting these two goals and offers guidelines in order to achieve a successful implementation, avoiding the obvious design pitfalls. Keywords— Games, Emotions, Design, Guidelines