Video Games and the Mind ─ Essays on Cognition, Affect and Emotion

Can a video game make you cry? Why do you relate to the characters and how do you engage with the storyworlds they inhabit? How is your body engaged in play? How are your actions guided by sociocultural norms and experiences? Questions like these address a core aspect of digital gaming--the video game experience itself--and are of interest to many game scholars and designers. With psychological theories of cognition, affect and emotion as reference points, this collection of new essays offers various perspectives on how players think and feel about video games and how game design and analysis can build on these processes.

Bernard Perron is a professor of film and game studies at the University of Montreal. He has edited, co-edited and written many essays and books on film and video game theories as well as on horror films and horror video games. Felix Schroter is a media studies scholar in Hamburg, Germany. He works as a research assistant at the University of Hamburg with a focus on cognitive theory, game studies and transmedial narratology.