ABSTRACT

Video games are not immediately synonymous with romance, but role-playing games can present players with opportunities to flirt, establish digital relationships, and even experience intimacy with pre-programmed in-game characters. This project explores understudied elements of video game players’ emotional investment in games through romantic narratives using interviews and content analysis of online forum discussions. Although romance is not the primary motivation for many players, it can become an important element that builds on and interacts with broader narrative considerations. Romance adds emotional grounding for video game stories and its inclusion can become thoroughly engaging for players. It makes the narrative feel realistic, makes players feel closer to and invested in the game world, and gives players new opportunities to bond with one another outside of the game. Romantic narratives play an important role in emotional consumption of video games, but also present opportunities to explore gaming culture more deeply.

摘要

电子游戏并不是浪漫的同义词，但是角色扮演游戏可以为玩家提供调情，建立数字关系，甚至与预先编程的游戏角色亲密接触的机会。该项目使用访谈和在线论坛讨论的内容分析，通过浪漫的叙事方式探索了视频游戏玩家对游戏情感投资的未充分研究的要素。尽管浪漫并不是许多玩家的主要动机，但浪漫可以成为建立在更广泛的叙事基础上并与之互动的重要元素。《浪漫史》为视频游戏的故事增添了情感基础，并且其加入可能会引起玩家的极大兴趣。它使叙述更逼真，使玩家感到更贴近游戏世界并投入其中，并为玩家提供了在游戏之外彼此联系的新机会。浪漫叙事在视频游戏的情感消费中起着重要作用，但同时也提供了更深入地探索游戏文化的机会。