Mystery, Mood, and Outsmarting Opponents

Knobloch-Westerwick and Keplinger studied the appeal of mystery stories and their correlation to the reader's self-esteem. They concluded that a person having a dejected day prefer predictable stories, which enabled the reader to guess the ending well before it was officially revealed. Whereas, readers feeling good about themselves preferred a surprise ending. Their interpretation is that when you're blue and feeling dumb, a predictable story in which you believe you are outsmarting the plot boosts something related to self-esteem. To learn more, read the article.

In the realm of interactive entertainment, imagine some speculative implications. If the psychological principle of self-flattery holds true during periods of dejection and abasement, one could expect a correlation between abasement and less cognitively challenging activities, such as solitaire, modestly paced platformers, such as Ratchet and Clank, or a casual game, such as Diner Dash, or Wii Bowling. Whereas, on days when a player is feeling important and loved, the player might prefer a challenge, such as Vagrant Story, Puerto Rico, or Go.

Of course, individual skillset, tastes in genres, aesthetics, and subject matter dominate the players' preference for any particular game. If a player associates bowling with stuffy rooms, bad shoes, sprained elbows, and poor beer, then bowling might not be a pick-me-up. Yet one would expect general preference for challenge, allowance for defeat, and an acceptance of unexpected outcomes when the player is feeling important.

This has further implications for interactive entertainment, because the interactions of the game can have an influence on one's own self-esteem. Winning a significant game, especially against another human player, often elevates the player's self-esteem. Within the span of an extended game, such as multi-hour console videogames, the player has the opportunity to elevate or depress self-esteem. Once the player's self-esteem (or at least temporary mood and subconscious self-appraisal) is elevated, we might expect the player to prefer plot twists, and increases in challenge.

This is an unsurprising speculation, given Csikszentmihalyi's psychological principle of flow. As relates to the above, flow includes a balance of challenge and ability.

The contrapositive, that when the player is feeling low from poor performance in the game, the game might not only ease difficulty, but do so in a manner that is predictable. Rather than rebalancing the statistical model to increase the odds of success (such as health-dependent potions dropped in The Two Towers), simplify the strategy and tactics of the opponent. Therefore, the player can congratulate him or herself on having outwitted the opponent.

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