short-paper

Good Frustrations: The Paradoxical Pleasure of Fearing Death in DayZ

Authors:

Fraser Allison,

Martin GibbsAuthors Info & Claims

OzCHI '15: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction

Pages 119 - 123

https://doi.org/10.1145/2838739.2838810

Published: 07 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The design of modern digital games has become increasingly oriented towards providing players with positive experiences such as fun and flow, and reducing negative experiences such as frustration and anger. DayZ is one notable exception, where negative experiences are central to its design. When a player is killed in DayZ, they lose their character with all its advancement, often equivalent to weeks of play, which can be an enormously frustrating and demoralising experience. However, the majority of its players view this as a positive and attractive feature, and one of the keys to the game's appeal. In this paper, we draw on 1,704 responses to a player motivations survey to unpack the complex player experience of permanent character death and demonstrate how this moment of negative affect contributes to the positive experience of DayZ more broadly.

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Cited By

Stemasov EWagner TAskari AJanek JRajabi OSchikorr AFrommel JGugenheimer JRukzio E(2024)DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication TechnologyProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642243(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642243
Munn N(2023)Death Is Not the End (of the Game): So, What Is It?The Art of Dying10.1007/978-3-031-35217-1_7(135-153)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35217-1_7
Segundo Díaz RRovelo Ruiz GBouzouita MConinx K(2022)Building blocks for creating enjoyable games—A systematic literature reviewInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102758159:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102758
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Good Frustrations: The Paradoxical Pleasure of Fearing Death in DayZ

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cover image ACM Other conferences

OzCHI '15: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction

December 2015

691 pages

ISBN:9781450336734

DOI:10.1145/2838739

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
HFESA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia Inc.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2015

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Short-paper
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OzCHI '15

OzCHI '15: The Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction

December 7 - 10, 2015

VIC, Parkville, Australia

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OzCHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 97 submissions, 48%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

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Cited By

Stemasov EWagner TAskari AJanek JRajabi OSchikorr AFrommel JGugenheimer JRukzio E(2024)DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication TechnologyProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642243(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642243
Munn N(2023)Death Is Not the End (of the Game): So, What Is It?The Art of Dying10.1007/978-3-031-35217-1_7(135-153)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35217-1_7
Segundo Díaz RRovelo Ruiz GBouzouita MConinx K(2022)Building blocks for creating enjoyable games—A systematic literature reviewInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102758159:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102758
Pusey MWong KRappa N(2021)Using Case Studies to Explore Need Satisfaction and Frustration in Puzzle Video GamesGames and Culture10.1177/1555412021105612617:5(752-772)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211056126
Sidhu PCarter M(2021) Pivotal Play: Rethinking Meaningful Play in Games Through Death in Dungeons & Dragons Games and Culture10.1177/1555412021100523116:8(1044-1064)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211005231
Tuijnman AKleinjan MChen SEngels RGranic I(2021)A Game-based Assessment of the Effects of Rejection on Young AdultsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34746815:CHI PLAY(1-27)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2021
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Frommel JKlarkowski MMandryk R(2021)The Struggle is Spiel: On Failure and Success in GamesProceedings of the 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3472538.3472565(1-12)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2021
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Cuerdo MMahajan AMelcer E(2021)Die-r Consequences: Player Experience and the Design of Failure through Respawning Mechanics2021 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9618894(01-08)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9618894
Kosa MUysal A(2021)Need frustration in online video gamesBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2021.192875341:11(2415-2426)Online publication date: 20-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2021.1928753
DEMİRBAŞ Y(2020)Dijital Oyunlarda Oynanış ve Anlatı İlişkisi: DayZ Oyunu ve Village TopluluğuGalatasaray Üniversitesi İleti-ş-im Dergisi10.16878/gsuilet.620851Online publication date: 24-Jun-2020
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