We Don’t Play As We Think, But We Think As We Play: Evidence for the Psychological Impact of In-Game Actions

Games are able to convey meaning that influences players’ beliefs and attitudes via their mechanics (aka “procedural rhetoric”), but recent work suggests that this is likely to be effective only when combined with traditional ways of conveying meaning (e.g., music, imagery, narrative, etc.). To investigate the specific component of rhetorical influence that comes from game mechanics, we constructed a city management strategy game that allowed us to independently vary narrative framing and game rules. We found that players perceived this game to be making an argument, but that player interpretations of this argument and the game’s influence on their attitudes were not necessarily consistent with our intended message. When players had the option to make policy choices within the game, their decisions appeared to be driven more by what game mechanics rewarded rather than by their real-world policy preferences. However, the actions that they took within the game did predict changes in those policy preferences after play. This was true only when the narrative framing of the game matched the real world policy context. This implies that procedural rhetoric is most effective when supported by other ways of conveying meaning, and that understanding the psychological impact of game mechanics requires paying attention to the moment to moment choices that players make within a game.