Work in Games: Exploring Player Experiences caused by In-game Activities

When people play a game, they ‘work’ through the conflicts generated by it. This ‘Work’ includes in-game activities which are performed in accordance with the rules of a game. Such a notion of Work is sparsely studied and has been explored partially using terms like action, interaction, decision-making, effort, labor and so on. In this PhD, we aim to broaden our understanding of the concept of Work and how it affects player experiences like fun, flow, engagement, and immersion. We seek to explore Work through empirical studies. Since, analyzing in-game player experiences is a challenging task, one of our goals is to evaluate several methods like experience sampling, protocol analysis, interview etc. Our goal is to contribute towards the theory of Work, which might also find applications in other fields like gamification, purposeful games, and organizational psychology.