Player-Character Relationship and Game Satisfaction in Narrative Game: Focus on Player Experience of Character Switch in The Last of Us Part II

• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.709926
• Publication Date: 2021-09-27T15:56:36Z
• Authors: Valérie Erb; Seyeon Lee; Young Yim Doh
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; player character; player-character relationship; Psychology; video games; game satisfaction; player experience; The Last of Us; BF1-990

While player characters (PCs) are the key element in engaging players narrative games, experience and relationship of with PC have received scarce attention from perspective subjective experience. The diversity importance game suggests meaningful connections between how relate to their resulting satisfaction game. We, therefore, investigated this study player-character influences We performed semi-structured in-depth interviews 12 Last Us Part II, a that has elicited highly polarized reactions relation responded switch Through thematic analysis, three themes were found, illustrating connection aspects overall satisfaction. "Tolerance forced character switch", "Malleability image" "Flexibility attachment". discuss those findings should be taken into consideration when designing diverse gaming experiences.