Books by Federico Alvarez Igarzábal
transcript Verlag, 2022
Gaming has never been disconnected from reality. When we engage with ever more lavish virtual wor... more Gaming has never been disconnected from reality. When we engage with ever more lavish virtual worlds, something happens to us. The game imposes itself on us and influences how we feel about it, the world, and ourselves. How do games accomplish this and to what end? The contributors explore the video game as an atmospheric medium of hitherto unimagined potential. Is the medium too powerful, too influential? A danger to our mental health or an ally through even the darkest of times? This volume compiles papers from the Young Academics Workshop at the Clash of Realities conferences of 2019 and 2020 to provide answers to these questions.
Violence | Perception | Video Games. New Directions in Game Research, 2019
This volume compiles papers from the Young Academics Workshop at the Clash of Realities conferenc... more This volume compiles papers from the Young Academics Workshop at the Clash of Realities conferences of 2017 and 2018. The 2017 workshop-Perceiving Video Games-explored the video game medium by focusing on perception and meaning-making processes. The 2018 workshop-Reframing the Violence and Video Games Debate-transcended misleading claims that link video games and violent behavior by offering a range of fresh topical perspectives. From BA students to postdoctoral researchers, the young academics of this anthology stem from a spectrum of backgrounds, including game studies, game design, and phenomenology. This volume also features an entry by renowned psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson.
ISBN: 978-3-8376-5051-8
Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accord... more Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accordance with rules. In this study, Federico Alvarez Igarzábal investigates the formal aspects of video games that determine how these changes are produced and sequenced. Theories of time perception drawn from the cognitive sciences lay the groundwork for an in-depth analysis of these features, making for a comprehensive account of time in this novel medium. This book-length study dedicated to time perception and video games is an indispensable resource for game scholars and game developers alike. Its reader-friendly style makes it readily accessible to the interested layperson.
Papers / Book Chapters by Federico Alvarez Igarzábal
Nature Human Behaviour
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines ... more The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines of human experience. The Blursday database provides repeated measures of subjective time and related processes from participants in nine countries tested on 14 questionnaires and 15 behavioural tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 2,840 participants completed at least one task, and 439 participants completed all tasks in the first session. The database and all data collection tools are accessible to researchers for studying the effects of social isolation on temporal information processing, time perspective, decision-making, sleep, metacognition, attention, memory, self-perception and mindfulness. Blursday includes quantitative statistics such as sleep patterns, personality traits, psychological well-being and lockdown indices. The database provides quantitative insights on the effects of lockdown (stringency and mobility) and subjective confinement on time perception (duration, passage of time and temporal distances). Perceived isolation affects time perception, and we report an inter-individual central tendency effect in retrospective duration estimation.
Journey through a virtual tunnel: Simulated motion and its effects on the experience of time
Frontiers in Virtual Reality
This paper examines the relationship between time and motion perception in virtual environments. ... more This paper examines the relationship between time and motion perception in virtual environments. Previous work has shown that the perception of motion can affect the perception of time. We developed a virtual environment that simulates motion in a tunnel and measured its effects on the estimation of the duration of time, the speed at which perceived time passes, and the illusion of self-motion, also known as vection. When large areas of the visual field move in the same direction, vection can occur; observers often perceive this as self-motion rather than motion of the environment. To generate different levels of vection and investigate its effects on time perception, we developed an abstract procedural tunnel generator. The generator can simulate different speeds and densities of tunnel sections (visibly distinguishable sections that form the virtual tunnel), as well as the degree of embodiment of the user avatar (with or without virtual hands). We exposed participants to various t...
The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines ... more The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines of human experience. The Blursday database provides measures of subjective time and related processes from more than 2,800 participants (over 9 countries) tested on 14 questionnaires and 15 behavioral tasks during the Covid-19 pandemic. The easy-to-process database and all data collection tools are made fully accessible to researchers interested in studying the effects of social isolation on temporal information processing, time perspective, decision-making, sleep, metacognition, attention, memory, self-perception, and mindfulness. Blursday also includes vital quantitative statistics such as sleep patterns, personality traits, psychological well-being, and lockdown indices. Herein, we exemplify the use of the database with novel quantitative insights on the effects of lockdown (stringency, mobility) and subjective confinement on time perception (duration, passage of time, temporal distan...
Brain–Heart Interaction and the Experience of Flow While Playing a Video Game
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2022
The flow state – an experience of complete absorption in an activity – is linked with less self-r... more The flow state – an experience of complete absorption in an activity – is linked with less self-referential processing and increased arousal. We used the heart-evoked potential (HEP), an index representing brain–heart interaction, as well as indices of peripheral physiology to assess the state of flow in individuals playing a video game. 22 gamers and 21 non-gamers played the video game Thumper for 25 min while their brain and cardiorespiratory signals were simultaneously recorded. The more participants were absorbed in the game, the less they thought about time and the faster time passed subjectively. On the cortical level, the fronto-central HEP amplitude was significantly lower while playing the game compared to resting states before and after the game, reflecting less self-referential processing while playing. This HEP effect corresponded with lower activity during gameplay in brain regions contributing to interoceptive processing. The HEP amplitude predicted the level of absorption in the game. While the HEP amplitude was overall lower during the gaming session than during the resting states, within the gaming session the amplitude of HEP was positively associated with absorption. Since higher absorption was related to higher performance in the game, the higher HEP in more absorbed individuals reflects more efficient brain–heart interaction, which is necessary for efficient game play. On the physiological level, a higher level of flow was associated with increased overall sympathetic activity and less inhibited parasympathetic activity toward the end of the game. These results are building blocks for future neurophysiological assessments of flow.
Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2021
Virtual environments are typically associated with entertainment and a fast subjective passage of... more Virtual environments are typically associated with entertainment and a fast subjective passage of time. This study examined the opposite effect by exposing participants (n = 83) to a virtual reality (VR) waiting room for 7.5 min. We assessed the participants' capacity for emotion regulation and self-control as well as their level of boredom, affective states, and experience of time while waiting. We designed this study after one previously conducted by Witowska et al. (2020) in a real waiting room, based on which we modeled the virtual room to compare the results. We expected our VR study to yield similar results to the real waiting room study, with correlations between boredom and a slower passage of time and increased thinking about time. Participants with a higher capacity for emotion regulation and self-control were expected to be less bored and experience time as passing faster than others. VR being an interesting new technology, we hypothesized that the virtual waiting room would be less boring and therefore lead to a faster subjective passage of time than the real room. Our results partly confirm the findings of the real waiting room study, showing correlations between boredom and increased thinking about time and a slower subjective passage of time. Contrary to our expectations, waiting in VR was more boring and led to a slower experience of time and more thoughts about time than waiting in the real room. We did not find the expected effect of emotion regulation and self-control on boredom and time perception.
Timing & Time Perception, 2021
Flow is a mental state characterized by deep absorption during challenging activities, which was ... more Flow is a mental state characterized by deep absorption during challenging activities, which was first studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. One of the defining characteristics of this state is the loss of the sense of time. Despite the widespread scientific interest in flow, there are few quantitative studies specifically on the aspect of time perception. The present study focuses on the relation between time perception and flow states in the context of video game play. Participants (n = 100) played the rhythm game Thumper for 25 minutes in one of two conditions: in virtual reality (VR) or on a computer screen (2D). Participants who played the game in VR performed better and had a stronger feeling of presence than those who played in 2D. Thumper was flow-inducing regardless of condition and the more flow participants experienced the less they thought about time and the faster time passed subjectively. The total score obtained by players as an objective measure of player performance was positively correlated with flow states, indicating that the more flow participants experienced, the better they played.
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
This paper argues that the lack of consensus on a definition of "art" is a fundamental problem in... more This paper argues that the lack of consensus on a definition of "art" is a fundamental problem in the video-games-as-art discussion. A brief review of some influential twentieth-century definitions of "art" reveals that the concept cannot be defined in terms of essential properties, but that it should rather be understood as a Wittgensteinian family resemblance term. The paper, then, proposes Dennis Dutton's cluster theory of art as a way of establishing consensus. Besides treating "art" as a family resemblance term, Dutton's definition reintroduces the notion of "human nature" that twentieth century aesthetics has largely dismissed. The resurfacing of this notion-already posited by philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, and Hume-is owed to evolutionary psychology, a novel approach to the study of human psychology from a Darwinian perspective. Following Dutton, the paper maintains that an evolutionary approach to the study of art enables us to see beyond cultural specificities and delve into the universal phenomena that lie behind them, providing a much-needed common ground for discussion. The paper finally returns to the issue of video games and argues that, in the light of Dutton's account, video games are to be considered an art form.
This manuscript was accepted in 2018 for publication in the issue "The Video Games Conundrum" of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, currently in press. Preprint shared with permission.
PeerJ, 2020
The flow state is defined by intense involvement in an activity with high degrees of concentratio... more The flow state is defined by intense involvement in an activity with high degrees of concentration and focused attention accompanied by a sense of pleasure. Video games are effective tools for inducing flow, and keeping players in this state is considered to be one of the central goals of game design. Many studies have focused on the underlying physiological and neural mechanisms of flow. Results are inconsistent when describing a unified mechanism underlying this mental state. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the physiological and neural correlates of flow and explains the relationship between the reported physiological and neural markers of the flow experience. Despite the heterogeneous results, it seems possible to establish associations between reported markers and the cognitive and experiential aspects of flow, particularly regarding arousal, attention control, reward processing, automaticity, and self-referential processing.
Philosophy of Computer Games 2019, 2020
This paper applies psychological models of time perception to examine how the speed of the passag... more This paper applies psychological models of time perception to examine how the speed of the passage of time can be altered by video games. Video games are well-known for making time fly, and this experience is typically understood as a sign of a good game. While this is true in many (maybe most) cases, this paper also makes an argument for the slowing down of the passage of time in games, and why experiences like boredom can possess aesthetic value.
Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, Vol.98, 2021
El presente cuaderno inaugura una línea de investigación institucional en el cam-po de los game s... more El presente cuaderno inaugura una línea de investigación institucional en el cam-po de los game studies en Latinoamérica. Propone en su recorrido un panorama exhaustivo y reflexivo que cubre los distintos ejes que están siendo abordados hoy por académicos, investigadores, artistas, desarrolladores y profesionales que desde distintas epistemologías llegan al mundo de los videojuegos. No se ha buscado trabajar sobre la especificidad de un tema en particular, sino por el contrario dar cuenta del amplio abanico de abordajes, cam-bios paradigmáticos y nuevos conceptos que están surgiendo hoy cuando los videojuegos se ponen en relación con la sociedad. Se da cuenta así de las relaciones que se pueden establecer entre los videojuegos y las narrativa, las artes visuales y la música, la educación, la comuni-cación y las ciencias.
Marshmallows and Bullets
This article takes a close look at the Resident Evil HD Remaster of 2015 through the lens of the ... more This article takes a close look at the Resident Evil HD Remaster of 2015 through the lens of the psychological notions of delayed gratification, time perspective, and temporal discounting. These concepts provide a coherent framework with which to analyze how players interact with video games in general, but are especially well suited for the analysis of the aesthetics of survival horror video games such as Resident Evil. Our mental construction of time plays a significant role in decision making processes directly related to resource management. Survival horror is characterized by the management of scarce resources (e.g. ammunition or health) in unsettling environments, and various psychological studies concerned with the aforementioned notions, in particular Walter Mischel’s famed “Marshmallow Test,” shed light on some of the mental processes that affect our interaction with this video game genre and Resident Evil in particular.
Bits to the Big Screen. Zur Filmadaption des Computerspiels Resident Evil
Film-Konzepte. Bernd Eichinger, 2017
This paper analyzes the film adaptation of the video game series Resident Evil and reflects on th... more This paper analyzes the film adaptation of the video game series Resident Evil and reflects on the challenges of bringing an interactive medium like the video game to the big screen.
Predictive Thinking in Virtual Worlds: Video Games and the Bayesian Brain
Bildverstehen. Spielarten und Ausprägungen der Verarbeitung multimodaler Bildmedien, 2017
This paper argues that a Bayesian approach to brain function has the potential to explain crucial... more This paper argues that a Bayesian approach to brain function has the potential to explain crucial aspects of our interaction with video games.
When launching a video game for the first time players become strangers in a virtual world. The initial moments of interaction with this environment through the actions of the avatar are rife with unknowns. From the physical laws that govern it to the behavior of its dwellers, how exactly the world operates is at first unclear. During those first minutes –or even hours– players need to acquire the rudimentary skills and knowledge that will allow them to succeed in the computer-generated setting. And still, once they have learned the fundamentals, games will typically continue to introduce novel challenges and scale in difficulty until the very end, generating a constant state of uncertainty.
The best way to deal with this uncertainty is by assessing the probability of future events. Bayesian brain approaches assert that the brain applies Bayesian statistics by using information stored in memory to create top-down models of the world (prior beliefs) that are then compared to the bottom-up sensory input received in any occasion (likelihood) in order to calculate the most probable outcome of an event (posterior probability) and generate an adequate response. Thus, more information about the environment –both available to the senses and stored in memory–, allows for better predictions of what is going on in the world and what is going to to happen next. This capacity is essential for decision making, especially when choices have to be made swiftly, as an instantaneous reaction to an unexpected event.
The paper is structured in two parts. First, it succinctly explains the model put forward by this Bayesian approach to brain function and examines some of the evidence that supports it. The second half of the paper argues that this approach can shed new light onto the way in which we interact with the virtual worlds of video games.
The Groundhog Day Effect. Iterations in Virtual Space
Time to Play. Zeit und Computerspiel, 2016
This paper analyzes a common element of video games: the process of repeating a segment of a game... more This paper analyzes a common element of video games: the process of repeating a segment of a game by saving and loading game states until the pursued outcome is achieved. I refer to this process as the Groundhog Day Effect (GDE for short). Picking up where previous analyses left off, a closer look at this process reveals some hitherto unexamined characteristics.
The name of the effect refers to the movie Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993). Scholars like Espen Aarseth (1999) and Mark J.P. Wolf (2002) have already pointed out the similarity between the film and the video-game process described above. On the surface the GDE might not seem to differ from how we perfect our skills in our everyday lives – that is, through repetition. However, as indicated by the aforementioned film analogy, video games add a curious trait to this otherwise familiar process. As the player repeatedly tries to succeed, the game’s fictional timeline swings back and forth. Aided by Jesper Juul’s (2005) time mapping model and by using different examples this paper describes the GDE and, at the same time, expands said model.
Subsequently, the paper focuses on a temporal paradox that often results from the GDE. As a save state is loaded, time is reset in the game world and the player can make use of the information that s/he has recently obtained during the trial and error process: how the level is designed, how many enemies there are and of what kind, or where can useful resources be found. Since the player character cannot have this information (its fictional memory was supposedly reset to a previous condition with the rest of the game world), the actions the player performs with it conflict with the storyworld. Still, a look at several examples such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montreal, 2003), Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007), and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith, 2014) shows that this is not always the case and that – though not necessarily with that particular purpose in mind – some “solutions” to the paradox have already been implemented.
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Books by Federico Alvarez Igarzábal
ISBN: 978-3-8376-5051-8
Papers / Book Chapters by Federico Alvarez Igarzábal
This manuscript was accepted in 2018 for publication in the issue "The Video Games Conundrum" of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, currently in press. Preprint shared with permission.
When launching a video game for the first time players become strangers in a virtual world. The initial moments of interaction with this environment through the actions of the avatar are rife with unknowns. From the physical laws that govern it to the behavior of its dwellers, how exactly the world operates is at first unclear. During those first minutes –or even hours– players need to acquire the rudimentary skills and knowledge that will allow them to succeed in the computer-generated setting. And still, once they have learned the fundamentals, games will typically continue to introduce novel challenges and scale in difficulty until the very end, generating a constant state of uncertainty.
The best way to deal with this uncertainty is by assessing the probability of future events. Bayesian brain approaches assert that the brain applies Bayesian statistics by using information stored in memory to create top-down models of the world (prior beliefs) that are then compared to the bottom-up sensory input received in any occasion (likelihood) in order to calculate the most probable outcome of an event (posterior probability) and generate an adequate response. Thus, more information about the environment –both available to the senses and stored in memory–, allows for better predictions of what is going on in the world and what is going to to happen next. This capacity is essential for decision making, especially when choices have to be made swiftly, as an instantaneous reaction to an unexpected event.
The paper is structured in two parts. First, it succinctly explains the model put forward by this Bayesian approach to brain function and examines some of the evidence that supports it. The second half of the paper argues that this approach can shed new light onto the way in which we interact with the virtual worlds of video games.
The name of the effect refers to the movie Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993). Scholars like Espen Aarseth (1999) and Mark J.P. Wolf (2002) have already pointed out the similarity between the film and the video-game process described above. On the surface the GDE might not seem to differ from how we perfect our skills in our everyday lives – that is, through repetition. However, as indicated by the aforementioned film analogy, video games add a curious trait to this otherwise familiar process. As the player repeatedly tries to succeed, the game’s fictional timeline swings back and forth. Aided by Jesper Juul’s (2005) time mapping model and by using different examples this paper describes the GDE and, at the same time, expands said model.
Subsequently, the paper focuses on a temporal paradox that often results from the GDE. As a save state is loaded, time is reset in the game world and the player can make use of the information that s/he has recently obtained during the trial and error process: how the level is designed, how many enemies there are and of what kind, or where can useful resources be found. Since the player character cannot have this information (its fictional memory was supposedly reset to a previous condition with the rest of the game world), the actions the player performs with it conflict with the storyworld. Still, a look at several examples such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montreal, 2003), Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007), and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith, 2014) shows that this is not always the case and that – though not necessarily with that particular purpose in mind – some “solutions” to the paradox have already been implemented.