‘What is my Call of Duty?’: Exploring the importance of player experience in a first-person shooter video game

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between previous gameplay experience and game responses and perceptions, such as guilt and stress, as well as in-game behaviour. Based on a dual-processing approach, we expected more experienced players to process games using a more effortful, system 2 type processing; whereas, less experienced players would process the game using the more automatic system 1 type processing. Further, we expected these differences in processing to be related to differences in guilt, stress and in-game outcomes. Consistent with these predictions we found that more experienced game players perceived game characters as less anthropomorphic and experienced less stress from shooting at in-game characters. In addition, perceiving game characters as more anthropomorphic was related to increased feelings of guilt after gameplay as well as an increase in stress resulting from shooting at in-game characters. Stress was negatively related to lower overall bullet counts and increased feelings of guilt. Results are discussed in terms of a dual-processing approach to video gameplay.