Collective Emotions: Integrating Personality, Appraisal, and Contagion in Affective Games

Enhancing the believability of computer games requires moving beyond individual affective modeling toward understanding how emotions spread within groups. This study introduces a computational framework for collective emotions that integrates personality traits (OCEAN model), cognitive appraisal (OCC model), and emotional contagion among player and non-player characters. Two versions of a game were developed, one with and one without collective emotion mechanisms. These two versions were tested in a controlled experiment. Quantitative analyses revealed that collective emotion modeling significantly enhanced player engagement, with large effects on playtime (dz= 0.67) and interaction frequency (dz= 1.23). Game Experience Questionnaire findings further indicated substantially higher levels of competence (dz= 2.32), flow (dz= 0.79), and positive impact (dz= 1.50).