I experienced a combination of compulsion and frustration playing Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Frogger.  The compulsion was that I kept going – replaying the game, thinking this time I will get through to the next level.  Frustration was when I nearly made it but not quite.  I also experienced a kind of recklessness when I was close to completing a level – just rushing in to finish it instead of calming down and taking my time to finish.  There is definitely a physiological response – I found myself holding my breath, feeling slightly anxious and the adrenalin pumping around my body.  It was totally immersive but I partly resented this immersiveness.  The resentment is due to feeling that I was ‘wasting my time’ playing these games – although having to experience them for the course did give them a legitimacy for me. 

Newman looks at why do players play. He  cites Rouse’s key motivations: challenge, immersion and the fact that players expect to do, not watch.  Certainly, I have experienced the immersion.  It is interesting what Newman (2004) says about ‘challenge’ – that players expect to lose.  Maybe that is why I find them so frustrating – I don’t expect to lose (but I keep losing).  The pleasure he claims is through replaying and practicing until the performance gets better.  For me these platform games are too simple – in that I find the repetition too boring. Maybe I would enjoy it more if the rewards were more ‘real’ – rather than just getting to the next level.  Although I expect I would get elated if I ever make it to the next level.

I was playing PacMan and it was the first time I played that game.  I was successful in getting to Level 2 at my first attempt but I did not realise that when I ate a large sphere and the ghosts turned blue that I could try to ‘eat’ them to earn extra points. I only learned that (and the fact that those things were ghosts) by later googling to find out more about the game. [Note: My getting to stage 2 at my first go was just beginners luck. I found it more difficult subsequently!]

I had a harder time with Donkey Kong.  The up key did not appear to work when I tried to make the man climb the ladder so I decided that I would have to make a number of points jumping over barrels before I could make it to the next level. But that did not seem to work. I got very frustrated and would have given up if I were not on the course. So again I googled ‘Donkey Kong pattern’ and gathered that the man could go up the ladder.  I realised that he had to be positioned exactly in front of the ladder in order to go up it.

Having done some of the initial reading about the definitions of digital or videogames, I realise that I have played some before. In particular, I have played minesweeper on my phone as well as brick???.  And I have played solitaire on my laptop.  I never thought of them as digital games – mainly because I didn’t play with anyone else – they were solitaire games. (And yes, I just used the word ‘game’.)  But I did not go out of my way to get those games – they came with my phone/laptop and I only played them when I was in transit when I was tired of reading.  But I enjoyed playing them (as long as no one I knew saw me playing them!).