Abstract
This study is motivated by the assumption that today’s function-oriented game localisation approach has room for improvement by
incorporating an affect-oriented approach. It draws on the concept of “affective framing” in a game with humour as “emotionally
competent stimuli”. Laughter as emotion data were collected from German, Japanese and Irish participants playing in their native
language relevant versions of the US-origin casual game Plants vs. Zombies. This small-scale
empirical study, combined with gamer interviews and gameplay trajectory, reveal evidence of specific functions of gamer emotions
across all three groups, most often as a relief during game play, facilitating the gamer’s ability to retain engagement by
accessing the emotional function of humour. The data suggest that affective framing through humour that is made culturally
relevant is deemed more important for the German group than the other groups. This group negatively perceived cultural stereotypes
in the game, whereas the Irish group perceived cultural associations positively. The focus on user emotions brings the neglected
affective dimension to the fore and towards affect-oriented game localisation as interdisciplinary research.
Capacity Investment Under Demand Uncertainty - An Empirical Study of the US Cement Industry, 1994-2006