As a disclaimer, I am work as a programmer in the game industry so I might have missed or misunderstood some things concerning game design.

I've read some papers on game design and psychology but they seem unsatisfactory.

Before I will proceed with my questions and issues I shall list the articles here:
http://www.gamasutra..._of_.php?page=1
http://www.gamasutra...ign.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra...php?story=23724

Valve has some interesting papers even if their focus is more on playtesting rather than the design process before the playtest.
http://www.valvesoft...Playtesting.pdf
http://www.valvesoft...ck-Ambinder.pdf

The gamasutra articles seem a too shallow in my opinion. They don't go into detail and I feel that they just scratched the surface a bit and established some "rules" and "tips" by oversimplifying everything. Most of the time I feel that the way they use to model a player is a super simplistic state-machine.
In reality we are really complex creatures, and even if you can trick us into certain things because of some hard-wired connections in our brains caused by evolution I feel that the players should be treated with more respect and research in these areas should explore further than skinner box examples or models.(something more complex than what zynga or the casinos are doing ).

For example I am interested right now in how can I raise certain feelings in my player. Let's say I want him to feel vulnerable and afraid. But I don't want him just to feel the fear of dying and starting over again, I want him to be afraid on a deeper level.

Or If I want him to have a feeling of hope how can I do that without using some cheesy flowers blossoming and trees growing and other similar childish things. I want to do it in a more subtle way.

Are there resources where I can learn about psychology and the ways humans tend to respond to visual and audio stimuli?

I think that games could go a level further in exploring these areas because unlike movies, the person interacts directly with the medium and is not only a receiver, so if you have any studies that involve games it would be even better .

Thanks in advance for at least reading this huge post .

Edited by clickalot, Today, 05:24 AM.