The relationship between game content and gameplay remains underexplored. High level debate about the relative narrativity of games remains common, but there is a gap in the understanding about the particularities of how diegetic objects relates to the business of managing player experience and behaviour at the heart of gameplay. The first half of this thesis proposes a new model for understanding gameplay as a network of affordance relationships which define supported actions. The theoretical focus upon supported actions rather than object characteristics enables a better understanding of the framework of gameplay created by a complex system of interrelated objects. In particular, it illustrates how the essential ludic structure of first-person games can be described in very simple terms, thus defining a discontinuity between complexity of experience and simplicity of structure. It is proposed that story is a primary means of managing this discontinuity to provide an immersive and seamless experience. Traditional models of narrative and interactive narrative are discussed to illustrate the problems of attempting to apply them directly to gameplay, and this is summarised in a discussion of the narratology/ludology debate. Instead, a new conceptualisation of narrative, drawn from the use of narrative as a model and metaphor in psychology, and based on schema theory is offered. It is argued that this new, game-specific conceptualisation - of a network of protonarrative units - maps efficiently and effectively onto the affordance model of gameplay and thus resolves the historical problem. In the second half of the thesis, evidence is offered to support the argument that not only can story be understood as a form of affordance, but that by examining commercial FPS titles, it is clear that story is used to manipulate player behaviour - that it serves a distinct gameplay function. This is achieved by analysing core elements of story: worlds and their populations; the avatar as a key device in managing the player/system relationship; and plot as the predetermined changes to object relationships over the course of a game. It is concluded that when gameplay is understood as a network of affordances, and story as a network of proto narrative units, and when the genre is analysed with this model in mind, not only is an understanding of the gameplay function of story evident, but this analysis yields a deeper level of understanding about the nature of FPS games and gameplay than has previously been available.

This dissertation is about moral cognition and the production of spiritual experiences in the Chinese version of the massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft (CWoW). Chapter 1 introduces the game, field sites, data collection methods, and the questions and paradigms that structure the dissertation's narrative. This chapter explains that during fieldwork CWoW players frequently described gameplay as yielding positive moral and spiritual experiences. Chapter 2 outlines the cognitive mechanisms – Haidt and Joseph's 'moral foundations' (2004; 2007) – that are hypothesised to inform the in-game experiences to which players attributed moral significance. Chapter 3 argues that some aspects of the WoW gameworld are high in cognitive 'relevance' (following Sperber & Wilson, 1986) for Haidt and Joseph's moral foundations. This relevance yields the game a capacity for cross-cultural appeal. Chapter 4 argues that social agencies operant in the lives of CWoW players motivated players to utilise these morally relevant aspects of gameplay as a 'religion-like tool for group cohesion' (following Sosis & Alcorta, 2008). These extra-game agencies help explain why these aspects of gameplay were cultivated in lieu of, or as superordinate to, aspects that may be 'relevant' to other cognitive mechanisms. Chapter 5 argues that reports of soul merger experiences obtained in CWoW resemble Durkheim’s 'collective effervescence' (Durkheim, 1995 [1912]) and may be understood at the cognitive level as 'flow' (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) experiences conjoined with affective outputs from Haidt and Joseph's moral foundations. Chapter 6 summarises the key points made in the preceding chapters and concludes that in the contexts sampled here, high-contingency aspects of CWoW gameplay may be viewed as Durkheimian religious rituals.