Research Interests

My research focuses on how interactive media, especially video games and immersive technologies such as VR and AR, influence users’ stress, motivation, and emotional well-being. I am particularly interested in understanding when interactive experiences stop being enjoyable and start becoming demanding, and how thoughtful design can make digital environments more meaningful and restorative. My master’s thesis examines when and why digital games shift from being relaxing to stressful using Bowman's Interactivity-as-Demand framework. Broadly, I’m interested in exploring the meaningful and restorative use of immersive media and how interactive design can balance cognitive and emotional demands to enhance well-being.

I feel exhausted after playing a game → I was supposed to relax → but why after a long and engaging game I feel more tired? → my friends reported the same issue, but is it a common phenomenon in game society? → why do people keep playing under such pressure? Do they enjoy other things? → what specific element in the game triggered people's high focus in cognitive, instead of achieving relaxation goals? → Can we understand this process using the media demand model? is this meaningful?

Master's Thesis

"Why Games Stop Feeling Fun: A Computational Approach to Emotional Demand in Play"

M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, 2026

Video games are often pursued for relaxation and social connection, yet players frequently report experiences of stress, frustration, and emotional exhaustion, particularly in online multiplayer environments. This thesis investigates the paradox of why games stop feeling fun by analyzing how players articulate interactive demands and affective experiences in naturally occurring online discourse.

Grounded in Bowman's Interactivity-as-Demand framework and informed by Flow theory and Mood Management perspectives, the study conceptualizes game play as a system of competing cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and controller-related demands. Using an observational computational approach, 1,457 posts and comments were collected from eleven gaming-related subreddits, focusing on competitive first-person shooter communities. The analysis employs a triangulated strategy combining theory-driven multi-label coding for demand detection with a multi-method sentiment analysis using keyword-based methods, VADER, and a fine-tuned DistilBERT model.

Key Findings:

• Cognitive and emotional demands are the most frequently discussed dimensions, often co-occurring to reflect the high-stakes nature of competitive play
• Controller and physical demands, while less frequent, are associated with disproportionately high negative sentiment, functioning as "hygiene factors" that disrupt enjoyment when they fail
• Social demands exhibit a polarized sentiment profile, acting as both a source of deep satisfaction through teamwork and intense frustration through toxicity
• Player frustration is driven less by high demand intensity alone than by the misalignment of these demands with player resources and expectations

This study extends the Interactivity-as-Demand framework by demonstrating the compound nature of gameplay stressors and illustrates the value of computational methods for understanding player experience at scale.