DOOMED

In all three scenarios presented so far -- primitive, social and software -- the first and most primitive level of affect is arousal. For instance, blowing something up to generate excitement. I believe I need only point at the current crop of summer movies to make that point. [Pick any set of summer films since 1980. Also see Habituation and Satiation.]

At the social level, you have infatuation. By being affectionate, that is, by engendering pleasant affect, you may be able to form an emotional bond with another person. Even operating systems can do this. Again, the Apple Macintosh.

Most software applications do not create infatuation or affection, only boredom, confusion, and frustration. Here is a further illustration of how affectless applications often are, by plan or from lack of effort on the part of their developers.

What if the game DOOM was designed to engender affect in the same manner as an ordinary software application? [By nowyou have probably graduated from DOOM to QUAKE. But if DOOM is still only a word to you, click the hot rat.]

I think it would go something like this