Federico Alvarez Igarzábal

Federico Alvarez Igarzábal studied Audiovisual Communications and Visual Arts in Córdoba, Argentina. He has worked as a researcher and teacher at different institutions, including the University of Cologne and the TH Köln (Germany), where he is currently employed. Since 2013 he is working on his PhD thesis on the topic of temporal structures in video games and time perception under the working title of “Time and Space in Video Games.”

University of Cologne / TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences


Marshmallows and Bullets

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15th October, 12:15 – 12:45

This talk examines the Resident Evil HD Remaster of 2015 with the psychological notions of delayed gratification, temporal discounting, and time perspective. These concepts describe how players interact with video games in general, but are especially adequate for the analysis of survival horror games. The player’s mental construction of time is connected to decision-making processes related to resource management. Survival horror is characterized by the management of scarce resources in unsettling environments. Psychological studies concerned with the aforementioned notions, i.e. Mischel’s famed “Marshmallow Test”, shed light on mental processes that affect interaction with this genre and Resident Evil in particular.

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