Gameplay experience in a gaze interaction game

Assessing gameplay experience for gaze interaction games is a challenging task. For this study, a gaze interaction Half-Life 2 game modification was created that allowed eye tracking control. The mod was deployed during an experiment at Dreamhack 2007, where participants had to play with gaze navigation and afterwards rate their gameplay experience. The results show low tension and negative affects scores on the gameplay experience questionnaire as well as high positive challenge, immersion and flow ratings. The correlation between spatial presence and immersion for gaze interaction was high and yields further investigation. It is concluded that gameplay experience can be correctly assessed with the methodology presented in this paper.Comment: pages 49-54, The 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction - COGAIN 2009: Gaze Interaction For Those Who Want It Most, ISBN: 978-87-643-0475-

How psychophysiology can aid the design process of casual games : a tale of stress, facial muscles, and paper beasts

Psychophysiological measurements have so far been used to express player experience quantitatively in game genres such as shooter games and race games. However, these methods have not yet been applied to casual video games. From a development point of view, games developed in the casual sector of the games industry are characterized by very short production cycles which make them ill-suited for complex and lengthy psychophysiological testing regimes. This paper discusses some methodological innovations that lead to the application of psychophysiological measurements to enhance the design of a commercially released casual game for the Apple iPad, called ‘Gua-Le-Ni’; or, The Horrendous Parade’. The game was tested in different stages of its development to dry-run a cycle of design improvements derived from psychophysiological data. The tests looked at the correlation between stress levels and the contraction of facial muscles with in-game performance in order to establish whether ‘Gua-Le-Ni’ offered the cognitive challenge, the learning curve, and the enjoyment the designers had in mind for this product. In this paper, we discuss the changes that were made topeer-reviewe

Tailoring a psychophysiologically driven rating system

Humans have always been interested in ways to measure and compare their performances to establish who is best at a particular activity. The first Olympic Games, for instance, were carried out in 776 BC, and it was a defining moment in history where ranking based competitive activities managed to reach the general populous. Every competition must face the issue of how to evaluate and rank competitors, and often rules are required to account for many different aspects such as variations in conditions, the ability to cheat, and, of course, the value of entertainment. Nowadays, measurements are performed out through various rating systems, which considers the outcomes of the activity to rate the participants. However, they do not seem to address the psychological aspects of an individual in a competition. This dissertation employs several psychophysiological assessment instruments intending to facilitate the acquisition of skill level rating in competitive gaming. To do so, an exergame that uses non-conventional inputs, such as body tracking to prevent input biases, was developed. The sample size of this study is ten, and the participants were put on a round-robin tournament to provide equal intervals between games for each player. After analyzing the outcome of the competition, it revealed some critical insights on the psychophysiological instruments; Especially the significance of Flow in terms of the prolificacy of a player. Although the findings did not provide an alternative for the traditional rating systems, it shows the importance of considering other aspects of the competition, such as psychophysiological metrics to fine-tune the rating. These potentially reveal more in-depth insight into the competition in comparison to just the binary outcome

Does your profile say it all? Using demographics to predict expressive head movement during gameplay

In this work, we explore the relation between expressive head movement and user profile information in game play settings. Facial gesture analysis cues are statistically correlated with players' demographic characteristics in two different settings, during game-play and at events of special interest (when the player loses during game play). Experiments were conducted on the Siren database, which consists of 58 participants, playing a modified version of the Super Mario. Here, as player demographics are considered the gender and age, while the statistical importance of certain facial cues (other than typical/universal facial expressions) was analyzed. The proposed analysis aims at exploring the option of utilizing demographic characteristics as part of users' profiling scheme and interpreting visual behavior in a manner that takes into account those features.peer-reviewe

Adaptive Music Generation for Computer Games

This dissertation explores a novel approach to game music that addresses the limitations of conventional game music systems in supporting a dynamically changing narrative. In the proposed approach, the music is generated automatically based on a set of variable input parameters corresponding to emotional musical features. These are then tied to narrative parameters in the game, so that the features and emotions of the music are perceived to continuously adapt to the game's changing narrative. To investigate this approach, an algorithmic music generator was developed which outputs a stream of chords based on several input parameters. The parameters control different aspects of the music, including the transition matrix of a Markov model used to stochastically generate the chords, and can be adjusted continuously in real time. A tense first-person game was then configured to control the generator's input parameters to reflect the changing tension of its narrative---for example, as the narrative tension of the game increases, the generated music becomes more dissonant and the tempo increases. The approach was empirically evaluated primarily by having participants play the game under a variety of conditions, comparing them along several subjective dimensions. The participants' skin conductance was also recorded. The results indicate that the condition with the dynamically varied music described above was both rated and felt as the most tense and exciting, and, for participants who said they enjoy horror games and films, also rated as the most preferable and fun. Another study with music experts then demonstrated that the proposed approach produced smoother musical transitions than crossfades, the approach conventionally used in computer games. Overall, the findings suggest that dynamic music can have a significant positive impact on game experiences, and that generating it algorithmically based on emotional musical features is a viable and effective approach