Gaming is a highly relevant application area for Intelligent Agents and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Computer games bring us a full set of new gaming experiences where synthetic characters take on the main role.Using affective input in the interaction with a game and in particular with a character is a recent and fairly unexplored dimension. This video presents a study of a tangible interaction device for affective input and its use in a role-playing game where emotions are part of the game logic

Bullock, Adrian

Gambäck, Björn

English

Swedish Institute of Computer Science Publications Database

Evaluating affective interaction in gaming 
 
Adrian Bullock and Björn Gambäck 
 
Swedish Institute of Computer Science 
Box 1263, SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden 
{adrian, gamback}@sics.se 
 
 
Abstract 
 
Gaming is a highly relevant application area for Intelligent Agents and Human Computer 
Interaction (HCI). Computer games bring us a full set of new gaming experiences where synthetic 
characters take on the main role. Using affective input in the interaction with a game and in 
particular with a character is a recent and fairly unexplored dimension. This video presents a study 
of a tangible interaction device for affective input and its use in a role-playing game where 
emotions are part of the game logic. 
 
 
1 The FantasyA game and the SenToy input device 
 
SenToy is an affective physical interface, a doll with sensors in its limbs that are sensitive to 
movement and acceleration, inspired by work on tangible user interfaces (Ishii and Ullmer 1997). 
It is used to control and influence synthetic characters that inhabit a 3D role-playing game named 
FantasyA (Höök et al. 2003). The FantasyA demonstrator, produced within the EU-IST Safira 
project, supports a duel between mages, with the two mages fighting it out, taking turns to either 
attack their opponent or to defend themselves. 
Figure 1: The players’ view of the game      Figure 2: Using SenToy to interact with the game  
 
1.1 Gesturing with SenToy 
 
The SenToy doll was used to influence emotional behaviour in the FantasyA game (see Figure 2). 
After a pre-study where the players were asked to express six emotions with SenToy (having no 
prior knowledge of the doll or gestures), they were taught how to provide input to FantasyA using 
SenToy, a previous Wizard of Oz study (Andersson et al. 2002) having identified gestures 
corresponding to six emotions; happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and gloating (see Figure 
3). The actions and gestures performed by players on SenToy were interpreted (using signal 
processing) and the inferred emotion from the recognised gesture was used to make their avatar 
change emotional state in FantasyA when it was their turn.  
ger, fear, surpriseFigure 3: Gestures use g an  and 
 
ame in pairs, and we assessed the success of both the FantasyA 
ame with its emotional content and the SenToy control device with its gestural input. Video 
r ers could easily express the emotions happiness, anger and sadness, 
ut that they had some trouble expressing the other emotions. However, after training in how to 
r SenToy, our subjects were told very little about the FantasyA 
ame, other than that it was a turn-taking duel, and interaction would be via SenToy. Players did 
., Mourão, D., Paiva, A., Costa, M., “Using a Wizard of Oz study to 
inform the design of SenToy”, Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), London, June 2002. 
3. 
d for expressin happiness, sadness, gloating  
))((
2 The study 
 
In our study users played the g
g
cameras, a microphone, questionnaires and open interviews were used to capture data. The game 
play in FantasyA is a duel, and players were able to influence their character’s actions during the 
duel through SenToy and the emotion they chose to express with it. 
 
3 Evaluation results 
 
3.1 The SenToy doll 
 
The p e-study showed that us
b
perform the gestures the users were able to express all six emotions with relative ease. Most users 
liked the doll as an input mechanism for playing the game, one player saying afterwards, “A few 
days after having played, I still like the doll very much. I really appreciated his direct contact to give 
commands, even if in that case, the commands were not that obvious and their result a bit fuzzy”. 
 
3.2 The FantasyA game 
 
Although training was provided fo
g
discuss strategies between themselves while playing, linking SenToy gestures to avatar actions, 
and while this worked most of the time sometimes the behaviour of their avatar was not what they 
expected, and this confused them. Hardly any of the players paid any attention to the emotional 
behaviour of their own avatar or their opponent’s avatar during the duel. Despite this lack of 
understanding, identified in the interviews, the majority of players enjoyed themselves greatly, 
with some child subjects even inquiring about the commercial availability of the game! 
 
References 
 
Andersson, G., Höök, K
Höök, K., Bullock, A., Paiva, A., Vala, M., Chaves, R. and Prada, R., “FantasyA and SenToy”, in 
Extended Abstracts of CHI 2003, Short Talk: Tangible Interfaces, p.804, ACM Press, 200
Ishii, H. and Ullmer, B., "Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and 
Atoms", In Proc of CHI’97, ACM Press, 1997. 


FantasyA and SenToy”,

SenToy and FantasyA: evaluating affective gaming

Software institutes' Online Digital Archive

Gaming is a highly relevant application area for Intelligent Agents and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Computer games bring us a full set of new gaming experiences where synthetic characters take on the main role.Using affective input in the interaction with a game and in particular with a character is a recent and fairly unexplored dimension. This video presents a study of a tangible interaction device for affective input and its use in a role-playing game where emotions are part of the game logic.Video downloadable from http://www.sics.se/~adrian/hcii03/ MPEG1 and WMV formats, 86Mb and 66Mb respectively.</p

Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet - Academic Archive On-line

RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden

http://soda.swedishict.se/2802/1/hci2003_ab.pdf

SenToy and FantasyA: evaluating affective gaming

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Swedish Institute of Computer Science Publications Database

Software institutes' Online Digital Archive

Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet - Academic Archive On-line

RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden