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Vanishing scares: biofeedback modulation of affective player experiences in a procedural horror game

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Abstract

To understand the impact of emotionally driven games on player experience, we developed a procedural horror game (Vanish) capable of run-time level, asset, and event generation. Vanish was augmented to interpret players’ physiological data as a simplified emotional state, mapping it to a set of adaptation rules that modify the player experience. To explore the effects of adaptation mechanisms on player experience, we conducted a mixed-methods study on three different versions of the game, two of which integrated varying biofeedback mechanisms. Players’ affective experiences were objectively measured by analysing physiological data. Additionally, subjective experience was recorded through the use of the Game Experience Questionnaire. Our study confirmed that biofeedback functionality had a statistically significant effect on the ratings of player experience dimensions: immersion, tension, positive affect, and negative affect. Furthermore, participants reported noticeable differences in player experience, favouring the added depth present in the biofeedback-enabled iterations of the game. In the future, these conclusions will help to develop more immersive and engaging player experiences.

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Notes

  1. http://www.experience-ozen.com/.

  2. https://emotiv.com/epoc.php.

  3. http://neurosky.com/.

  4. http://www.bcinet.com/products/.

  5. http://www.bitalino.com/.

  6. Gameplay mechanics are constructs of rules intended to provide players with a limited set of possible interactions with the game world, determining the complexity and level of player interaction allowed to the player. For a more in-depth study, we refer the reader to [57].

  7. Vanish is available for free on IndieDB (http://www.indiedb.com/games/vanish) for both Mac and PC. It is currently ranked #8 out of a total of 17,754 games, as of July, \(15{\mathrm{th}}\), 2014.

  8. While we did not have the required hardware, the game allows the usage of an Oculus Rift device for orientation and omnidirectional treadmill for movement. We find the idea of analysing the effects of modulating movement speed and orientation when using these devices particularly interesting.

  9. Game AI is a term referring to a specific subtype of AI usually used in games. It usually refers to techniques create intelligent-like behaviours on behalf of non-player characters (NPCs), such as player interactions, strategy formulating or pathfinding. Sometimes it extends to other areas of the game world, such as terrain or level generation in procedural content generation or player experience or behaviour modelling. A game AI director is a type of system that oversees the AI of most aspects of the game, including assigning group strategies to several NPCs to simulate coordination [58].

  10. This was an intended feature, as dynamic level layouts are somewhat common features in survival horror games. Since the game revolves heavily around the game character’s sanity (or lack thereof), we decided to correlate this event with the player character’s mental deterioration, thus helping to convey this notion to the player and, at the same time, tap into his own psyche in an attempt to subconsciously link the two.

  11. As we previously mentioned, players were fitted with the physiological apparatus on all gaming conditions to avoid bias effects.

Abbreviations

ACC:

Accelerometer

AID:

AI director

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

AV:

Arousal/valence

BF:

Biofeedback

BP:

Blood pressure

BVP:

Blood volume pulse

DBF:

Direct biofeedback

DDA:

Dynamic difficulty adjustment

DG:

Design grammar

ECG:

Electrocardiogram

EDA:

Electrodermal activity

E-IBF:

Equilibria indirect biofeedback

EMG:

Electromyography

FPS:

First-person shooter

GEQ:

Game Experience Questionnaire

HR:

Heart rate

HRV:

Heart rate variability

IBF:

Indirect biofeedback

IBI:

Inter-beat interval

ICG:

Impedance cardiogram

NN:

Neural network

PCG:

Procedural content generation

PIERS:

Physiological inductive emotional recognition system

PPG:

Photoplethysmogram

PST:

(Body) posture

RSP:

Respiration

SC:

Skin conductance

S-IBF:

Symbiotic indirect biofeedback

SS:

Study size

ST:

Skin temperature

TPS:

Third-person shooter

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the SFRH/BD/77688/2011 scholarship. We would like to thank Samantha Stahlke for proofreading an earlier version of the paper. Dr. Nacke thanks NSERC and SSHRC for funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LIACC-Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro A. Nogueira & Eugénio Oliveira

  2. Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Vasco Torres

  3. Faculty of Engineering, INESC TEC, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Rui Rodrigues

  4. HCI Games Group, Faculty of Business and IT, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Ontario, Canada

    Lennart E. Nacke

Authors
  1. Pedro A. Nogueira
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  2. Vasco Torres
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  3. Rui Rodrigues
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  4. Eugénio Oliveira
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  5. Lennart E. Nacke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pedro A. Nogueira.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Rules for mapping the physiological metrics into AV ratings

The following algorithm was applied on top of the regressed physiological metrics to convert regressed skin conductance (RSC), regressed heart rate (RHR) and regressed electromyography \((REMG_{ZYG}\) and \(REMG_{CORR}\)) into arousal and valence.

figure a

Appendix 2: Detailed break-down of players’ emotional states by demographic and gaming conditions

figure b

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Nogueira, P.A., Torres, V., Rodrigues, R. et al. Vanishing scares: biofeedback modulation of affective player experiences in a procedural horror game. J Multimodal User Interfaces 10, 31–62 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-015-0208-1

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