Instituut voor Communicatie, Media & IT

This paper describes a first exploration of human motor behavior that may be associated with player experiences in digital games. Evidence from literature suggests that patterns in pressure and postural movement data may be indicative for experiences such as interest, arousal, frustration and boredom. In the current study we explore the relation between behavioral measures and people's emotional experience during game play. Results from the study presented in this paper indicate that the intensity of people's actions (e.g. pressure exerted on the mouse) and bodily movement relates to several experiences during game-play, including frustration. However, the results show that these behavioral measures do not exclusively relate to one specific experience. Rather, the results imply these behavioral measures to relate to the level of arousal and level of dominance felt during game-play. From these results it is evident that behavioral measures have a clear application potential. This study presents a starting point in the development of a set of behavior-based measures of player experiences. Establishing sensitivity and validity of such measures can be regarded as the necessary first step in the process of creating an emotionally adaptive game.

As the game industry matures and games become more and more complex, there is an increasing need to develop scientific methodologies for analyzing and measuring player experience, in order to develop a better understanding of the relationship and interactions between players and games. This panel gathers distinguished European playability and user experience experts to discuss current findings and methodological advancements within player experience and playability research.

The area of digital games constitutes a tremendously varied set of applications, with a wide range of associated player experiences, defying a one-size-fits-all approach to its conceptualization and measurement. One of the main challenges facing the gaming research community is a lack of a coherent and fine-grained set of methods and tools that enable the measurement of entertainment experiences in a sensitive, reliable and valid manner. Much like the six wise (but blind) men touching the elephant, no single ...

With the increased adoption of real-time objective measurements of player experience, advances have been made in characterising the dynamically changing aspects of the player experience during gameplay itself. A direct coupling to player action, however, is not without challenges. Many physiological responses, for instance, have an inherent delay, and often take some time to return to a baseline, providing challenges of interpretation when analysing rapidly changing gameplay on a micro level of interaction. The development of event-related, or phasic, measurements directly coupled to player actions provides additional insights, for instance through player modelling, but also through the use of behavioural characteristics of the human computer interaction itself. In this study, we focused on the latter, and measured keyboard pressure in a number of different, fast-paced action games. In this particular case, we related specific functional game actions (keyboard presses) to experiential player behaviour. We found keyboard pressure to be higher for avoidance as compared to approach-oriented actions. Additionally, the difference between avoidance and approach keyboard pressure related to levels of arousal. The findings illustrate the application potential of qualifying players' functional actions at play (navigating in a game) and interpret player experience related to these actions through players' real world behavioural characteristics like interface pressure.