Difference between revisions of "Affective VideoGames"

Revision as of 22:05, 20 December 2009

Project description

The aim of this projects is to develop a software that can adapt a behaviour of an interactive videogame (a car game like TORCS or a similar parametrizable game) according to an evaluation of his/her emotional state. We will start by analizing biological signals to evaluate the emotional state. The goal is to maximize the engagement of the player, making her/him staying as long as possible in the "flow" state , by adapting the parameters of the videogame to her/his real emotional state.

The first part of the project consisted of the analysis of a set of VideoGames. In particular three different available open source games have been studied in order to receive feedbacks from the player (in terms of excitement), finding out which one is the most suitable for the goal of the project: the one potentially affecting most the player's emotions. The games that have been analyzed for this first stage of the project have been the following:

- a puzzle/action 3d game called Beaver Valley;

- TORCS (driving simulator);

- the music video game called Frets on Fire.

TORCS has been selected and experiments with it have been done in October 2009, leading to the definition of a methodology to face experiments and some preliminary results.

Here is an example of this experiment. The player is sitting in front of a desktop computer equipped with a keyboard. During the game the biological signal of the subject are acquired by sensors on the fingers and the ProComp Infiniti system.

Following this methodology, in January 2010 a new set of experiments will be performed with volunteers. In these experiments, images from two cameras will also be recorded to allow the analysis of gestures and facial expressions.

• External link

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More details on the project are available under the discussion tab, accessible by involved airwiki users.

Students that worked on the project in the past

• Andrea Campana (Project work - Sep 2009)

• Andrea Tommaso Bonanno (MS Thesis - Dec 2009)

Laboratory work and risk analysis

Laboratory work for this project will be mainly performed at AIRLab/DEI. The only risks are related to the use of computers and data acquisition devices