Affective VideoGames

Part 1: project profile

Project name

Affective VideoGames

Project short description

In this project we try to develop a software that can adapt a behaviour of an interactive videogame (a car game like TORCS or a similar parametrizable game), to do this we will use some measure based on excitement of the player, analizing biological signal to valuate the emotional state. The goal is to maximaze the fun and reducing the boring of the player, adapting the difficulty of the videogame.

Dates

Start date: 2008/11/14

End date: 2009

People involved

Project head(s)

Matteo Matteucci User:MatteoMatteucci

Other Politecnico di Milano people

Simone Tognetti User:SimoneTognetti

Students currently working on the project

Andrea Campana User:AndreaCampana

Andrea Tommaso Bonanno User:AndreaTommasoBonanno

Laboratory work and risk analysis

Laboratory work for this project will be mainly performed at AIRLab/Lambrate. It will include significant amounts of mechanical work as well as of electrical and electronic activity. Potentially risky activities are the following:

• Use of high-voltage circuits. Special gloves and a current limiter will be used.

Part 2: project description

The first part of the project will consist of the analysis of a set of VideoGames. In particular two/three different available open source games will be 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 will be analyzed for this first stage of the project will be the following: - a puzzle/action 3d game called Beaver Valley; - TORCS (driving simulator); - the music video game called Frets on Fire. These games will be studied through their source code and configurations in order to identify how and where to change the key parameters of the game in response to player's emotions. In order to perform this study the ProComp sensing system will be used in order to analize biological signals and then to evaluate the emotional state of the player.

More details on the project will be available as soon as possible.