This year I had a pleasure to present at the GUR Summer Camp on May 15th, 2020 my thesis research project. For those of you who missed it, I’m sharing my presentation as a PDF with the script as comments.
What is “Using Electrodermal Activity to Map Out Player Journeys” presentation about?
Creating the most optimal play experience is the dream goal of every developer. For that, developers need to study their players. The most efficient way are player studies. There are several ways of doing player research, such as player interviews, play testing, player experience questionnaires and so on.
The problem with these studies is they capture the post-play experience, an experience that is cognitively processed to its end state but necessary for articulation. The results might be biased as the player needs to interpret and re-evaluate their experience in order to give feedback to the developer. Play experiences are unconscious and players are unaware of the effects a stimuli has on them. So when a player is talking about their experience with a game, they can only give us a fraction of what they were actually experiencing. This is where electrodermal activity comes into play.
As the name implies, EDA refers to some sort of electric activity or change of skin properties, that linearly correlates to arousal “and reflects emotional responses as well as cognitive activity (Boucsein, 1992)” (Isbister & Schaffer, 2008., p. 212 ).
By using player’s psychophysiological data we can map out the exact player experience as a response to video game elements. That knowledge could be helpful in the development of video games.
In this presentation I will show you how I measured EDA for my M.A. thesis project, talk about problems with the EDA devices and analysis, and discuss the next steps of using the insights of my project to develop a toolbox to play experience in game development and game studies.
This talk is open to young academics, veterans, and anyone interested in learning about the not-so-complicated EDA devices from the background of cognitive narratology and UX.
Download the PDF-Presentation here.
References:
Lang, P.J. 1995. The emotional probe. American Psychologist, 50 (5), 372-385.
Boucsein,W. 1992. Electrodermal Activity. New York: Plenum Press.Isbister & Schaffer. Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience, p. 212.
Playful Brain Demand 