PhD Project – Playful Brain Demands – Physiological Arousal Evoked by Elemental Structures in AAA-Video Games

The Basic Idea

According to the state-of-the-art research* surrounding player psychology, experience and game design, user experience (UX) in games is formed through interactions with individual elements within a game, e.g. finding a treasure box, fighting enemies. The key to understanding UX to drive innovation and user-centricity lies in these elements.

Natali’s project looks isolated at player’s biometric feedback as a result of interacting with a game’s individual elements. She choose to measure player’s skin conductivity using electrodermal activity (EDA) devices because it unlocks access to the purest form of play experience.

The purest form of an UX occurs as a bodily reaction before users can apply meaning to their experience. While this presents researchers with the debate of validity of such reactions, it also generates UX reactions free from any biases. It limits player or facilitator interpretation biases, presents fact based, objective measurements, and it’s industry standardized measurement of UX.

The project is located at the heart of Transversal Translational Medicine (TTM) and practical User Research borrowing research insights from neurosciences. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Thomas Günther, the project seeks to expand current research findings on the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), biometrics, and UX by driving and delivering game design innovation, and advocating a user-centric design.

Mixed Methods – Research Plan v.0.1

The project is located at the heart of Transversal Translational Medicine (TTM) and practical User Research borrowing research insights from neurosciences. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Thomas Günther, the project seeks to expand current research findings on the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), biometrics, and UX by driving and delivering game design innovation, and advocating a user-centric design.

Phase 2 (ca. 2023-2024) is about gathering user data, computing the data, and prototyping the first model, before going into the first audience review.

Analysis Plan v.0.1

The data analysis plan is to use linear regression and machine learning for data validation, due to the high number of independent variables. Details will follow soon.

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Cited Sources & Ongoing Bibliography List

*Sources:

Burelli 2013, Frandsen 2017, Garver et al. 2017, Pfau et al. 2020, Naglé et al. 2021, Rogers et al. 2018, Tompkins 2021, Nacke et al. 2010, Hicks et al. 2019, Hellqvist et al. 2017, Caroux 2015, Arrambide 2019, Thue et al. 2010

Ongoing Bibliography:

Covariates Research List

Andersen, N. (2019). Environmental Storytelling in Storyworlds (Master’s thesis, Aalborg University, Denmark). Retrieved from https://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/files/306255849/Masters_Thesis_Environmental_Storytelling_In_Storyworlds.pdf

Arrambide, K. (2019, October 17). Interactive Narratives in Games. Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.1145/3341215.3356334

Burelli, P. (2013). Virtual Cinematography in Games: Investigating the Impact on Player Experience. International Conference On The Foundations Of Digital Games, 134-141. https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.4643

Caroux, L., & Isbister, K. (2016). Influence of head-up displays’ characteristics on user experience in video games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 87, 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.11.001

Eastin, M. S. (2006). Video Game Violence and the Female Game Player: Self- and Opponent Gender Effects on Presence and Aggressive Thoughts. Human Communication Research, 32 (3), 351–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00279.x

Ekman, I. (2014). A Cognitive Approach to the Emotional Function of Game Sound. In The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199797226.013.012

Frandsen, K. (2017). The Impact of Visual Properties on Player Habits and Game Sessions (Master’s Thesis, Uppsala University, Sweden). Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1118826/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Garver, S., Adamo-Villani, N., & Dib, H. (2018). The Impact of Visual Style on User Experience in Games. EAI Endorsed Transactions on Game-Based Learning, 4 (15), 153535. https://doi.org/10.4108/eai.5-1-2018.153535

Green, M. C., & Jenkins, K. M. (2014). Interactive Narratives: Processes and Outcomes in User-Directed Stories. Journal of Communication, 64 (3), 479–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12093

Hellqvist, M., & Härjeström, H. (2017). Measuring the Impact of Heads-Up Display on Player Experience in FPS Games (Bachelor’s thesis, Södertörn University, Sweden). Retrieved from http://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1095528/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Hicks, K., Gerling, K., Dickinson, P., & Vanden Abeele, V. (2019). Juicy Game Design. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311350.3347171

Lips, D. (2021). The responsibilities in Red Dead Redemption 2: An analysis of playful learning through environmental storytelling in a videogame (Doctoral dissertation or Bachelor’s thesis, Utrecht University). Retrieved from https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/402055

Lopez-Fernandez, O., Williams, A. J., Griffiths, M. D., & Kuss, D. J. (2019). Female Gaming, Gaming Addiction, and the Role of Women Within Gaming Culture: A Narrative Literature Review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00454

Melhart, D., Liapis, A., & Yannakakis, G. N. (2019). PAGAN: Platform for Audiovisual General-purpose ANnotation. 2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW). https://doi.org/10.1109/aciiw.2019.8925149

Murray, J.T. (2018). Annotating Player Experience in Telltale Games the Wolf Among Us (Master’s thesis, University of California, USA). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69n1d6tp

Nacke, L. E., Grimshaw, M. N., & Lindley, C. A. (2010). More than a feeling: Measurement of sonic user experience and psychophysiology in a first-person shooter game. Interacting with Computers, 22 (5), 336–343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2010.04.005

Naglé, T., Bateman, S., & Birk, M. V. (2021). Pathfinder. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5 (CHI PLAY), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3474691

Pfau, J., Smeddinck, J. D., & Malaka, R. (2020). Enemy Within: Long-term Motivation Effects of Deep Player Behavior Models for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376423

Rogers, K. (2017). Exploring the Role of Audio in Games. Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. https://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3133227

Rogers, K., Aufheimer, M., Weber, M., & Nacke, L. E. (2018). Exploring the Role of Non-Player Characters and Gender in Player Identification. Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.1145/3270316.3273041

Thue, D., Bulitko, V., Spetch, M., & Romanuik, T. (2010). Player Agency and the Relevance of Decisions. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 210–215). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16638-9_26

Tompkins, J.E. (2021). Does the Character Matter? Avatar Gender, Identification, and Player Agency Among Women Who Play Digital Games (Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, USA). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/openview/6ea1693a35445e06f6396ae18476c725/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

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Bowman, N.D. (2018/2020). Video Games. A Medium That Demands Our Attention. Routledge, New York, London.

Bowman, N.D., & Tamborini, R. (2015). “In the Mood to Game”: Selective exposure and mood management processes in computer game play. New Media Society 17 (3), 375–393. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813504274

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