子越 王

Games are entertaining due to its interactive nature and the occasional requirement of a certain level of skill to control the avatar. However, this can also potentially lead to frustration since there is no way for a game to truly understand the player’s behaviours during gameplay. Mistakes sometimes happen due to carelessness. Yet, the more likely reason is that the player is lacking the skill to control an avatar as though it is an extension of theirselves. We propose the PhysioSense controller, a custom designed gamepad controller that can develop a player’s sense of agency towards their game avatar, thus leading to better control. It senses the player’s　electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate, and motion to compute their cognitive load level in real-time and trigger a haptic feedback during key events in the game. The haptic feedback is delivered via subtle actuation on the button that needs to be pressed during these events, allowing the player to still retain their sense of agency as though they performed the action themselves. We performed an initial evaluation the PhysioSense Controller using a game with three levels of custom difficulty and found a correlation between the haptic feedback and player’s agency. We also analyze the player’s physiological reaction and presented with these difficulties. Finally, we discuss potential applications and how our prototype and findings can be used to improve the experience of players regardless of their skill level.