Play With Your Emotions: Exploring Possibilities of Emotions as Game Input in NERO

Abstract

This work presents NERO, a game concept using the player's active emotional input to map the emotional state of the player to representative in-game characters. Emotional input in games has been mainly used as a passive measure to adjust for game difficulty or other variables. However the player has not been given the possibility to explore and play with one's emotions as an active feature. Given the high subjectivity of felt emotions we wanted to focus on the player's experience of emotional input rather than the objective accuracy of the input sensor. We therefore implemented a proof-of-concept game using heart-rate as a proxy for emotion measurement and through repeated player tests the game mechanics were revised and evaluated. Valuable insight for the design of entertainment-focused emotional input games were gained, including emotional connection despite limited accuracy, influence of the environment and the importance of calibration. The players overall enjoyed the novel game experience and their feedback carries useful implications for future games including active emotional input.