J. Matias Kivikangas

Spatial Presence and Emotions during Video Game Playing: Does It Matter with Whom You Play?

The authors examined whether the nature of the opponent (computer, friend, or stranger) influences spatial presence, emotional responses, and threat and challenge appraisals when playing video games. In a within-subjects design, participants played two different video games against a computer, a friend, and a stranger. In addition to self-report ratings, cardiac interbeat intervals (IBIs) and facial electromyography (EMG) were measured to index physiological arousal and emotional valence. When compared to playing against a computer, playing against another human elicited higher spatial presence, engagement, anticipated threat, post-game challenge appraisals, and physiological arousal, as well as more positively valenced emotional responses. In addition, playing against a friend elicited greater spatial presence, engagement, and self-reported and physiological arousal, as well as more positively valenced facial EMG responses, compared to playing against a stranger. The nature of the opponent influences spatial presence when playing video games, possibly through the mediating influence on arousal and attentional processes.

Physiological compliance for social gaming analysis: Cooperative versus competitive play

We report the results of an empirical study demonstrating the value of using physiological compliance as a measure of social presence during digital game playing. The physiological activity (facial EMG, electrodermal activity, cardiac activity and respiration) of 21 dyads were acquired synchronously while they were playing a digital game either cooperatively or competitively and either at home or in the laboratory. Physiological compliance was defined as the correlation between the physiological signals of the dyad members. The results of this study confirm that physiological compliance is higher in a conflicting situation than when playing cooperatively. Importantly, the results also demonstrate that physiological compliance is related to self-reported social presence. This suggests that physiological compliance is not limited to negative situations but rather increases due to rich interactions. Only minor differences in physiological compliance were observed between home play and laboratory play, suggesting the ecological validity of laboratory measures. Finally, we propose that compliance measures can be considered as objective indices of social presence in digital gaming.

Social Interaction in Games: Measuring Physiological Linkage and Social Presence

Psychophysiological methodology has been successfully applied to investigate media responses, including the experience of playing digital games. The approach has many benefits for a player experience assessment—it can provide detailed, unbiased, and time-accurate data without interrupting the gameplay. However, gaming can be a highly social activity. This article extends the methodological focus from single player to include multiple simultaneous players. A physiological metric for investigating social experience within a shared gaming context is introduced: Physiological linkage is measured by gathering simultaneous psychophysiological measurements from several players. The authors review how physiological linkage may be associated with social presence among participants in various gaming situations or social contexts. These metrics provide such information about the interaction among participants that is not currently available by any other method. The authors discuss various measures used to calculate linkage, the related social processes, and how to use physiological linkage in game experience research.Psychophysiological methodology has been successfully applied to investigate media responses, including the experience of playing digital games. The approach has many benefits for a player experien...

Keep your opponents close: social context affects EEG and fEMG linkage in a turn-based computer game

In daily life, we often copy the gestures and expressions of those we communicate with, but recent evidence shows that such mimicry has a physiological counterpart: interaction elicits linkage, which is a concordance between the biological signals of those involved. To find out how the type of social interaction affects linkage, pairs of participants played a turn-based computer game in which the level of competition was systematically varied between cooperation and competition. Linkage in the beta and gamma frequency bands was observed in the EEG, especially when the participants played directly against each other. Emotional expression, measured using facial EMG, reflected this pattern, with the most competitive condition showing enhanced linkage over the facial muscle-regions involved in smiling. These effects were found to be related to self-reported social presence: linkage in positive emotional expression was associated with self-reported shared negative feelings. The observed effects confirmed the hypothesis that the social context affected the degree to which participants had similar reactions to their environment and consequently showed similar patterns of brain activity. We discuss the functional resemblance between linkage, as an indicator of a shared physiology and affect, and the well-known mirror neuron system, and how they relate to social functions like empathy.

Physiological Linkage of Dyadic Gaming Experience

Dyadic gaming experience was studied in a psychophysiological experiment where conflict structure and the presence of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent in a turn-based game were varied in four different conditions. Electrocardiographic and electrodermal activity signals of 41 same-gender dyads were recorded to study joint changes in their physiological signals. A strong physiological linkage was found within dyads in all conditions, but the linkage scores did not differentiate between conflict modes. The only significant difference in linkage between conditions was an increase when the AI agents were not present. In addition, linkage was associated with different self-report scales assessing social presence. These results suggest that social presence and physiological linkage within dyads are higher when dyads can focus on each others’ actions without distractions.

Gender Differences in Emotional Responses to Cooperative and Competitive Game Play

Previous research indicates that males prefer competition over cooperation, and it is sometimes suggested that females show the opposite behavioral preference. In the present article, we investigate the emotions behind the preferences: Do males exhibit more positive emotions during competitive than cooperative activities, and do females show the opposite pattern? We conducted two experiments where we assessed the emotional responses of same-gender dyads (in total 130 participants, 50 female) during intrinsically motivating competitive and cooperative digital game play using facial electromyography (EMG), skin conductance, heart rate measures, and self-reported emotional experiences. We found higher positive emotional responses (as indexed by both physiological measures and self-reports) during competitive than cooperative play for males, but no differences for females. In addition, we found no differences in negative emotions, and heart rate, skin conductance, and self-reports yielded contradictory evidence for arousal. These results support the hypothesis that males not only prefer competitive over cooperative play, but they also exhibit more positive emotional responses during them. In contrast, the results suggest that the emotional experiences of females do not differ between cooperation and competition, which implies that less competitiveness does not mean more cooperativeness. Our results pertain to intrinsically motivated game play, but might be relevant also for other kinds of activities.

Developing a triangulation system for digital game events, observational video, and psychophysiological data to study emotional responses to a virtual character

Game researchers are currently lacking comprehensive data analysis tools that triangulate game events, event-related survey data, and psychophysiological data. Such a tool would allow a comprehensive analysis of player engagement in digital games. The development of this tool was motivated by an experimental psychology study that asked whether emotional reactions to congruent and incongruent emotional stimuli within an intrinsically motivated game task are the same as within the traditional experimental picture-viewing paradigm. To address the needs of our study, we used the Source SDK (Valve Corporation) for creating a system that automates event logging, video management psychophysiological data markup. The system also allowed recording of self-report measures at individual play events without interrupting the game activity.

Why do players buy in-game content? An empirical study on concrete purchase motivations

Selling in-game content has become a popular revenue model for game publishers. While prior research has investigated latent motivations as determinants of in-game content purchases, the prior literature has not focused on more concrete reasons to purchase in-game content that stem from how the games are being designed. We form an inventory of reasons (19) to buy in-game content via triangulating from analyses of top-grossing free-to-play games, from a review of existing research, and from industry expert input. These reasons were operationalized into a survey (N=519). Firstly, we explored how these motivations converged into categories. The results indicated that the purchasing reasons converged into six dimensions: 1) Unobstructed play, 2) Social interaction, 3) Competition, 4) Economical rationale, 5) Indulging the children, and 6) Unlocking content. Secondly, we investigated the relationship between these factors and how much players spend money on in-game content. The results revealed that the purchase motivations of unobstructed play, social interaction, and economical rationale were positively associated with how much money players spend on in-game content. The results imply that the way designers implement artificial limitations and obstacles as well as social interaction affects how much players spend money on in-game content. Inventory/questionnaire of in-game purchase motivations (19) was formed.Motivational dimensions of in-game purchases were investigated via survey (N=519).Nineteen motivations converged onto six main dimensions:Unobstructing, Social, Competition, Economical, Children, and Unlocking content.Unobstructing, Social and Economical motivations predicted in-game purchases.

Experience Assessment and Design in the Analysis of Gameplay

We report research on player modeling using psychophysiology and machine learning, conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers of computer science, psychology, and game design at Aalto University, Helsinki. First, we propose the Play Patterns And eXperience (PPAX) framework to connect three levels of game experience that previously had remained largely unconnected: game design patterns, the interplay of game context with player personality or tendencies, and state-of-the-art measures of experience (both subjective and non-subjective). Second, we describe our methodology for using machine learning to categorize game events to reveal corresponding patterns, culminating in an example experiment. We discuss the relation between automatically detected event clusters and game design patterns, and provide indications on how to incorporate personality profiles of players in the analysis. This novel interdisciplinary collaboration combines basic psychophysiology research with game design patterns and machine learning, and generates new knowledge about the interplay between game experience and design.

Relationship of Moral Foundations to Political Liberalism-Conservatism and Left-Right Orientation in a Finnish Representative Sample

In moral foundations research, two single-item measures of political orientation – with anchors labeled “liberal-conservative” or “left-right” – have been alternatively used. Using a Finnish representative sample, we employed both measures. High conservatism was associated with binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and sanctity), while the associations with the individualizing foundations (harm and fairness) were practically zero. By contrast, the left-right dimension was not associated with the sanctity foundation, but was associated with all other foundations. The measures of political orientation were interchangeable only for fairness; harm was more strongly associated with the left-right dimension, and all binding foundations were more strongly associated with the liberal-conservative dimension. This suggests that at least in some countries, the liberal-conservative and left-right measures are not interchangeable.