Adaptive Gaming & Engagement

Spring 2009 || Team Project || Design & Research || Eindhoven University of Technology

What is the next step in the world of gaming? Video games are becoming more accessible to the general public and competitive electronic sport (e-sport) marking its ground as a legitimate sport. Taking this to a new level, the project revolved on research in Adaptive Gaming & Engagement for gamers, with the objective to find means to train their skills or to motivate by giving feedback on their movement and emotions.

The Adaptive Gaming & Engagement concept investigates the mechanic of adapting in-game content according to a player’s skill or interest to extend the playtime and optimize engagementment through measuring a player’s emotional state. A Pong game simulation was built to experiment adaptive gaming in its fundamental state. This is done by measuring the engagement level of a player based on the level of fun and boredom. By using frequency and the amplitude of the mouse movement together with the body posture, the player’s engagement level can be determined. The input enables the Pong game to adapt its content and enables the in-game changes to fluctuate based on a neutral value gathered from that specific user to extend the playing time of a sequence.

Adaptive Pong Simulation