24 Apr 08: FUGA reseachers measure gaming experience

The FUGA research project "The Fun of Gaming" creates methods and sophisticated techniques to improve gaming research and the overall gaming experience. The goal is to examine how the gaming experience - player's emotions and cognitions - can be accurately assessed.

The project also develops a prototype of an emotionally adaptive game. The game changes in real time based on the player's emotional state. For example, the game can get more difficult if the player becomes nervous.

The FUGA mini-symposium will be held at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) in Espoo on 24 April, 2008 from 13:00 to 17:00. At the symposium, the FUGA researchers from different European countries will present their latest findings.

They will show new innovative techniques for researching the gaming experience. They will also provide new tools for designing games for different purposes. The game industry will also present at the symposium.

FUGA is a large international, interdisciplinary research project. The European Commission is funding the project as part of the 6th Framework Program.

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• Thomas Howalt, IO Interactive: Beatles? Is that an insect?

• Niklas Ravaja, CKIR: Fun of dying

  • Different in-game events in a first-person shooter (FPS) game may elicit unexpected emotional responses as indexed by psychophysiological measurements.

• Klaus Mathiak, UKA: No fun of dying

  • Brain imaging was applied to measure neural correlates of (dis-)enjoyment dimensions and their subjective experience during game play.

• Christoph Klimmt, HMTH: Games as Ideal-Self-Simulators: Identity Play and the Fun of Gaming

  • The speaker examines the notion of "becoming someone else" or "identification" with a game character during digital game play and present related experimental findings from studies with "Call of Duty 2" (c) and "Need for Speed: Carbon" (c).

• Kai Kuikkaniemi, TKK-HIIT: Bio-feedback gaming

  • Biofeedback gaming technology connects body and emotions to the games. How does it work and what does it mean?

• Lennart Nacke, HGO: Game Design and Player Emotions

  • Using emotional responses shown by psychophysiological measurements, we can validate game design elements for specific player emotions.

• Wijnand Ijsselstein, TUE: Development and validation of the Game Experience Questionnaire

• Sten Selander, Netport: Invest in Fun

  • Investment structure into games.