Affective game engines

Abstract

The tremendous advances in gaming technologies over the past decade have focused primarily on the physical realism of the game environment and game characters, and the complexity and performance of game simulations and networking. However, current games are still lacking in the affective realism of the game characters, and the social complexity and realism of their interactions. To achieve the next leap in the level of engagement and effectiveness, particularly in the arena of serious games, gaming research needs to focus on enhancing the social and affective complexity and realism of the game characters, their interaction, and the game narrative as a whole. To achieve these goals, games and game development tools will need to provide functionality to support the recognition of user and game character emotions, real-time adaptation and appropriate responses to these emotions, and more realistic expression of emotions in game characters and user avatars. To support these functionalities, the games will need to construct affective models of the players, and include computational models of emotion within the game characters. In this paper, we discuss these functionalities, and suggest a set of requirements for an affective game engine, capable of supporting the development of more affectively realistic, engaging, and effective games. The discussion is organized around the functional requirements and the computational tasks necessary to support them. We emphasize the importance of selecting appropriate semantic primitives, and discuss how existing methods and techniques in affective computing and computational affective modeling contribute to the development of affective game engines and game development tools.