Development of Serious Game for Stress Measurement

Abstract

Stress can provoke various symptoms in human. It can affect our thoughts, emotion, and behavior. In general, it is necessary but dangerous if we do not control the level. This study tried to develop a game to measure stress level of game-player and verify whether the score measured by the game correlates with stress level measured by self-reported surveys. A simple prototype of game to measure player’s stress level was developed based on Odd-one out experimental paradigm that allow to measure attentional engagement and disengagement in stress people. 50 students and 50 office-workers played the game to measure stress level and the data was analyzed with correlation analysis between stress score measured by the game and that measured by surveys (type-D and perceived stress scale). The results showed that there is significant correlation between two stress scores measured by computer game and the perceived stress scale but no correlation between the stress score measured by computer game and that measured by type-D. This indicate that the game developed based on attentional movement can measure in general stress level related to current concerns but not long-term temperature related to stress. Some limits and precautions of stress measurement with computer game such as reaction time or statistical assumption were discussed.