Engagement and Discrete Emotions in Game Scenario: Is There a Relation Among Them?

Abstract

Analysis of user engagement is a factor of great importance for different computational applications, especially games. The knowledge of this information allows evaluating the software and making possible enhancing the software. However, analyzing user engagement is still a challenge. The most common approach in the literature has been the application of questionnaires at the end of the interaction process. Although some studies investigate the use of emotions to measure user involvement, the analysis of facial expressions has been little explored in this context. This technique has the main advantage of using a camera, dispensing other invasive sensors. This paper presents an investigation to evaluate whether discrete emotions can be related to engagement in game scenarios. Two studies were conducted with 48 volunteers playing games to discover if there is relation between emotions recognized by facial expressions and engagement measured in two different ways (by software and by user’s self-assessment). Our analysis comprises about 38 h of games and more than one million records of emotional states. The results indicate that there is no universal relation between discrete emotions and engagement, suggesting that the game context can influence users’ engagement.