Arindam Dey, Thammathip Piumsomboon, Youngho Lee, Mark Billinghurst

Empathic Computing LaboratoryUniversity of South Australia

Effects of Sharing Physiological States of Players in a Collaborative Virtual Reality

Gameplay

How to make VR collaborations empatheticby measuring and sharing physiological cues?

Motivation

Background

Felnhofer et al. 2015 Moser et al. 2013

Meehan et al. 2002

Jang et al. 2002

Tan et al. 2014

Background

• VR can trigger emotional response

• Heart-rate can be an indicator of emotional response

• Sharing physiological feedback increases positive affect

• Mostly single user experiences

• First to share real-time physiological feedback in a collaborative VR gaming environment

• Players inhibited same body different viewpoint

• Evaluation

Contribution & Novelty

No Yes

Joyous

Scary

Physiological CueG

amin

g Ex

peri

ence

between-subjectsw

ithin

-sub

jects

Experimental Design

Player and observer had:• Dependant location• Independent head orientation (less dizziness and higher presence)

Experimental Setup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiHxps-Ofw

Data Collected• Subjective

• Positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS)• Subjective Questionnaire (four point Likert-scale)

• Objective • Raw heart-rate• Relative head orientation

Participants

• 26 (13 in each group)

• 7 female

• Age: m=30.5, sd=5.2

Experimental Details

When heart rate feedback is shown:

H1. Observers will feel more connected to the active player

H2. Generate more positive affect

H3. More interaction between collaborators

Scary Zombie game:

H4. Will trigger more subjective understanding of emotions

Hypotheses

Raw heart-rate

• No significant difference (p=.4)

• Slightly higher heart-rate in scary zombie game

Results

Positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS)

• Significant effect of gaming experience (p=.01)

• Scary zombie game had more positive and negative affects

• No significant (p=.15) effect of heart-rate visualization

GameZombieButterfly

Score

4 0

3 0

2 0

1 0

0ZombieButterfly

Affect

NegativePositive

NoHRHR

Condit ion

Page 1

Results

Mean (+- 1 SE)

Subjective questionnaire

Q1. How much did you understood the emotional state of the player? (scary>>joyous, p<.001)

Q2. How much attentive were you to the gameplay? (scary>>joyous, p<.001)

Q3. How much did you enjoy the collaboration?

GameZombieButterfly

Rea

lized

Em

otio

nal S

tate

of t

he P

laye

r

3

2

1

NoHRHR

Condit ion

Page 1

GameZombieButterfly

Atte

ntiv

enes

s to

the

Gam

epla

y

3

2

1

0

NoHRHR

Condit ion

Page 1

GameZombieButterfly

Exp

erie

nce

of C

olla

bora

tion

4

3

2

1

0

NoHRHR

Condit ion

Page 1

Q1 Q2 Q3

Results

Relative head orientation

• Significant effect of gaming experiences• Joyous game had more aligned head orientation

than scary game

Results

Limitations

• Low number of participants in each group

• Heart-rate recordings devices less accurate than medical grade devices

• Only heart-rate was recorded

• Only two of the experiences explored

• Only one hypothesis accepted: game had a significant effect on subjective understanding of emotions

• Heart-rate feedback showed promises to be effective

Discussion

• Gaze direction feedback for both collaborators

• Voice communication

• Salient visualisation of emotional cues

• Interaction for observer

• Exploring other physiological cues

• Extend the study with more participants

Future Research

• First to share real-time physiological feedback in a collaborative VR gaming environment

• Players inhibited same body different viewpoint

• Heart-rate showed promises to be effective

• Scary game created => higher positive and negative affects=> more subjective understanding and attention

Summary

Thank You!

Arindam Deyarindam.dey@unisa.edu.au

http://empathiccomputing.org

Fully funded PhD positions

@ECL, Australia