"Now you need to laugh!"

Abstract

Up to now interaction in desktop games is mostly limited to keyboard and mouse input. This paper describes a desktop game, which uses emotional facial expressions as an additional input channel for creating a virtual flower in a digital universe. The game is being developed for children between 8 and 14 years old and was evaluated in a three-day field study with almost 300 children in the context of a shopping mall. The results show that more than two-thirds of the participants had fun playing the game. This was also confirmed by the high willingness to replay the game. Moreover, the study showed that the game provides the right amount of challenge to the players; it is approximately equally difficult for younger and older children.