Inducing and measuring emotion through a multiplayer first-person shooter computer game

Abstract

To develop an annotated database of spontaneous, multimodal, emotional expressions, recordings were made of facial and vocal expressions of emotions while participants were playing a multiplayer first-person shooter (fps) computer game. During a replay of the session, participants scored their own emotions by assigning values to them on an arousal and a valence scale, and by selecting emotion category labels (e.g. ‘happiness’ and ‘frustration’). The fps-game proved to be a successful evoker of a diversity of emotions. The annotation results revealed interesting insights in current models of emotion. While the twodimensional arousal-valence space is usually described as circular, we found a V-shape pattern of reported arousal and valence values instead. Furthermore, correlations were found between emotion characteristics and user-specific preferences about games. The recorded data will be used in future research concerning automatic and human recognition of emotions.