Observational coding of players' behavior as a continuous measure of digital game experiences

Studies of non verbal communication have already demonstrated the significance of bodily movements, such as facial expressions, gestures, head and body postures, as indicators of specific emotional experiences. According to Reeves and Nass (1996), people tend to respond socially and naturally to computers as well. We apply these streams of research in the context of digital gaming. Concretely, we aim to unravel behavioral indicators of game experience by means of observational coding of behavior exhibited during game play. In one experiment we manipulated the difficulty level of a first person shooter game and coded behavioral indicators of boredom, arousal, valence and frustration. In a second experiment we let people play a racing game in different social settings (e.g., alone, competitive) and observed their behavior in quest of indicators of interpersonal involvement, immediacy, and rapport. In both experiments we validate our observational findings against self-report and psychophysiological measures.