Abstract:
Affective gaming has received much attention lately, as the gaming community
recognizes the importance of emotion in the development of engaging and effective
games. Affect plays a key role in user experience, both in entertainment and in
'serious' games. Current focus in affective gaming is primarily on the sensing
and recognition of the players' emotions, and on tailoring the game responses to
these emotions. A significant effort is also being devoted to generating 'affective
behaviors' in the game characters, and in player avatars, to enhance their realism and
believability. Less emphasis is placed on modeling emotions, both their generation and
their effects, in the game characters, and in user models representing the players.

In this talk I will discuss how the emerging discipline of affective computing
contributes to each of these three elements of affective game design, with
emphasis on the importance of affective modeling to support the development of
more realistic and believable non-playing characters. The talk will provide
information about existing data and theories from the affective sciences, and
methods and techniques from affective computing, relevant for affect-focused
game design and the development of affective games.