A Framework for Psychophysiological Data Acquisition in Digital Games

Conducting psychophysiological experiments that measure how players experience digital games not only allows investigating the effects digital games have on players, it also gives game developers a tool to validate game design. In order to develop digital games rapidly that can be used as stimuli in psychophysiological experiments, a coherent and flexible development environment is required. A development environment that allows researchers to design their experiments, build the stimulus game and easily integrate all required data acquisition functionality into it. Throughout this thesis, such an environment for rapid development of stimulus games that employ logging of psychophysiological data will be designed and implemented. Methods for gathering player related data in digital games and related fields of application will be compared, in order to establish a theoretical foundation for the conception of a logging framework. Based on this, game engines, development suites and frameworks will be reviewed, leading to the selection of the XNA framework and the Torque X Engine as suitable technologies for the implementation of this logging framework. The logging framework will be implemented as a set of Torque X components and an example game will be developed in order to demonstrate the application of the framework and the different logging components. Finally, the choice of C#, XNA and the Torque X Engine for development, the impact of the logging framework in accelerating the development of stimulus games, as well as prospects for the future development of the logging framework will be discussed. Date: January 10, 2008 Blekinge Institute of Technology School of Technoculture, Humanities and Planning Karlshamn, Sweden Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg Faculty of Computer Science Magdeburg, Germany