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Towards Tangibility in Gameplay: Building a Tangible Affective Interface for a Computer Game


Abstract In this paper we describe a way of controlling the emotional states of a synthetic character in a game (FantasyA) through a tangible interface named SenToy. SenToy is a doll with sensors in the arms, legs and body, allowing the user to influence the emotions of her character in the game. The user performs gestures and movements with SenToy, which are picked up by the sensors and interpreted according to a scheme found through an initial Wizard of Oz study. Different gestures are used to express each of the following emotions: anger, fear, happiness, surprise, sadness and gloating. Depending upon the expressed emotion, the synthetic character in FantasyA will, in turn, perform different actions. The evaluation of SenToy acting as the interface to the computer game FantasyA has shown that users were able to express most of the desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall, players, especially children, really liked the doll as an interface.
Year 2003
Keywords affective computing, tangible interfaces, synthetic characters
Authors Ana Paiva, Rui Prada, Ricardo Chaves, Marco Vala, Adrian Bullock, Gerd Andersson, Kristina Höök
Booktitle ICMI'2003 - 5th international conference on Multimodal interfaces
Pages 60 - 67
Publisher ACM
Address Vancouver, Canada
Month November
Pdf File \"pdf
BibTex bib icon or see it here down icon

@inproceedings { paiva03, abstract = {In this paper we describe a way of controlling the emotional states of a synthetic character in a game (FantasyA) through a tangible interface named SenToy. SenToy is a doll with sensors in the arms, legs and body, allowing the user to influence the emotions of her character in the game. The user performs gestures and movements with SenToy, which are picked up by the sensors and interpreted according to a scheme found through an initial Wizard of Oz study. Different gestures are used to express each of the following emotions: anger, fear, happiness, surprise, sadness and gloating. Depending upon the expressed emotion, the synthetic character in FantasyA will, in turn, perform different actions. The evaluation of SenToy acting as the interface to the computer game FantasyA has shown that users were able to express most of the desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall, players, especially children, really liked the doll as an interface.}, address = {Vancouver, Canada}, booktitle = {ICMI'2003 - 5th international conference on Multimodal interfaces}, keywords = {affective computing, tangible interfaces, synthetic characters}, month = {November}, pages = {60 - 67}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {Towards Tangibility in Gameplay: Building a Tangible Affective Interface for a Computer Game}, year = {2003}, author = {Ana Paiva and Rui Prada and Ricardo Chaves and Marco Vala and Adrian Bullock and Gerd Andersson and Kristina Höök} }

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