Appropriateness of Adaptation

There are lots and lots of subtopics to think about here!

For me, one of the biggest questions is the following: Is this dependent on game genre, game pace, or style of game play?

I hope that over the coming posts you’ll understand why I pose this question.

The world of computer games is both big and diverse, which suggests that adapting to user emotions may not be appropriate for all games, or indeed in all situations.

Let’s consider single player vs. multiplayer. In a single player situation the environment around the player can adapt to that one user. However, in a multiplayer game, where the players are on opposite teams the environment would have to adapt to two contradicting states. Is this feasible, and if so, how would you do it?

 In single player mode the AI of potential monsters can be adapted to the player's emotions, whereas in a multiplayer versus style game, the game cannot adapt one of the player's capabilities. Even attempting to steer the progress of the game through changing luck levels for the players is not advised. This could benefit one player, but the other would end up feeling cheated. This is an ethical issue, one of many. I will attempt to discuss ethics in later posts.

Moving on from single vs. multiplayer there is the question of style of game. I say style of game, because at the moment I'm not sure whether it is genre dependent or dependent on pace or whether the game play is about solving a puzzle, or killing some monster/other player's avatar say. Casual games, such as the game I've made, I think can greatly benefit from emotion detection and adaptation provided it's fast pace.

Consider a casual game such as Frozzd http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/20523. In this game you "jump from planet to planet as you guide the Mubbly creatures, and use them as an army to defeat the Frozzd." This is an amazing casual game by the way! Definitely worth a try!
The game is not extremely fast pace; you can take your time running and jumping between planets. Having said that, if you encounter the Frozzd you need to be ready, and then things start happening fairly quickly. I think adding emotional adaptations to this game would benefit it as it would differ each time you played it, and in addition it would give you a sense of achievement on each level. More experienced players could then be made to feel challenged from the get go, and noobs could be allowed to finish the game (not necessarily without dying a few times, we’re not talking make it dead easy here..)

On the other hand, consider Mah Jong. I suppose this is also a casual game, but it is a totally different style. Mah Jong is more like a slow card game, matching pairs to make them disappear.



Playing Mah Jong you may well experience different emotions, however because the game play is slow, and it's a game based on thought and careful consideration, the physiological changes are likely to be so slow and small that they could just as well be because of something totally unrelated to the game (e.g. someone comes in to the room and tells you of some good news). This suggests a limitation of the technology and will be discussed in a later post. From a design point of view though, it's hard to see how a game like Mah Jong may benefit from adaptations, or indeed what you may adapt. The blocks are all laid out at the start of the game. As two and two vanish it depends on your own choices whether you will make it or not. In fact, if the game was adaptive and changed certain blocks (it would have to be hidden blocks, or the player would see it changing, which could lead to frustration, or at least boredom if they could see the 'cheating' taking place), the system could potentially change the outcome of the game in a negative fashion by messing up a winning strategy.

This leads me to think it’s not related to the genre of the game so much as pace and/or style of game play. What do you think?

When I think about the single player vs. the multi-player experience, I often liken human players, especially those who aren't present, as often being a surrogate AI.  Especially in games where there is minimal interaction between players, this is strongly the case.  As player interaction allowance increases, this decreases the "AI" usage of a player, and increases potential distractions.  As most players are capable of de-facto Turing tests as part of our normal routine, we're eventually able to tell the difference between a computer contributor and a genuine one, especially as the level of interactivity and the diversity of potential modes of interactivity increase.
 
So it's more HOW a multi-player game operates that determines the differences, rather than whether or not there is a multi-player mode or not.  You then have the single player version of this, with the player being the sole influence on the environment (time seems to stop for the player, allowing her or him to do pretty much what they want at their own pace), or if there are other actors in the environment which affect things independent of player wishes, or if these same actors are partly or wholly reactive to player behavior, but still seem to have a will of their own, and thus complexify the relationship of player to game.
 
If you limit interaction in a multi-player environment, and you make clear the goals, you decrease this disruption of the feedback element for the game, while if you increase the interaction in a single player environment, you may wind up creating unforseen physical states in the player as a result of possible incongruous or human-like behavior on the part of the AI.
 
Addressing your end question directly, I wonder if the potential for different games and how different people relate to them is too broad to be able to nail down a specific idea on why this is so.  
 
One "frustration" idea came to mind; perhaps you've heard of it.  There's a Tetris clone which actually picks tetrads that are the WORST possible tetrad for a given situation, based upon an algorithm.  When you need a long piece to make a Tetris, it doesn't come up, possible EVER. The goal of the game changes into trying to fool the algorithm into giving you at least adequate tetrads, instead of expecting the eventual correct one to come down.  The converse of this would be to have a Tetris that reacted to a player's poor performance by providing helpful block formations.  This could still be sabotaged, though, by a player stacking everything up in the middle and not even bothering to play correctly.
 
The game has no direct understanding of what the player is doing, but the player's behavior is still manifested on screen in a way that he machine reacts to it.
 
Pace, then, is absolutely important in understanding, especially in rudimentary stages, what a player is actually reacting to, as a game that moves too quickly may cause multiple states which run over each other and collide, creating confusing readings.  A slower-paced game will be easier to understand WHAT the player is reacting to.  An accurate understanding of player state may also hinge on repetition, where the game tests to see if what they're reacting to is something onscreen, or if it's just a coincidental event outside of the sensors' purview (such as the good news).   Should a faster-paced game be used, it may benefit from simplicity, where the stimuli are limited to a few separate incidents which the player reacts to, and thus can be repeated and won't confuse the readings.
 
Then again, a player's reaction to the first of a type of incident is not necessarily going to be the same as the second.  The player could be delighted at the overwhelming force that crushes their tiny force, because the odds are so ridiculous, but repeated exposure to the same sorts of odds may lead to frustration.  It helps to repeat incidents to continually gather calibration data over time, maybe, to sort of check the hypothesis of the starting calibration, if that makes sense.  The pacing of these repeated incidents may have to be spaced out over several play sessions, rather than hammering it into the player again and again, to avoid another reaction, that of frustration and disgust, and possibly irritation that the game simplistically hammers in the same event over and over.
 
It should also be noted, and perhaps you'll get into this in the ethical part, that a game that reacts to a player may be seen as invasive.  A player suddenly doesn't have the freedom, within the context of the game, of having whatever emotion she or he wants to have.  The player must be mindful of their emotional state, as readable through physical sensors, lest they affect the game in an undesirable way.  For a home version, then, pause would be absolutely necessary, as I would hate to be punished by the game for not having the expected emotional state.  I realize that's outside the scope of your study, but it's something to consider.

Oh god it's an essay thread.

Yeah, it's 2:30 in the morning....I'll tackle this.
 
From a design standpoint everything can be broken down to a simple "push, pull" concept. Give the player moments of progress, versus moments challenge. This can be of course associated from either a narrative or game design point of view, but for the focus of you argument, design point of view. This very basic theory covers everything to difficulty and even general pace to your game.
 
ahoodedfigure brings up the concept that adaptation to difficulty can run into legitimate bouts of frustration, which is understandable. Does having a game of tetris you can't win translate into something fun, of course not, there is no visible threshold of a pull the impression of giving the player the ability to progress. As long as you have that threshold, the safer. 
So when ever that awesome space algorithm from the future that calculates and adapt how your multiplayer session is going, independent from pre-desired paths from a designer everything will be gravy. 
 
Understanding emotions psychologically from a player perspective, is a bit more difficult and is more up to the player in question than to the designer. What we can do is try our hardest to guess, or impose what we think the player might be feeling. Even with a cool funky future space algorithm, everything will still be greatly subjective to the individual user.
 
Regardless, you guys covered almost everything that I could think of.