Game or Watch: The Effect of Interactivity on Arousal and Engagement in Video Game Media

A recent paper in the IEEE Transactions on Games featured research on player engagement that may have some good techniques for measuring player engagement in my own research.

Change in pupil size from baseline during the online shark encounter for the interactive and spectator conditions. (Juvrud, Ansgariusson, Selleby, and Johansson 2022)

J. Juvrud, G. Ansgariusson, P. Selleby and M. Johansson, "Game or Watch: The Effect of Interactivity on Arousal and Engagement in Video Game Media," in IEEE Transactions on Games, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 308-317, June 2022, doi: 10.1109/TG.2021.3073084.

The researchers measured the levels of arousal of game players ("on-line" viewers) and game spectators ("off-line" viewers) as they either played games directly or watched recordings of gameplay (like over Twitch or a "Let's Play" video). The researchers used equipment to measure the participants' heart rate, eye movement, and pupil dilation. Additionally, the participants were asked questions so they could report on their own feelings of engagement. The researchers mentioned that there are other biofeedback measures for arousal, such as galvanic skin response, that they did not use.

Both sets of participants showed elevated levels of engagement and arousal when interfaced with the digital gameplay. Unsurprisingly, the active game players were more engaged than the other group. One novel contribution the experiment shows is that both groups showed fairly equal levels of engagement during non-interactive cutscenes (which tell me that you don't feel that you are "playing" during a game's cutscenes... a logical conclusion but it is good to see the data for this).

This research shows that the methods used are effective tools for measuring a player's sense of engagement with a game. Pairing this with research on measuring presence in games could lead to an overall holistic sense of engagement and embodiment with a digital game.