Total immersion: Designing for affective symbiosis in a virtual reality game with haptics, biosensors, and emotive agents

Affective symbiosis for human-computer interaction refers to the dynamic relationship between the user and affective virtual agents. In order to facilitate a true, immersive experience, we believe that it is necessary to adapt the presentation of an affective agent to the user’s affective state. Investigating the experience, behavior, and physiological correlates of affective events, such as winning and losing during a competitive game, therefore might be used to adapt the agent’s emotional states and system events. An experimental virtual reality game environment was designed as a stepping stone toward a system to demonstrate affective symbiosis. Users were invited to play a game of air hockey with affective agents in virtual reality. We collected the electrocardiography, electrodermal activity, and postural data, as well as self-reports, to investigate how emotional events affected physiology, behavior, and experience. The users were found to be engaged in the competition strongly while only paying limited attention to their adversaries’ emotional expressions. We discuss how game events are much stronger causes for affective responses, with the physiological effects of winning and losing becoming more enhanced as the game progresses. We discuss how an affective, symbiotic system could implement both game events and dynamic, affective agents to create a system for total immersion.