Player’s Stress Reduction in Competitive Online Game by Presenting Calm Scent

Playing competitive online games is usually fun but sometimes player feels unpleasant and is stressed regardless of games content. When a player is stressed, her/his motivation for games decrease. The purpose of this study is to make competitive online games more enjoyable by reducing player's stress. We propose a system that detects player's stress in a competitive online game by her/his RRI and automatically presents calm scent of lavender oil with an aroma diffuser and a fan when she/he is stressed. In the proposed system, each player wears an armband-type pulse sensor and plays a game with a controller while looking at the display. The system get the player's heart rate from armband-type pulse sensor in real time. Next, the system calculates the RRI from heart rate and determines that the player is stressed when her/his RRI is greater than the threshold. To evaluate the proposed system, we are going to experiment to check the functionality of the proposed system, investigate how long to play the game and under what conditions to detect participants' stress in the game and evaluate whether the proposed system can reduce participants stress in a real environment.