Towards Understanding Player Experience in Virtual Reality Games through Physiological Computing

Measuring the Virtual Reality (VR) player experience is essential for gaining valuable insights into player interaction and engagement patterns within the growing and interconnected ubiquitous computing. However, understanding and measuring these factors in VR games presents a challenge, as existing approaches to understanding player experience through objective and subjective methods have limitations in capturing its full extent. This study, therefore, delves into player experience within VR games through physiological computing. By integrating advanced wearable sensors, our research explores the potential of employing multimodal physiological measures to comprehend player experience in VR games. Applying Machine Learning (ML) models, we analyse physiological data to identify player experience patterns associated with motivational engagement, competence, tension, challenge, and affective states. This study enriches immersive technology and gaming, offering a novel approach to unravelling the intricate interplay between physiological responses and player experiences in VR, thereby enhancing wearable sensor computational capabilities.