Augmenting the Sense of Social Presence in Online Video Games Through the Sharing of Biosignals

This study outlines the development of a platform that enables real-time bio-information sharing between gaming partners regardless of the game of choice. The authors hypothesize that since biosignals contain information about a person’s physiological and psychological state, sharing bio-information with easy-to-understand visual representations can augment the sense of social presence between online gaming partners. The proposed method uses the heart rate as a biosignal detected using a wrist-worn heart rate monitor, uploads these signals to a secure online real-time database, and creates visual representations of the gaming partner’s heart rate on each gamer’s screen. Comparative studies were conducted with 20 gamers. The results showed that sharing bio-information could elicit a sense of social presence similar to sharing real-time face videos in online settings. Furthermore, a synergetic effect was observed when bio-information was combined with face video sharing, leading to an even greater perceived social presence. Similar trends were not observed in co-presence in the participants of this study. However, grouping the participants’ scores by emotional arousal level showed a similar trend in the high-arousal group, suggesting that the impact of bio-information sharing may be modulated by the intensity of the gaming experience. The obtained results underscore the potential of bio-information sharing to augment social presence in online gaming contexts.