Space maze : experience-driven game camera control
Yana Knight, Héctor P. Martínez, Georgios N. Yannakakis · OAR@UM (University of Malta) · 2013
Virtual camera control is a key factor in game experience be-cause the camera dictates how players see the game world. As the complexity and unpredictability of games increases, automatic camera control becomes a fundamental require-ment. In this paper, we present a game technology demon-strator that showcases automatic camera control capable of creating dissimilar experiences within a 3D prey/predator game. An adaptation algorithm informed by predictors of subjective experiences adjusts the behavior of the camera to influence the experience of the player throughout the game. 1. ADAPTIVE CAMERA CONTROL Camera control is an important component of player expe-rience [4]: the camera viewpoint defines the amount of in-formation shown to the player and thus has a direct impact on the perceived challenge [5] as well as other aspects of the experience, such as player frustration [6]. While most research on automatic camera control tech-niques has centered around the efficient placement of the camera, determination of the viewpoint and the ease of use (e.g. [3]), a number of studies have investigated the connec-tions between camera control and player experience. Burelli and Yannakakis [2] studied automatic camera control in re-lation to playing and gaze behavior, building computational models of camera view preferences based on the players’ behavior. Yannakakis et al. [6] investigated a larger vari-ety of experiences focusing on the relation between camera and several affective states, such as frustration and excite-ment. Computational models mapping the player’s physi-ological state and the game’s camera profile to subjective self-reports of experience were built facilitating an objec-tive estimator of the player’s affective state in relation to camera behavior. Similar models — substituting physiolog-ical information with gameplay data — were used to imple-ment a demonstrator of affective camera control1 in which