Manipulating Player Performance via Music Tempo in Tetris
Aline Hufschmitt, Stéphane Cardon, Éric Jacopin · 2020
In this paper we study the possibility of influencing player performance in Tetris by varying the tempo of the music. To keep a player in the flow, it is useful to be able to vary the difficulty of a game. It has been shown that music influences human behavior and cognition (memory, reflexes). By synchronizing or desynchronizing the tempo with the fall of the tetriminos and varying the tempo in steps or more gradually, we found that a synchronous and steadily increasing tempo makes the game difficult for novice players and even more so for those with a neutral evaluation of the music. We also discovered that the tempo setting in one session can positively or negatively prepare the performance in the next session for all the players. These results pave the way for the creation of an AI capable of varying the difficulty of a game through music.