Can You Keep Calm?: Adaptive Gameplay using Heart Rate as a Controller

TL;DR

This paper presents a heart rate-controlled game designed to help players manage stress, demonstrating that adaptive gameplay based on biometric feedback can improve emotional states and reduce physiological stress responses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel HR-based control system for serious games aimed at mental health, showing its effectiveness in stress reduction and emotional regulation.

Findings

HR-controlled gameplay reduced negative emotions

Increased positive emotions during gameplay

Players showed less cardiac reactivity

Abstract

Serious games for health are designed with specific health objectives and are increasingly being used in mental health interventions. Leveraging sensor equipped handheld devices such as smartphones and smartwatches, these games can provide accessible and engaging therapeutic environments. This study introduces a heart rate (HR) controlled game to aid players manage stress by adjusting gameplay according to their biometric feedback. We aimed to determine how HR-based controls influence their experience and if it can be used to reduce stress. Findings from a controlled experiment revealed that HR controlled gameplay reduced negative and increased positive emotions. Also, players exhibited relatively less cardiac reactivity in HR adaptive target based gameplay. This highlights the promise of biometric feedback based gamified digital environments in supporting accessible mental health support.