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Towards Real-Time Adaptation of a Non-Player Character Companion Using Physiological Signals of the Player
Key insights
6 takeaways- 01Real-time adaptation of NPC companions using physiological signals offers a more nuanced approach to game difficulty than traditional stress-based adjustments, focusing on matching support to a player's current cognitive capacity.
- 02The study utilizes a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) methodology within a Minecraft environment to evaluate how physiological data can inform NPC behavior, specifically regarding the timing and nature of hints.
- 03Effective companion adaptation requires moving beyond simple outcome metrics to consider how narrative integration and sensitivity to the player's working memory constraints impact the overall experience.
- 04Cognitive load is heavily influenced by prior knowledge and expertise, necessitating adaptive systems that account for 'expertise reversal' patterns rather than relying on static difficulty settings.
- 05The research employs open-source hardware and software to decompose physiological signals into tonic and phasic components, using a 300-sample rolling average to monitor player states in real-time.
- 06Current limitations in physiological-based game adaptation include inconsistent data quality across studies and a lack of multimodal signal integration, which this research aims to address through validated Minecraft-based tasks.
Summary
Physiological signals offer a means of personalising games beyond performance-based adaptation, yet they are rarely used to drive non-player character (NPC) companion behaviour in commercial-like environments. We present the results of a preliminary Wizard-of-Oz study in which an NPC companion in Minecraft adapts its behaviour in real time based on three physiological proxies of cognitive load. Sixteen participants completed two matched sets of redstone construction tasks with either an adaptive
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