Predicting Positive Affect in Video Gaming with Psychophysiological Arousal, Subjective Arousal and Subjective Flow

Abstract

Our study examined how arousal and flow predicted levels of positive affect in 58 videogame players using the desktop arcade game Winterbells. While arousal and flow are frequently examined in video game research, this study examined their combined effects in accounting for positive affect variance.We used an ABBA experimental design, where “A” and “B” denoted the control and game epochs respectively, to assess gamers’ psychophysiological reactions during video gameplay while participants’ heart rate (HR) and skin conductance levels (SCL) were recorded. SCLs were significantly higher in the game epochs compared to the control epochs. Surprisingly, HR failed to mirror these effects.Using a hierarchical multiple regression framework, we showed that while both subjective and objective arousal (HR) during game epochs predicted positive affect, flow significantly added to the ability to predict positive affect. Based on this research, measurement of HR, SCL and flow can aid in the predictions of positive affect for future videogame development.

Keywords: videogames, positive affect, subjective arousal, heart rate (HR), skin conductance level (SCL), flow