StrEx: Towards a Modulator of Stressful Experience in Virtual Reality Games.

In this work, we explored the advantages of dynamic game balancing using players’ affective state introducing StrEx, a plugin designed to modulate the stress level induced by a video game in an unobtrusive way. The proposed plugin is also intended to validate results obtained by [1]. Our system collects motion behavioral data and updates a model of the player’s stress level to guide the transitions of a Finite State Machine which regulates the stress level induced by the game through the generation of game content. We designed and developed a virtual reality horror-survival game, with the aim of testing the system functioning. Our approach shows promising potential to create more immersive and engaging video games exploiting affective-based adaptation.