How Wii and Kinect Hack Your Emotions
“You can make people feel all kinds of ways with movements, which could be the science of what makes the Wii so engaging,” Isbister said. “A lot of these games have stumbled upon doing this already without realizing the social science underlying it.”
Numerous studies have shown that movements or postures generate cues the mind can use to figure out how it feels, a phenomenon dubbed the physical-feedback effect. Wii games might also create emotions between people through “emotional contagion,” where the brain can make us feel what we see, hear, read or think others experience.
‘Designing interaction as if we did not have any body or emotion is detrimental to what it means to be human.’
The scientists are categorizing motions seen in Wii games using a system developed by famous early 20th-century dance researcher Rudolf Laban, who codified movements based on factors such as whether they were fast or slow, light or heavy.
In addition to experimenting with games that are bestsellers or have the best reviews, as well as the ones recommended by developers, they are also using minigames they devised themselves to test players with specific movements. One such game, which they call Wriggle, examines head wobbling and body tilting. The researchers take video of people while they play, capture their movement data and interview them before and after playing to see if and how their moods change.