You know who conducts tests with subjects hooked up to biofeedback gear, under camera surveillance? If you guessed GLaDOS, you’re right. If you guessed Valve Corp., you’re also right. Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around?
“For us, playtesting is the most important part of the game development process,” Valve’s playtesting lead and in-house experimental psychologist (no, seriously) Mike Ambinder tells Gamespot.
“It’s not something we save for the end of the development, or use as a quality assessment or balancing tool. It is the dominant factor that shapes our decisions about what to release and when to release it.”
The company’s playtesting labs are fitted with cameras that track players’ eye movements, heart-rate monitors, even skin conductivity testing equipment. It’s probably safe to assume the sentient AIs are kept out of sight.
“We became interested in the use of biofeedback both as a playtesting methodology and as potential user input to gameplay because the idea of quantifying emotion or player sentiment seems to have utility,” Ambinder says.
“On the playtesting side, recording more objective measurements of player sentiment is always desired. People sometimes have a hard time explaining how they felt about various things, and memories of feelings and events can become conflated.
“Conversely, if you have a more objective measurement of arousal or engagement, you can get a clearer picture for how people are emotionally consuming your game.”
Or plotting to kill you. Obviously.
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