Assessing game experience: Heart rate variability, in-game behavior and self-report measures

Assessing game experience by means of recordings of physiological reactions elicited during game play is a technique that has gained popularity in recent years in the field of digital games research. However, since physiological signals are typically linked to several psychological processes, the use of some measures such as cardiac activity or heart rate (HR) remains problematic. The goal of the present study is to investigate to what extent game logs and self-report measures of game experience have a predictive value for heart rate variability during game play. Our results showed that the accurate registration of in-game behaviors by means of game logs carries the potential of providing richer information for the interpretation of variations in cardiac activity than only post-hoc self-report measures.