Assessing the engagement of players in analog board games through biometric monitoring

The growing popularity of board games spurred their recent use in different contexts aside from entertainment and leisure. However, it continues to be very difficult to effectively quantify the engagement of a player with a board game, which might be relevant for some use cases. We employed electronic sensors to measure a specific biosignal, namely the galvanic skin response, or electrodermal activity, which is the most reliable indicator for emotional activation. Our initial hypothesis is that this biosignal can be used to objectively assess the player engagement with the game, by monitoring the level of emotional activation during gameplay. Results indicate that an approach based on biometric monitoring that includes the electrodermal activity of players, eventually coupled with other relevant biosignals, can be used to identify different engagement levels of players in board game sessions. More work will be required to establish correlations and link observed signal patterns to events and eventually to specific characteristics of games, but the proposed approach is promising towards quantifying user experience and engagement in board games without relying on subjective indirect assessment methods.