Exploring Olfaction for Enhancing Multisensory and Emotional Game Experience

Abstract

In recent years, an increasing amount of game players attribute importance to the perceived value of games, such as positive experiences and emotions, rather than functions in games. In contrast to the game itself, user experience is gradually becoming the main focus in the design of computer games. Therefore, a successful game should have a high perceived value and the capability of evoking positive emotions and experiences within the players through the five human senses. However, current games mainly depend on the visual, auditory and tactile experience, olfactory experience is very scarce. In order to explore the possibilities that the intervention of the sense of smell could enhance pleasantness experience of playing games. This study choose the Chinese folk music which is commonly used in Chinese games as background music, and some common odors as experimental stimuli. Three experiments were conducted. The first two experiments were used to classify the music clips and odors separately according to the evoked emotions. Results showed that most odors and music clips had a high effect on the arousal of emotion. The third experiment was used to verify whether congruent odors could increase the pleasantness of music significantly more than incongruent odors. Results showed that music-odor congruency played a key role in perceiving pleasantness of music. Congruent odor can increase pleasant perception of music while incongruent odor can decrease pleasant perception of music. These findings could be important not only for the theoretical understanding of multisensory and emotional feedback in game experience, but also for the optimization of game design.