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[IbizaPocholo]

Microsoft Working on Machine Learning Algorithms for Tracking and Influencing Player Emotions

Tech giant Microsoft is reportedly working on complex machine learning algorithms to track and influence a player's emotions while gaming.

gamerant.com

Tech giant Microsoft is investing in machine learning technologies to track and influence a gamer's emotions. Microsoft is one of the biggest tech companies globally, alongside Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Amazon, with a market capitalization of nearly 1.8 trillion dollars. The corporation is looking to increase its footprint in the gaming industry as it is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard, a leading game developer.

The said patent will utilize complex machine-learning algorithms and heuristics to modify the playing experience of gamers by influencing their emotions. Microsoft will build on the current practice used by many developers, using background music, loot, threats, and NPC behavior to induce specific feelings in players. The proposal discusses engine-agnostic and game-agnostic techniques to enhance the player experience using machine learning algorithms for Natural Language Processing (NLP) based on previous game events. These game events can be directly caused by the player, like pressing a particular button, a combination of controls, or their in-game choices. By employing an application programming interface (API) to link specific numbers, letters, words, or phrases to particular game events, game developers can translate game events into text strings.

In some systems, the mapping is kept in a table or text log consisting of a series of text strings that correspond to game events that happened during the course of the game's part (or the whole). According to the Microsoft patent, the text strings are added to the text log when the corresponding game event occurs. One or more curves depict target player experiences relating to game progress. Curves can describe various player experiences, such as calm/intensity, bad/good luck, and conceptual ideas like "victorious." The figure above shows a block diagram of a system for processing video games that allows coordinating game choices using a semantic natural language processing (NLP) machine learning (ML) algorithm.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

Repeated L3 translates to extreme joy as I teabag your mom while drinking my choco milk

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Microsoft will build on the current practice used by many developers, using background music, loot, threats, and NPC behavior to induce specific feelings in players

Translation: this will be used to make you consoooooom more

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Microsoft May Soon Be Able to Measure Players' Heart Rates Using Eye-Tracking Cameras

Microsoft’s new patent might someday allow the company to keep track of what gamers’ hearts are doing as they play the latest and greatest games.

gamerant.com

According to a patent filed in April 2022, Microsoft believes it may be able to detect heart rates using eye-tracking cameras. The patent references a "head-mounted device" that includes an eye-tracking camera, which would work with a "machine-learned AI model to analyze the series of images to extract a photoplethysmography waveform." Photoplethysmography's appeal is that it offers "a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue."

Besides monitoring head motion of the person wearing it, the camera would "emit infrared light at the one or more areas of skin around the one or more eyes of the wearer." The patent also references potential use of an accelerometer, a gyroscope (previously featured in hardware such as the 3DS to make possible games like Super Mario 3D Land), or a magnetometer. The device would be able to filter out "noisy" data to cancel it out of a data set, presumably generating more accurate, useful results by the AI. Over time, the device would apply calibration relating to individual users to "improve the machine-learned AI model."

 

[levyjl1988]

Sounds like a great system to exploit, I usually get bad RNG and it pisses me off. I tend to distance myself from shitty mechanics and bad play through as, so if a game can read my emotions of being pissed off then it can give me better outputs and results.

I remember losing a month match in a fps game. Never went back to playing that game or buying more from the pat franchise, I believe they put me in match with higher skill so they can show off their micro transaction skins or something.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Tech giant Microsoft is investing in machine learning technologies to track and influence a gamer's emotions.

Techbros are the worst. The thought social interactions are designed by people who lack social skills.

 

[Three]

Techbros are the worst. The thought social interactions are designed by people who lack social skills.

Welcome to the new Cambridge Analytica data source. What better way to know your hidden behavioural tendencies than to see your behaviour in a designed situation.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

Do you know what influences my emotions?

Good games and experiences.

 

[adamsapple]

Didn't Sony have a patent for something exactly like this a few days ago as well?

Looks like generating content tailored to the players emotions is the next stage in gaming evolution.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

 

[H4ze]

Can I link that to my Keyboard so MS will feel my fist hitting it when I enter rage mode? Doesn't happen that often anymore, but there is still a reason why I only buy cheap keyboards xD
Or convert my anger to energy so I can shit on electricity costs?

 

[Teslerum]

1 step closer to our AI overlords:

 

[Boralf]

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

 

[NickFire]

The said patent will utilize complex machine-learning algorithms and heuristics to modify the playing experience of gamers by influencing their emotions. Microsoft will build on the current practice used by many developers, using background music, loot, threats, and NPC behavior to induce specific feelings in players.

It should make games quicker, cheaper, and easier to develop. But the trade off seems to be jobs and artistic expression.