Tell Us How You Really Feel

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[Developers] can draw the line and say where they want the peaks of the game to be and we can help deliver on that and that's what makes [our technology] so successful."

When this technology was first brought to our attention, we couldn't help but think of Bunnyfoot. The British company primarily uses eye tracking to determine effectiveness and emotional engagement with in-game advertisements. According to Lee, though, the technology EmSense uses and the techniques of Bunnyfoot are very, very different.

"People have been doing tests in university labs for years checking to see if someone looks in a particular place and if the heart rate goes up," Lee explained. "What we've done is said, 'To truly understand and help people, you have to give context.' We can give our clients half a million key events and provide actual benchmarks against the competition. We can measure people without crazy wires everywhere, and we can rate what people liked and when. You can see where they looked, but that doesn't rate if people are really engaged. That doesn't necessarily give a natural response."

The consumer applications are endless

Now, it should be noted that EmSense has not yet worked on in-game advertisements. The company has, however, worked on both games (as stated above) and TV commercials. The same techniques that they use for both could easily be applied to in-game advertising, and to great affect we'd assume.

"When you [study] in-game advertising, you look to see if people are engaged. Because we rate to see if people are people engaged in a spot, you can actually see if people are into it, if they've seen the ad and how long they looked at it. Without EEG, it's something you wouldn't be able to do," said Lee. "It's a great new market that's growing. The big issue is you have to make things sell. Clearly, though, that is what is happening right now, with [advertisers investing a lot of money]."

"We do TV commercials as well, so we're heavily into advertising. We can see if people got the joke, how long did it take to get the joke, etc. and that's not something that's been done before. If no one thinks about your brand description, it's not going to sell. We actually measure objectively if people are engaged."

When asked why EmSense wasn't involved in in-game advertisements right now, he responded frankly, "For a high profile TV commercial, generally that's 5-6 million dollars, and that's a lot of money on the line. That's a whole world of difference compared to putting a billboard in a game."

Not Vulcans when it comes to decisions

Emotional connection with a product is a rare and (to those selling the products) a beautiful thing. In fact Steven Spielberg and Bill Clinton have gone on the record as saying that emotions are key for people to engage in products, whether it's a movie, TV show or a speech. It's long been a sort of intangible quality that EmSense is hoping to make quantifiable in their clients' products.

"You look at how people make decisions, whether it's for politics, or movies or, advertising and media, people are not being rational, they're being emotional in their decisions," Lee commented. "[When you decide,] it's the one you 'feel' you should buy. So when you make decisions to buy something or vote, it's based on emotions. Advertising, however, has traditionally been based around rational thought, 'you should by this for X reason,' and they're trying to build an emotional model off of that. You have to make sure it's the right experience."

We talked with Lee about several factors in testing games and how people engage with them. He conveyed how many players actually disengage when using vehicles because the threat of death is gone (he contrasted that to the Halo series, where engagement raises very high because of fear of death in vehicles). Lee also noted that hooking players in the first 45 minutes is key, perhaps especially for 100-hour long RPGs; that "core" and "beginner" gamers are rated separately; and that they use surveys after tests to supplement their EEG findings.

"All the guys here are gamers and we want to help build games," confessed Lee. "That's what's really exciting is asking, 'How do we make better games?' The one big customer we can talk about is THQ, who's been great to work with. This is something that really allows us to engage our audiences. Each of the publishers and developers that we work with are very cool and that's why we came over here. It's awesome to make the vision of a developer come true."

"When customers started doing this, the creative said, 'This allows us to do more.' So this is actually crafting the experience to be better and that's a great feeling," he concluded.

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