Emotion-Aware Adaptive Design in Games: A Critical Review of Progress, Evaluation Bottlenecks, and Future Trends

Abstract

This paper reviews emotion-aware adaptive game design. It explains how games detecting player feelings can outperform traditional difficulty adjustment, which only tweaks numbers like health or damage. While such tweaks boost performance, they rarely reduce negative emotions or improve immersion. Affective computing now allows cameras and mics to spot frustration or boredom in real time. However, better detection does not always improve experience—a "last-mile" issue caused by overusing simple number tweaks, harming player control, and using weak testing. The review blends ideas from difficulty, immersion, emotion detection, audio, and story. It uses a three-part framework: how emotions are detected, what game elements are adapted, and how success is measured. Future games should adjust feedback, pacing, sound, and story while keeping players in control. Future paths include stable real-world emotion detection, modular engine tools, and long-term testing.