With advances in the area of sensor technology and signal processing, a new generation of computer games based on affective computing is emerging. In order to increase a player's level of immersion and engagement, a number of affective games encourage a user to express his or her emotive states and dynamically adapt actions and events to them.

In my talk, I will propose an affective user interface to a computer game based on a new paradigm called "Emote to Win". As opposed to many traditional computer games, users are not expected to manipulate control devices in a skilful manner to win the game. Instead the basic idea is to elicit certain reactions of a virtual pet via appropriate emotive user behaviors. I will present a first prototype of a gaming application for exploring new intuitive control strategies based on bio physiological feedback and affective speech.

The second part of my talk will focus on how to enhance virtual game partners with affective behaviors. While earlier synthetic agents showed a tendency to convey emotions in an exaggerated manner, more recent work aims at the subtle expression of emotions or the suppression of socially undesirable emotions. In my talk, I will present a small game of dice where one of the human players is replaced by a virtual agent.  This game can only be won by deceiving the other players and by detecting such attempts from the other players. Thus, a highly emotional situation is created when the agent blames the user for deceit or when the user detects such an attempt and the agent has to react to it.