PokerFace: Game players themselves are truly memorable

Video games support instant replays so that game players can see previously occurred events (e.g., goals in sports games) again from a different point of view and permanently store such exciting moments and feelings as pleasant memories. However, players are likely to have different feelings and enjoyment depending on the player context, such as who they play with, their looks, or conversation during gaming even for the same game. Therefore, instant replays without such player context are not enough for users to remind the enjoyable moments that could not happen again, and thus precious memories will be forgotten. This paper presents PokerFace, a new video game console that provides advanced instant replays containing the player context. PokerFace detects memorable situations during gaming and generates advanced instant replays by combining both the game replay and the user's reaction and synchronizes them in time so that the players can see both their own looks and those of other players at the time when the exciting moment take place. Our system provides game players with better memories by storing advanced instant replays into the permanent storage or web blogs. We have implemented a prototype of PokerFace and conducted user studies. From the evaluation results, we conclude that PokerFace can have the competitiveness in game consoles market by giving more enjoyment and better memories for users.