This Is Your Brain On Video Games, Ads

Developing a first-person shooter video game that can rival the genre's top-selling hits like Call of Duty is always a long shot.

So game maker THQ tried an unusual research method last year to evaluate people's early emotional response to its in-development shooter game Frontlines. Instead of asking a test group how it liked the game, as with most market research, the company hired technology specialist EmSense to measure people's brain waves, heart rate and sweat responses while they played the military-theme game. Armed with that data, THQ took Frontlines in a whole new direction developmentally, said Bob Aniello, chief marketing officer at THQ.