BodyTalk: Using Body Language Communication in Online Cooperative Games

The rapid growth of the Internet has enabled billions of people to share photos, to blog, and to play games with each other. However, languages remain a barrier for people to connect, socialize, and cooperate around the world.
We conducted a 12-person user study to understand how language barriers affect cooperative experiences through 3 popular cooperative games. Results showed that participants without common languages rated their experience as significantly more frustrating and less fun. We propose using body language to transcend language barriers for cooperative games. Our system, BodyTalk, uses Kinect sensors to track users'' postures and share them as avatars in real-time with other users over the Internet. Our 48-person user study using our prototype game showed that cooperative experience with body language was more fun and less frustrating, and co-experience was improved for all participants, especially for those without common languages.
Also, 79% of the participants preferred having body language communication.