Hello, my name is Yoan-Daniel Malinov and this is my submission video to CHI Play 2020’s Doctoral Consortium titled
“Characterizing the Benefits of Multi-Modal Play in Virtual Reality”.
I am currently finishing my first year in a 3 year PhD program at the University of Southampton.
My PhD is, as the title might suggest, about multi-modality in VR:
in other words, ways of introducing a second player to a single player VR game without a Head Mounted Display.
I think, as VR is becoming more mainstream and more people start using it,
we need to know how outside viewers can be included in the experience,
because right now, in most cases people in the same room either just watch the VR player
or participate in the game through a controller (such as The PlayroomVR)
or verbally, such as the way Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
has a “bomb defuser” who only sees a manual, and the VR player, who is with the bomb and has to defuse it.
This design space needs to be explored more in depth, as knowing the pros and cons of each way of adding a second player
would be very beneficial for any future developments in this sphere.
This is where my research comes in – I aim to explore how including a second player alongside the VR player
can happen, in what ways a second player can be included, and the difference between those ways.
I have chosen immersion as the first property to measure, as the whole point of VR is to be immersive,
so if including a second player through a phone, for example, is better than a PC,
then that would be the preferred way to go when an increase in immersion with co-located play is wanted.
Similarly, I am using co-presence as the second property I am measuring to make sure that
that neither of the ways detract from this “feeling” of being together with another person:
this is important because in a social setting, like this game, it is desirable to have that feeling,
as it can increase enjoyment, shown by a few studies in the past.
What I have done in my first year is create the game “Stuck in Space” (seen in the background),
which I used to conduct a user study exploring the difference in immersion and co-presence for both players – the VR player and the non-VR player.
There are two versions for the second player – a PC version (which is the baseline used in the industry), and a tracked phone that acts as a window into the virtual world.
The game's premise is that the VR player is an astronaut in their space station and the non-VR player is a drone that has to help them fix the spaceship.
The study used two modified questionnaires for co-presence and immersion. The networked minds measure of social presence and the IPQ.
Two people would play the game once, fill in the surveys, swap and do it again, with a semi structured interview as the end.
The results, with sample size of 24, as seen on the screen, were a bit surprising: the expected results for co-presence would be that the VR/Phone version
has a higher score than the VR/PC, as the players are next to each other, but there was no significant difference between the versions.
The only difference being the immersion of the VR player versus the PC and Phone versions, which was expected.
The interview data was then coded, and 13 codes emerged, spread across 5 themes for both immersion and co-presence.
They help shed light on why the survey results were this: one of the reasons was that each of the two modes
has positives and negatives that cancel each other out in the end, so for a person to be able to observe a significant difference,
they would need to be accentuated or removed from the experience.
One of the main themes, embodiment, was an important part of the experience, as some people easily played the role of the drone, while others didn’t feel like one at all.
With that in mind, the future direction of my PhD would be to conduct a systematic review of ways of achieving embodiment,
followed by expert interviews to confirm the findings and get opinions on tackling this problem from firsthand experience.
After that, I would create a game with the list of ways of achieving embodiment in mind, and test whether they increase embodiment in the different players,
which would lead to and increase of co-presence and immersion.