Hi everyone. I am Sukran Karaosmanoglu from University of Hamburg, and today, I will present our paper that I co-authored with Philipp Sykownik, Katharina Emmerich, Frank Steinicke, & Maic Masuch
Playing video games with others in person is a play mode that many players enjoy.
Co-located gaming environments have unique experiential qualities that remote games often cannot offer, such as giving a high-five and seeing the others' facial expressions.
However, maybe in five years, co-located games may be dead the way we know them…
Virtual reality technology is becoming increasingly common
and current social VR applications offer various social- and entertainment-related experiences.
But, how far do these experiences compare to their real-world counterparts?
Research indicates that VR joint media consumption scenarios can approximate their face to face counterparts.
However, studies in this context are limited.
In our paper, we extend the literature by providing a timely and nuanced look at our specific use case: simulating co-located multiplayer gaming in social VR.
Our research specifically explores: How do the player and social experience in VR compare to the experience in the face to face setting?
And what features enhance or inhibit the player and social experience in VR?
To explore our research questions, we designed and implemented a couch coop VR simulator.
Overall, our VR application consisted of three components.
Our application starts with a calibration scene where users map their physical room layout to their virtual room layout.
After calibration, the users enter the customization scene, where the avatar's arm length, body scale, and appearance can be adjusted.
When both remote users sit on the couch in their individual scenes, they enter the game scene together, appearing as sitting next to each other on the virtual couch.
Here, they play a multiplayer game together on a virtual TV.
We decided to use a simple game that would function equally well in the VR and co-located scenario.
Based on prior works, we implemented a multiplayer game that features interdependence between players to induce an engaging social setting.
With the implementation finalized, we compared the co-located multiplayer simulator with its face to face counterpart in a mixed-methods user study with 25 dyads.
In the VR condition, participants played together in VR while being located in separate labs.
In the co-located condition, they were co-located together in the same room and played on a single TV screen.
In our paper, we present the results of our extensive analysis in detail, covering the immersive, player, and social experience based on questionnaire, behavioral, and interview data.
However, in the scope of this presentation, we focus on the social experience and player experience findings.
We found that overall, the participants seemed to have experienced moderate to high degrees of social presence.
However, perceived co-presence, attentional allocation, mutual understanding, and affective understanding were significantly higher in co-located gameplay.
In terms of player experience, both conditions seemed to have induced high levels of enjoyment for most participants.
The perceived immersion seems to have been moderately high in both conditions while VR condition being significantly higher than co-located play.
Around 75% of the participants liked one of the two conditions better, with almost 50% indicating the in-person variant.
Overall, players liked the game, avatars, and could imagine using this VR scenario privately.
While the game, avatars and voice chat, knowing each other, and novelty effects mainly enhanced the social experience in VR,
lack of VR full-body representation and mimics hindered the social experience of users.
In our study, players had a similar player experience in both conditions, with immersion even a bit more intense in VR.
In terms of sociality, however, the V R version induced a slightly less rich experience.
However, we consider the identified differences marginal since both scenarios induced high social presence and conclude that join media consumption in VR works.
Avatars with limited behavioral realism annoyed users, but in general, inhibiting aspects became even less salient depending on the activity context.
Also, the VR-exclusive features, such as avatar customization, created opportunities for social interaction that does not occur in the f2f scenario.
In our case, novelty effects certainly compensated for sociality-inhibiting effects by triggering more social interaction during the game break.
However, whether the VR experience would be significantly worse than face to face experience in the long run is an open research gap.
Our results blur the boundaries between local and online multiplayer games, and highlight this scenario as an alternative for f2f social game experiences.
We also provide design implications.
We suggest considering the activity context when evaluating specific technical limitations; certain users might not want to use face or other tracking technologies in individual contexts.
Based on our results, we question whether photorealistic avatars based on users' physical appearances are something future users ultimately want or expect in leisure activity contexts.
Shared control was demonstrated as a simple yet scalable game mechanic to create high player interdependence and communication. Therefore, we recommend its use.
Our scenario introduced the possibility to experience a previously ``friend-exclusive" game situation with strangers and is therefore possibly an access to social dynamics that other game media do not offer so far.
Finally, we recommend using our scenario as a tool for remote testing of co-located games in a standardized environment.
Overall, we've explored how far a VR social gaming scenario can approximate its real-world version.
And with these insights, we've shown that VR is almost there in terms of offering a rich social and player experience like its real-world co-located gaming counterpart.
Thank you for listening to this talk. Please refer to the paper for more details and contact me or my co-authors with any questions.