The Virtual Hero: the influence of narrative on affect and presence in a VR game

Entertainment media, such as video-games, often make use of a narrative to invoke an emotional reaction and draw people into the experience. A narrative can add layers of emotional complexity to even quite simple forms of game-play. In immersive virtual reality people are surrounded by the game environment, making their sense of presence and immersion highly salient to the perceived quality of the game. This pilot study investigates how game performance, satisfaction, arousal and sense of presence are affected when a pre-game background story is introduced to a virtual reality zombie shooter game. Several trends were observed, indicating that people might be more involved in the game-world and more prepared for the virtual experience. Participants who were exposed to a short pre-game back-story tended to achieve higher game scores and experience a higher sense of presence, although these differences were not significant. We examine the measurements used in this study and theorize how affect and presence interact with respect to the use of narrative devices in virtual reality games.