Immersive Technologies and Natural Interaction to Improve Serious Games Engagement

Newly available technologies and natural interaction in video games are reshaping the role of immersion and interaction on game enjoyment. The current work aims at assessing a highly immersive setup exploiting natural user interaction, combining Head Mounted Display and a depth camera, with the objective of evaluating its use as a platform for Serious Games through a series of experiments whose results are presented and discussed. Initial findings suggest that the introduced technological setup offers high level of engagement and facilitate the achievement of the flow state.

[1]  D. Kort,et al.  Digital Games as Social Presence Technology: Development of the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire (SPGQ) , 2007 .

[2]  Bartholomäus Wissmath,et al.  Immersion in Computer Games: The Role of Spatial Presence and Flow , 2011, Int. J. Comput. Games Technol..

[3]  Jesús Favela,et al.  2012 6th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (pervasivehealth) and Workshops , 2022 .

[4]  Massimo Bergamasco,et al.  I'm in VR!: using your own hands in a fully immersive MR system , 2014, VRST '14.

[5]  Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze,et al.  Stirring up experience through movement in game play: effects on engagement and social behaviour , 2008, CHI.

[6]  S. Saini,et al.  A low-cost game framework for a home-based stroke rehabilitation system , 2012, 2012 International Conference on Computer & Information Science (ICCIS).

[7]  Leila Alem,et al.  A usability and spatial awareness study of near-eye displays , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC).

[8]  Olga De Troyer,et al.  Maze commander: a collaborative asynchronous game using the oculus rift & the sifteo cubes , 2014, CHI PLAY.

[9]  Massimo Bergamasco,et al.  Evaluating the Impact of Highly Immersive Technologies and Natural Interaction on Player Engagement and Flow Experience in Games , 2015, ICEC.

[10]  Jeanne H. Brockmyer,et al.  The Development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A Measure of Engagement in Video Game Playing: Response to Reviews , 2009, Interacting with computers.

[11]  Massimo Bergamasco,et al.  [Poster] Interacting with your own hands in a fully immersive MR system , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).

[12]  Pedro Miguel Moreira,et al.  Natural user interfaces in serious games for rehabilitation , 2011, 6th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI 2011).

[13]  B. Kapralos,et al.  Using Serious Games and Virtual Simulation for Training in the Fire Service: A Review , 2015 .

[14]  Paul A. Cairns,et al.  Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..