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Asymmetrical Multiplayer Versus Single Player: Effects on Game Experience in a Virtual Reality Edutainment Game

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Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics (AVR 2020)

Abstract

Gamification of learning material is becoming popular within the education field and the possibilities of designing edutainment games are being explored. This project compares a single player and a two-player game experience in a collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) edutainment game. The two versions of the game had exactly the same information, where in the collaborative game the information was divided between the two players in an asymmetrical format, where one player is outside of VR. The evaluation of the two versions compared only the experience of the participants in VR using an independent measures design. The results showed that the two-player version scored higher in questions related to positive game experience with a significant difference to the single player version. Furthermore, participants using the two-player version rated significantly lower on questions related to annoyance. In the setting of an edutainment game the results suggest that incorporating a collaborative aspect through asymmetrical game play in VR increases enjoyment of the experience.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Christian Carlsson, Loreen Ople Villacorte and Guy Rumsey at Grundfos for their contributions to our background research on water treatment and sanitation.

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Correspondence to Anders Hansen .

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Hansen, A., Larsen, K.B., Nielsen, H.H., Sokolov, M.K., Kraus, M. (2020). Asymmetrical Multiplayer Versus Single Player: Effects on Game Experience in a Virtual Reality Edutainment Game. In: De Paolis, L., Bourdot, P. (eds) Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics. AVR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12242. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58465-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58465-8_2

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