Frustration in games can have negative consequences for both players and those around them. Despite these effects, methods for supporting frustration management in hectic gameplay are scarce. In this paper, we present Frustration Buddy, a novel tangible intervention system aimed at managing frustration during play. Frustration Buddy leverages distraction and soothing techniques to help players control their emotions. Our paper provides an artifact contribution, complemented by exploratory findings from semi-structured interviews with nine participants on frustration in games, how they manage it, and their opinions on Frustration Buddy’s design and applicability in their gaming environments. The results suggest participants were open to the idea of a device supporting frustration management and that the use of a tangible device like a stress ball was well-received. We provide insights on how to design such a device based on our design decisions and the preferences expressed by the gamers in our interviews.

Commendation systems in online multiplayer games are designed to recognize positive in-game behaviors. Examples include the Honor system (League of Legends) and the Endorsement system (Overwatch). However, we do not know how players use and perceive them. Our mixed-methods study (n = 511) explores how players interact with commendation systems and how they view their usefulness and appeal. Through thematic analysis, we identified four key themes: using commendation systems 1) to reward performance, 2) to reward friendly behavior, 3) without intent or understanding, and 4) distilling preferences for specific versions or features within these systems. We further provide exploratory insights of play-related factors that correlate with high commendation levels, and attitudes towards the systems. We infer that the purpose of commendation systems is not clear to users. We outline aspects in which players need more guidance, and conclude that designers should be more transparent about their intentions and expectations.

In modern online multiplayer video games, players experience a plethora of social interactions like communication, competition, and completion of shared goals. Those experiences are, however, hindered by toxic behavior. Game developers have sought to counteract such behaviors by introducing what we call Behavior Ranking Systems, i.e., systems that track and assess player in-game behavior, based on which players are assigned ranks and receive rewards or punishments accordingly. Despite their important role, information on the functionality of these systems is difficult to find, limited in detail, and often outdated. In this paper, we provide a review of four prominent Behavior Ranking Systems, analyze their designs in detail, and identify their features. Based on our review, we define a design space encompassing the core features of a Behavior Ranking System to inform the design of new such systems.

AI is transforming live streaming with new communities forming around channels featuring automated or prompt-based AI-generated videos. By introducing AI as an active and sometimes unpredictable participant in community interactions, traditional creator-audience and audience-audience relations are disrupted, presenting challenges for toxicity and moderation. This paper presents findings from a mixed-methods survey of viewers ( ) to understand their motivations for engaging with AI content, perceptions of toxicity, and moderation preferences. Our findings highlight the variety of viewer motivations of the participants of the surveyed communities with both individual and social aspects, that viewers were more engaged by AI interactions and user-generated prompts than by other viewers, and that toxicity arose from various sources and negatively related to the sense of community, with most viewers favouring in-community moderation. Our insights represent an initial descriptive examination of communities that rely exclusively on fast-paced AI-generated content and underscore the need for updated moderation strategies to sustain healthier dynamics in AI livestreams • We study new livestream communities around AI-generated videos • We identify individual and social motivations of viewers • We identify sources of toxicity in the communities • We explore how the community members react to toxicity and think about moderation

Social VR's focus on embodied and immersive experiences has led to its increasing popularity and value for education, work, entertainment, and even our everyday social lives. However, there is also a growing concern about emerging harmful behaviours among users in social VR spaces. Despite this, existing work has highlighted a fundamental challenge in effectively identifying and mitigating such behaviours: there is no established terminology or consensus on what should be categorised as harmful behaviours in social VR. In this work, we aim to address this critical gap by providing a foundation for classifying harmful behaviours in social VR, which can help researchers, developers, and policymakers to achieve conceptual clarity and actionable insights for designing safer VR environments. Using a systematic literature review of existing work in this space, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of harmful behaviours identified in existing HCI research and classify them based on dimensions of behaviour modality (i.e., verbal, physical, environmental, and three novel system-, gesture-, and spatial-based categories) and interaction dynamics (i.e., one-to-one, one-to-many). This work provides an important conceptual contribution that enables researchers to better differentiate and systematically investigate these different types of harms in social VR. It also offers valuable guidance for the design of safer social VR environments, e.g., through informing the development of validated scales, codes of conduct, detection algorithms, and other types of interventions.

With large language models (LLMs) on the rise, in-game interactions are shifting from rigid commands to natural conversations. However, the impacts of LLMs on player performance and game experience remain underexplored. This work explores LLM's role as a co-builder during gameplay, examining its impact on task performance, usability, and player experience. Using Minecraft as a sandbox, we present an LLM-assisted interface that engages players through natural language, aiming to facilitate creativity and simplify complex gaming commands. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 30 participants, comparing LLM-assisted and command-based interfaces across simple and complex game tasks. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that the LLM-assisted interface significantly improves player performance, engagement, and overall game experience. Additionally, task complexity has a notable effect on player performance and experience across both interfaces. Our findings highlight the potential of LLM-assisted interfaces to revolutionize virtual experiences, emphasizing the importance of balancing intuitiveness with predictability, transparency, and user agency in AI-driven, multimodal gaming environments.

There is growing recognition of the role video games can play in helping people through challenging times, however many still argue that video game play can lead to adverse and problematic behaviours when relied upon to manage negative affect. This study sought to explore a number of factors that may play a role in influencing the likelihood one develops problematic habits of play, particularly in the context of difficult and stressful times. Specifically, this study utilised Self-Determination Theory and the Dualistic Model of Passion to explore the relationships between emotion regulation, psychological need satisfaction and frustration, passion for video games, and problematic video game play during times of difficulty and stress. A path analysis was conducted using data from 440 participants and found that, overall, emotion regulation may be associated with whether or not problematic play is likely to occur, particularly through its relationship with need satisfaction (and frustration) and video game passion.

Source confusion occurs when individuals attribute a memory to the wrong source (e.g., confusing a picture with an experienced event). Virtual Reality (VR) represents a new source of memories particularly prone to being confused with reality. While previous research identified causes of source confusion between reality and other sources (e.g., imagination, pictures), there is currently no understanding of what characteristics specific to VR (e.g., immersion, presence) could influence source confusion. Through a laboratory study (n=29), we 1) confirm the existence of VR source confusion with current technology, and 2) present a quantitative and qualitative exploration of factors influencing VR source confusion. Building on the Source Monitoring Framework, we identify VR characteristics and assumptions about VR capabilities (e.g., poor rendering) that are used to distinguish virtual from real memories. From these insights, we reflect on how the increasing realism of VR could leave users vulnerable to memory errors and perceptual manipulations.

Gaze interaction is a promising interaction method to increase variety, challenge, and fun in games.We present “Shed Some Fear”, a 2D platform game including numerous eye-gaze-based interactions. “Shed Some Fear” includes control with eye-gaze and traditional keyboard input. The eye-gaze interactions are partially based on eye exercises reducing digital eye strain but also on employing peripheral vision. By employing eye-gaze as a necessary input mechanism, we explore the effects on and tradeoffs between user enjoyment and digital eye strain in a five-day longitudinal between-subject study (N=17) compared to interaction with a traditional mouse. We found that perceived competence was significantly higher with eye gaze interaction and significantly higher internal eye strain. With this work, we contribute to the not straightforward inclusion of eye tracking as a useful and fun input method for games.

Toxicity is pervasive in online multiplayer games, exposing players to disruptive and harmful behaviours. Players employ various approaches to cope with exposure to toxicity; however, game designers and researchers lack guidance on how to implement coping support within games. In this paper, we first conduct a formative study to collect a comprehensive list of coping approaches from toxicity literature and use affinity mapping to identify overarching game-based coping strategies. Then, we report findings from a survey (n = 85) on players’ experiences with toxicity, how they employ the identified coping strategies, how games support coping, and their general coping styles. Our paper contributes a framework for coping strategies to deal with game-based toxicity and provides insights into the prevalence of these strategies among players and factors that affect their usage and effectiveness. These findings can be used to guide better in-game tools that help players mitigate the harm caused by toxicity.

Redirected walking (RDW) is a technique that allows users to navigate larger physical spaces in virtual reality (VR) environments by manipulating the users’ view of the virtual world. In this study, we investigate the effect of adding spatial audio elements to curvature gains in RDW aiming to increase the perceptual threshold for the manipulation and allowing for higher levels of unnoticed redirection. We conducted a user study (n = 18), evaluating perceptual thresholds across conditions with and without spatial audio elements across different curvature gains. We found that spatial audio can significantly increase thresholds with a large effect size. This finding indicates the value of spatial audio for RDW. It could facilitate higher levels of redirection, while maintaining a convincing experience, leading to more freedom to navigate virtual environments in even smaller physical spaces.

Hybrid board games (HBGs) augment their analog origins digitally (e.g., through apps) and are an increasingly popular pastime activity. Continuous world and character development and customization, known to facilitate engagement in video games, remain rare in HBGs. If present, they happen digitally or imaginarily, often leaving physical aspects generic. We developed DungeonMaker, a fabrication-augmented HBG bridging physical and digital game elements: 1) the setup narrates a story and projects a digital game board onto a laser cutter; 2) DungeonMaker assesses player-crafted artifacts; 3) DungeonMaker’s modified laser head senses and moves player- and non-player figures, and 4) can physically damage figures. An evaluation (n = 4 × 3) indicated that DungeonMaker provides an engaging experience, may support players’ connection to their figures, and potentially spark novices’ interest in fabrication. DungeonMaker provides a rich constellation to play HBGs by blending aspects of craft and automation to couple the physical and digital elements of an HBG tightly.

Attempts to digitize pinball have been met with skepticism; however, VR presents a new opportunity to access and enjoy this popular game. In a controlled study (N=60), we investigated how physical pinball, VR pinball, and PC pinball differ in terms of player experience (pX) and task demand using both quantitative and qualitative data. Participants mainly preferred physical pinball, followed by VR pinball; only two participants preferred pinball on the PC. With the exception of immersion, results showed no pX differences between physical and VR pinball; although PC pinball was rated as inferior on multiple dimensions. Furthermore, enjoyment of physical pinball was associated with curiosity, control, and challenge, whereas in VR and PC pinball, immersion and audiovisual appeal mattered. Interestingly, preference and pX did not depend on existing familiarity with pinball. Our findings suggest that VR can offer an accessible, enjoyable pinball experience, regardless of familiarity.

We are excited to present PACM HCI's 2024 issue on games and play research, which contains 63 original and highly relevant articles covering the entire spectrum of HCI games research. As in the previous year, we used three recommendations ' 'Accept with Minor Revisions', 'Revise and Resubmit', and 'Reject.' For papers that were accepted with minor revisions, the second round of reviews was a 'light-touch' process in which the editorial board members checked the revisions, whereas papers that received Revise and Resubmit received another full round of external reviews with the same reviewers in most cases, and were also subjected to a final selection process. This second revision was treated as a real resubmission, which meant that it was given full consideration, but no guarantee or preferential treatment towards acceptance; a share of the revised papers was ultimately rejected. We would like to acknowledge the efforts that our community has made in adapting to this new process, working together with the submitting authors to achieve high-quality scholarship. The track editorial board consisted of 32 members and a total of 230 external reviewers from around the world ensured a high-quality review process. After the first round of submissions, each paper was handled by a primary track editorial board member who received reviews from a second track editorial board member and two external reviewers so that each submission received at least three high-quality reviews. After reviews were completed and checked for quality, the primary initiated discussion amongst the reviewers and came up with a preliminary recommendation (accept, between accept and revise and resubmit, revise and resubmit, between revise and resubmit and reject, reject). Papers that were in the middle three categories were then discussed in two synchronous virtual track editorial board meetings that took place over two consecutive days. The inclusion of the board meeting at this stage was a new addition to the review process last year. We included it to better calibrate decision making across the committee at this critical point in the review process, ensure consistency in outcomes, promote reflection and consideration at this stage in the process, and mentor newer editorial board members in the review process. We strove for a diverse program approaching games research from a variety of perspectives, including design, engineering, psychology, computer and data science while at the same time only accepting high-quality pieces of work. In this issue, we observe the following distribution of primary contributions: 42.9% of papers self-classify as using qualitative methods, 11.1% use quantitative methods, and 20.6% use mixed methods. Additionally, 3.2% of papers present design artifacts and 6.3% present technical artifacts. Finally, 4.8% of papers employ meta-research methods, 6.3% of papers present a new methodological approach, and 4.8% of papers contribute to the development and validation of theory. All articles in this issue were invited to present at the ACM CHI PLAY 2024 conference. We thank our dedicated team of track editorial board members, external reviewers, and paper authors, who continue to support the new review process and timeline, contributing to the maturation and growth of the PACM HCI games and play research community, and resulting in this issue of 63 exciting and highly relevant articles. This issue's 63 papers reflect the importance of play in our everyday lives, comment on recent trends and technical developments relevant to games and play, and also represent a significant effort of our community in coming together to produce a collection of research that highlights the multifaceted value of play.

Toxic behavior is known to cause harm in online games. Players regularly experience negative, hateful, or inappropriate behavior. Interventions, such as banning players or chat message filtering, can help combat toxicity but are not widely available or even comprehensively studied regarding their approaches and evaluations. We conducted a systematic literature review that provides insights into the current state of interventions literature, outlining their strengths and shortcomings. We identified 36 interventions and qualitatively analyzed their approaches. We describe the types of toxicity being addressed, the entities through which they act, the methods used by intervention systems, and how they are evaluated. Our results provide guidance for future interventions, outlining a design space based on known systems. Furthermore, our findings highlight gaps in the literature, e.g., a sparsity of empirical evaluations, and underexplored areas in the design space, enabling researchers to explore novel directions for future interventions.

The Dualistic Model of Passion (obsessive and harmonious passion) can explain motivations for videogame play along with associated outcomes, such as the development of social capital; however, existing research exploring passion and social capital in videogaming has been cross-sectional. In the current study we surveyed players of DotA 2 at three time points, over six months (T1 n=462, T2 n=182, T3 n=115), to explore the stability of passion for DotA 2 over time and how such passion may lead to the development or erosion of social capital. Our key findings include that passion for playing DotA 2 is relatively stable over time and that harmonious passion predicts future bridging social capital, while obsessive passion predicts future bonding social capital. Importantly, our findings suggest the absence of a "slippery slope" scenario in which players who have a healthy pattern of engagement development obsessive passion or problematic play. Equally, however, our findings also suggest that those who are obsessive are unlikely to naturally trend towards a more harmonious style of engagement over time. We consider the implications of our findings for health practitioners, players and videogame developers and identify the differences between our longitudinal findings and the existing cross-sectional research.

Game economies (GEs) describe how resources in games are created, transformed, or exchanged: They underpin most games and exist in different complexities. Their complexity may directly impact player difficulty. Nevertheless, neither difficulty nor complexity adjustment has been explored for GEs. Moreover, there is a lack of knowledge about complexity in GEs, how to define or assess it, and how it can be employed by automated adjustment approaches in game development to target specific complexity. We present a proof-of-concept for using evolutionary algorithms to craft targeted complexity graphs to model GEs. In a technical evaluation, we tested our first working definition of complexity in GEs. We then evaluated player-perceived complexity in a city-building game prototype through a user study and confirmed the generated GEs' complexity in an online survey. Our approach toward reliably creating GEs of specific complexity can facilitate game development and player testing but also inform and ground research on player perception of GE complexity.

Social interactions are an essential part of many digital games, and provide benefits to players; however, problematic social interactions also lead to harm. To inform our understanding of the origins of harmful social behaviours in gaming contexts, we examine how trait psychopathy influences player perceptions and behaviours within a gaming task. After measuring participants’ (n=385) trait-level boldness, meanness, and disinhibition, we expose them to neutral and angry social interactions with a non-player character (NPC) in a gaming task and assess their perceptions, verbal responses, and movement behaviours. Our findings demonstrate that the traits significantly influence interpretation of NPC emotion, verbal responses to the NPC, and movement behaviours around the NPC. These insights can inform the design of social games and communities and can help designers and researchers better understand how social functioning translates into gaming contexts.

This work explores perceptions of performance enhancer usage in esports. Specifically, we explored the perception of: food and food supplements; non-medical use of prescription drugs; drugs with some social acceptance (e.g. alcohol, nicotine, cannabis); drugs with lower social acceptance (e.g., psychedelics, opioids); and non-invasive brain stimulation (e.g. transcranial direct current stimulation). A mixed-methods approach was used to triangulate findings around three data sets, including both prompted and unprompted online forum comments, as well as survey data. The studies evidence that players are willing to use or are already using enhancers to increase their in-game performance, and that players are generally concerned about the use of enhancers in professional esports contexts. Furthermore, the community perceives that a substantial number of e-athletes use enhancers. The core contribution of this work is a comprehensive investigation into perspectives of esports performance enhancement, which highlights the urgent need for further research, as well as regulation by esports leagues.

Many games use engagement rewards as incentives for players to engage, e.g., daily login rewards, repeatable challenges, or seasonal rewards like holiday skins. These rewards may serve players by facilitating enjoyment or motivation; however, they may also be considered differently by skeptical players, e.g., as dark patterns that do not benefit players, and may detract from-or even harm-player experiences. As they are widely prevalent in a variety of games, it is important to understand how such rewards are experienced by players to inform potential pitfalls, such as when they are negative for gaming experience or lead to unhealthy gaming behaviours. 178 participants completed a mixed-methods survey and described such rewards in games they play, the tasks required to acquire them, and their experience qualitatively and with validated scales of motivation regulation and passion orientation. We found that players perceived these rewards as beneficial (e.g., as motivation), as negative (e.g., by promoting fear of missing out), or even as an obligation or chore. Quantitative results further support the dualistic experience of such rewards. We contribute findings and design recommendations that are useful for understanding and designing widely used but potentially detrimental reward mechanics.

Game developers, researchers, and players recognize the harm of toxic behaviour in online games-yet toxicity persists. Players' coping strategies are limited to tools that focus on punishing toxic players (e.g., muting, blocking, reporting), which are inadequate and often misused. To address the needs of players experiencing toxicity, we took inspiration from research in other online spaces that provide support tools for targets of harassment. We iteratively designed and evaluated in-game tools to support targets of toxicity. While we found that most players prefer tools that explicitly address toxicity and increase feelings of control, we also found that tools that solely provide social or emotional support also decrease stress, increase feelings of control, and increase positive affect. Our findings suggest that players may benefit from variety in toxicity support tools that both explicitly address toxicity in the moment and help players cope after it has occurred.

Toxicity in online gaming is a problem that causes harm to players, developers, and gaming communities. Toxic behaviors persist in online multiplayer games for a number of reasons, and continue to go unchecked due in large part to a lack of reliable methods to accurately detect toxicity online, in real-time, and at scale. In this article, we present a modeling approach that uses features derived from in-game verbal communication and game metadata to predict ifOverwatchgames are toxic. With logistic regression models, we achieve accuracy scores of 86.3% for binary (high vs. low toxicity) predictions. We discuss which features were most salient, potential application of our predictive model, and implications for toxicity detection in games. Our approach is a low-cost, low-effort, and noninvasive contribution to holistic efforts in combating toxicity in games.

Video game toxicity, endemic to online play, represents a pervasive and complex problem. Antisocial behaviours in online play directly harm player wellbeing, enjoyment, and retention—but research has also revealed that some players normalize toxicity as an inextricable and acceptable element of the competitive video game experience. In this work, we explore perceptions of toxicity and how they are predicted by player traits, demonstrating that participants reporting a higher tendency towards Conduct Reconstrual, Distorting Consequences, Dehumanization, and Toxic Online Disinhibition perceive online game interactions as less toxic. Through a thematic analysis on willingness to report, we also demonstrate that players abstain from reporting toxic content because they view it as acceptable, typical of games, as banter, or as not their concern. We propose that these traits and themes represent contributing factors to the cyclical normalization of toxicity. These findings further highlight the multifaceted nature of toxicity in online video games.

Digital biomarkers of mental health issues offer many advantages, including timely identification for early intervention, ongoing assessment during treatment, and reducing barriers to assessment stemming from geography, age, fear, or disparities in access to systems of care. Embedding digital biomarkers into games may further increase the reach of digital assessment. In this study, we explore game-based digital biomarkers for social anxiety, based on interaction with a non-player character (NPC). We show that social anxiety affects a player's accuracy and their movement path in a gaming task involving an NPC. Further, we compared first versus third-person camera perspectives and the use of customized versus predefined avatars to explore the influence of common game interface factors on the expression of social anxiety through in-game movements. Our findings provide new insights about how game-based digital biomarkers can be effectively used for social anxiety, affording the benefits of early and ongoing digital assessment.

Self-report assessment is important for research and game development, e.g., to gather data during play. Games can use dialogues with non-player characters (NPCs) to gather self-report data; however, players might respond differently to dialogues than questionnaires. Without guidance on how in-game assessment affects player perceptions and experiences, designers and researchers are in danger of making decisions that harm data quantity and quality, and perceptions of privacy. We conducted a user study to understand self-report collection from NPC dialogues and traditional in-game overlay questionnaires. Data quality and player experience measures autonomy, curiosity, immersion, and mastery did not differ significantly, although NPC dialogues enhanced meaning. NPC dialogues supported an increase in data quantity through voluntary 5-point scales but not via open responses; however, they also increased the perceived intimacy of shared information despite comparable objective intimacy. NPC dialogues are useful to gather quantitative self-report data. They enable a meaningful play experience but could facilitate negative effects related to privacy.

Game designers and developers benefit from gathering data from players; however, interrupting play with questionnaires can harm experience. Previous work has suggested that embedding questionnaires into games, such as through dialogue choices when interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) can help, but there is no evidence that dialogue choices can model the real-world beliefs of players. In this study we demonstrate two methods of successfully predicting responses to validated scales of sexist beliefs from NPC dialogues that do not differ in their resulting narrative engagement. Our findings open opportunities for better tailoring games and game experiences by modeling players through their in-game interactions.

Experiencing the thrill of success is one of digital gaming’s pleasures, but often also involves the crush of repeated failure. To explore success and failure in play, we conducted a mixed-methods study in which 182 participants described scenarios of success and failure and their experiences therein. Our results suggest that success and failure should be considered in relation to the players’ goals, that failure should be differentiated into temporary and perpetual failure, and that temporary failure (the struggle) is integral to the experience of success (overcoming the struggle). We further show that although success is generally more enjoyable than failure, players who enjoy a challenge are more likely to experience competence and find enjoyment within experiences of failure. Our findings contextualize what players perceive as failure and success, and that, for many players, success is overcoming the struggle of failure.

Players can get stuck in video games, which impedes their process to their goal and results in unfavorable outcomes like negative emotions, impediments of flow, and obstacles for learning. Currently, it is not easily possible to assess if a player is stuck, as no widely accepted definition of "being stuck" in games exists. We conducted 13 expert interviews and a systematic literature review with 104 relevant papers selected from 4022 candidates. We present a definition of "being stuck" that conceptualizes the state as a continuum and contextualize it within related concepts. Our stuck continuum can be applied to regulate the player's stuck level. We propose a taxonomy of measures that are useful for the detection of the level of stuckness and discuss the effectiveness of countermeasures. Our stuck concept is crucial for game developers creating an optimal player experience in games.

Social anxiety is a prevalent problem that affects many people with varying severity; digital exposure therapy-which involves controlled exposure to simulations of feared social situations alongside cognitive restructuring-can help treat patients with anxieties. However, the need to personalize exposure scenarios and simulate audiences are barriers to treating social anxieties through digital exposure. In this paper, we propose game streaming as an exposure therapy paradigm for social anxiety, supporting it with data from two studies. We first propose a framework describing requirements for exposure therapy and how game streaming can fulfill them. We select demand and performance visibility from these characteristics to showcase how to manipulate them for experiences of gradual exposure. With Study 1, we provide evidence for these characteristics and support for the framework by showing that a game's demand affected expected fear of streaming games. In Study 2, we show that the prospect of streaming led to elevated fear, a necessary property for effective exposure therapy. Further, we show that the effect of streaming on expected fear was similar for participants who can be considered socially anxious. These findings provide evidence for the essential effect of exposure therapy, which serves as a first step towards the validation of streaming as a social anxiety treatment. Our paper provides an initial, important step towards a novel, broadly applicable, and widely accessible digital approach for the treatment of social anxiety.

While evidence supports that some commercial off-the-shelf video games may promote mental wellbeing, it is an extensive time investment to experimentally identify games that benefit players. The time delay between commercial games research and commercial game development can render such research out-of-date. In this work, we explore player-written game reviews as a way to expeditiously identifying games with potential benefits for mental wellbeing. Through a content analysis of review data, we found that players publicly disclose experiences consistent with self-care. Our analysis generated categories related to coping and recovery, emotional regulation, social connectedness, and obsessive play. Through this process, we identified several games as strong candidates for further research. Our work contributes to an emerging research agenda of commercial video games as therapy (VGTx), by providing a technique for rapidly identifying games with therapeutic potential. Further, we demonstrate that Steam user reviews are a valuable source of affective player experience data-a contribution with broad implications for player experience research.

Online social interactions in multiplayer games can be supportive and positive or toxic and harmful; however, few methods can easily assess interpersonal interaction quality in games. We use behavioural traces to predict affiliation between dyadic strangers, facilitated through their social interactions in an online gaming setting. We collected audio, video, in-game, and self-report data from 23 dyads, extracted 75 features, trained Random Forest and Support Vector Machine models, and evaluated their performance predicting binary (high/low) as well as continuous affiliation toward a partner. The models can predict both binary and continuous affiliation with up to 79.1% accuracy (F1) and 20.1% explained variance (R2) on unseen data, with features based on verbal communication demonstrating the highest potential. Our findings can inform the design of multiplayer games and game communities, and guide the development of systems for matchmaking and mitigating toxic behaviour in online games.

Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) are the dominant form of enabling Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) for personal use. One of the biggest challenges of HMDs is the exclusion of people in the vicinity, such as friends or family. While recent research on asymmetric interaction for VR HMDs has contributed to solving this problem in the VR domain, AR HMDs come with similar but also different problems, such as conflicting information in visualization through the HMD and projection. In this work, we propose ShARe, a modified AR HMD combined with a projector that can display augmented content onto planar surfaces to include the outside users (non-HMD users). To combat the challenge of conflicting visualization between augmented and projected content, ShARe visually aligns the content presented through the AR HMD with the projected content using an internal calibration procedure and a servo motor. Using marker tracking, non-HMD users are able to interact with the projected content using touch and gestures. To further explore the arising design space, we implemented three types of applications (collaborative game, competitive game, and external visualization). ShARe is a proof-of-concept system that showcases how AR HMDs can facilitate interaction with outside users to combat exclusion and instead foster rich, enjoyable social interactions.

High degrees of interaction fidelity (IF) in virtual reality (VR) are said to improve user experience and immersion, but there is also evidence of low IF providing comparable experiences. VR games are now increasingly prevalent, yet we still do not fully understand the trade-off between realism and abstraction in this context. We conducted a lab study comparing high and low IF for object manipulation tasks in a VR game. In a second study, we investigated players' experiences of IF for whole-body movements in a VR game that allowed players to crawl underneath virtual boulders and "dangle'' along monkey bars. Our findings show that high IF is preferred for object manipulation, but for whole-body movements, moderate IF can suffice, as there is a trade-off with usability and social factors. We provide guidelines for the development of VR games based on our results.

Current approaches for locomotion in virtual reality are either creating a visual-vestibular conflict, which is assumed to cause simulator sickness, or use metaphors such as teleportation to travel longer distances, lacking the perception of self motion. We propose VRSpinning, a seated locomotion approach based around stimulating the user's vestibular system using a rotational impulse to induce the perception of linear self-motion. In a first study we explored the approach of oscillating the chair in different frequencies during visual forward motion and collected user preferences on applying these feedback types. In a second user study we used short bursts of rotational acceleration to match the visual forward acceleration. We found that this rotational stimulus significantly reduced simulator sickness and increased the perception of self-motion in comparison to no physical motion.

Including haptic feedback in current consumer VR applications is frequently challenging, since technical possibilities to create haptic feedback in consumer-grade VR are limited. While most systems include and make use of the possibility to create tactile feedback through vibration, kinesthetic feedback systems almost exclusively rely on external mechanical hardware to induce actual sensations so far. In this paper, we describe an approach to create a feeling of such sensations by using unmodified off-the-shelf hardware and a software solution for a multi-modal pseudo-haptics approach. We first explore this design space by applying user-elicited methods, and afterwards evaluate our refined solution in a user study. The results show that it is indeed possible to communicate kinesthetic feedback by visual and tactile cues only and even induce its perception. While visual clipping was generally unappreciated, our approach led to significant increases of enjoyment and presence.

When player skill levels are not matched, games provide an unsatisfying player experience. Player balancing is used across many digital game genres to address this, but has not been studied for co-located augmented reality (AR) tabletop games, where using boosts and handicaps can adjust for different player skill levels. In the setting of an AR table football game, we studied the importance of game balancing being triggered by the game system or the players, and whether player skill should be required to trigger game balancing. We implemented projected icons to prominently display game balancing mechanics in the AR table football game. In a within-subjects study (N=24), we found players prefer skill-based control over game balancing and that different triggers are perceived as having different fairness. Further, the study showed that even game balancing that is perceived as unfair can provide enjoyable game experiences. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions for player balancing in AR tabletop games.

Most current virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD) create a highly immersive experience and are currently becoming part of the living room entertainment (e.g. PSVR). However, current VR systems focus mainly on increasing the immersion and enjoyment for the user wearing the HMD (HMD user). This results in all the bystanders (Non-HMD users) in the living room being excluded from the experience and degraded to mainly observing the HMD user. In this demonstration we show ShareVR, a VR system using floor projection and mobile displays in combination with positional tracking to visualize the virtual world for the Non-HMD user, enabling them to interact with the HMD user and become part of the VR experience. Additionally, we implemented several experiences for the asymmetric nature of ShareVR, exploring its design space.

Virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD) allow for a highly immersive experience and are currently becoming part of the living room entertainment. Current VR systems focus mainly on increasing the immersion and enjoyment for the user wearing the HMD (HMD user), resulting in all the bystanders (Non-HMD users) being excluded from the experience. We propose ShareVR, a proof-of-concept prototype using floor projection and mobile displays in combination with positional tracking to visualize the virtual world for the Non-HMD user, enabling them to interact with the HMD user and become part of the VR experience. We designed and implemented ShareVR based on the insights of an initial online survey (n=48) with early adopters of VR HMDs. We ran a user study (n=16) comparing ShareVRto a baseline condition showing how the interaction using ShareVR led to an increase of enjoyment, presence and social interaction. In a last step we implemented several experiences for ShareVR, exploring its design space and giving insights for designers of co-located asymmetric VR experiences.

Entertainment and in particular gaming is currently considered one of the main application scenarios for virtual reality (VR). The majority of current games rely on any form of locomotion through the virtual environment while some techniques can lead to simulator sickness. Game developers are currently implementing a wide variety of locomotion techniques to cope with simulator sickness (e.g. teleportation). In this work we implemented and evaluated four different controller-based locomotion methods that are popular in current VR games (free teleport, fixpoint teleport, touchpad-based, automatic). We conducted a user study (n = 24) in which participants explored a virtual zoo with these four different controller-based locomotion methods and assessed their effects on discomfort, presence, enjoyment, and affective state. The results of our study show that free teleport locomotion elicited least discomfort and provided the highest scores for enjoyment, presence, and affective state. With these results we gained valuable insights for developers and researchers implementing first person locomotion in VR experiences.

Orientation in public environments is a critical skill for new arrivals, yet also one that is usually only learned gradually through trial and error. This paper suggests the use of pervasive augmented reality (AR) for the design of a serious game that teaches navigational skills in a public environment. Many AR scavenger hunt games confront players with new environments by default, however they rarely focus explicitly on teaching navigational skills. We propose a concept that utilises augmented reality techniques for increased immersion and motivation, while upholding the real-world sense of presence for an easy transfer of orientation skills to everyday life. For this purpose, we implemented a first prototypical serious game in the form of an AR scavenger hunt. A preliminary evaluation regarding its usability produced promising results. As such, the prototype constitutes a first proof of concept. In future iterations, it will be further developed as an adaptive AR serious game, and evaluated in respect to its efficacy in teaching orientation and navigation skills.