Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi-player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study (N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the game.
%0 Journal Article
%1 10.1145/3611057
%A Hirsch, Linda
%A Müller, Florian
%A Chiossi, Francesco
%A Benga, Theodor
%A Butz, Andreas Martin
%C New York, NY, USA
%D 2023
%I Association for Computing Machinery
%J Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.
%K sfbtrr161 2023 c06
%N CHI PLAY
%R 10.1145/3611057
%T My Heart Will Go On: Implicitly Increasing Social Connectedness by Visualizing Asynchronous Players’ Heartbeats in VR Games
%U https://doi.org/10.1145/3611057
%V 7
%X Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi-player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study (N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the game.
@article{10.1145/3611057,
abstract = {Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi-player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social connectedness in such games, our work explores the visualization of physiological data from asynchronous players, i.e., electrocardiogram (ECG). We identified two visualization dimensions, the number of players, and the visualization style, after a design workshop with experts (N=4) and explored them in a single-user virtual escape room game. We spatially and temporally integrated the visualizations and compared two times two visualizations against a baseline condition without visualization in a within-subject lab study (N=34). All but one visualization significantly increased participants’ feelings of social connectedness. Heart icons triggered the strongest feeling of connectedness, understanding, and perceived support in playing the game.},
added-at = {2024-04-12T11:41:14.000+0200},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
articleno = {411},
author = {Hirsch, Linda and M\"{u}ller, Florian and Chiossi, Francesco and Benga, Theodor and Butz, Andreas Martin},
biburl = {https://puma.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/bibtex/26f5c683c974c4159b5539380a70d14ec/sfbtrr161},
doi = {10.1145/3611057},
interhash = {97774386f5022d8b7a2ce0d84b0328d7},
intrahash = {6f5c683c974c4159b5539380a70d14ec},
issue_date = {November 2023},
journal = {Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.},
keywords = {sfbtrr161 2023 c06},
month = {10},
number = {CHI PLAY},
numpages = {26},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
timestamp = {2024-04-12T11:41:14.000+0200},
title = {My Heart Will Go On: Implicitly Increasing Social Connectedness by Visualizing Asynchronous Players’ Heartbeats in VR Games},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3611057},
volume = 7,
year = 2023
}