AR Fighter: Using HMDs to Create Vertigo Play Experiences

Byrne, Richard; Marshall, Joe; Mueller, Florian "Floyd"

Abstract

Game designers working with Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) are usually advised to avoid causing disorientation in players. However, we argue that disorientation is a key element of what makes “vertigo play” (such as spinning in circles until dizzy, balancing on high beams, or riding theme park rides) engaging experiences. We therefore propose that designers can take advantage of the disorientation afforded by HMDs to create novel vertigo play experiences. To demonstrate this idea, we created a two-player game called “AR Fighter”, in which two HMD-wearing players attempt to affect each other’s balance. A study of AR Fighter (N=21) revealed three recurring vertigo-experience themes for researchers to analyse and associated design tactics for practitioners to create digital vertigo play experiences. With this work we aim to guide others in using disorientation as intriguing game element to create novel digital vertigo play experiences, broadening the range of games we play.

Citation

Byrne, R., Marshall, J., & Mueller, F. ". (2018). AR Fighter: Using HMDs to Create Vertigo Play Experiences. In CHI PLAY '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (45-57). https://doi.org/10.1145/3242671.3242689

• Conference Name: CHI PLAY'18: 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
• Conference Location: Melbourne, Australia
• Start Date: Oct 28, 2018
• End Date: Oct 31, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Oct 1, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 31, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 23, 2018
• Deposit Date: Oct 16, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 17, 2018
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 45-57
• Book Title: CHI PLAY '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
• ISBN: 9781450356244
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3242671.3242689
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1169543
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3242671.3242689