Enhancing Communication and Awareness in Asymmetric Games

Abstract

Asymmetric games rely on players taking on different gameplay roles, often with associated different views of the game world and different input modalities. This asymmetry can lead to difficulties in establishing common referents as players collaborate. To explore communication and group awareness in asymmetric games, we present a novel asymmetric game, combining a tablet presenting a 2D top-down view and a virtual reality headset providing an immersive 3D view of the gameworld. We demonstrate how communication can be afforded between the two types of views via interaction techniques supporting deixis, shared reference, and awareness. These techniques are bi-directional, enabling an equitable collaboration. A pilot study has shown that players adapt well to the system's two roles, and find the collaborative interaction techniques to be effective.

Asymmetric VR Game Subgenres: Implications for Analysis and Design

“…Research by Rogers et al develops a framework for understanding asymmetries in VR games specifically, though they posit that some elements may apply to non-game contexts [2]. They perform a systematic review of existing research papers discussing AVR games, most of which were designed by researchers to better understand their unique affordances, impacts, and design considerations (e.g., [18][19][20][21]). The framework relies heavily on Harris et al [8] and the MDA framework [14], which the authors find to be highly relevant to the asymmetric VR games they reviewed, though they recommend several refinements that are applicable to the AVR context [2].…”

MindCraft: Theory of Mind Modeling for Situated Dialogue in Collaborative Tasks

“…Second, departing from previous Leader-Follower setups (where one partner explicitly leads and gives instructions to the other, the follower, who tries to execute said instructions) (Suhr et al, 2019), we focus on a setting where partners each have asymmetric knowledge (Bortolaso et al, 2019) and skill-sets towards completing a joint goal. In order to effectively complete the given tasks, partners need to negotiate their own plans of action by taking into account what they currently know and don't know about their partner, and of their common understanding of the task at hand.…”