Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in Virtual Reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience

Abstract

To date, research on the user experience of Virtual Reality (VR) games is sparse even though VR and immersive gaming experiences are emerging as a substantial consumer based within the videogame industry. Using facial electromyography and skin conductance response measurement, the current research presents the first psychophysiological evidence to show that: (1) VR games may heighten affective responses such as fear and arousal; (2) different levels of immersion in various gameplay modes may evoke higher affective responses; and (3) these heightened affective responses significantly correlate with users’ experience of enjoyment at the precise onset of the affective response. Due to the second‐by‐second nature of psychophysiological measurement, the study's findings also pinpoint a specific sequence (i.e., entrapment in a dark room) within the gameplay that significantly evoked nearly 2.5‐times higher fear with arousal as well as enjoyment. These findings contribute to the ongoing study of VR in the fields of media psychology, media studies, human‐computer interaction studies, and marketing by demonstrating the strong link between immersion, affective responses, and positive user experience toward a horror VR game and their marketing implications.

Strategic use of immersive media and narrative message in virtual marketing: Understanding the roles of telepresence and transportation

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Motivations of playing digital games: A review and research agenda

“…Research on digital gaming has been evident in journals across various fields including science, business and humanities. A recent special issue from Psychology & Marketing on “Digital Gaming and Marketing” (Phau et al,) has published papers in the area of virtual reality games (Bender & Sung, 2021), gamification via mobile applications (Kunkel et al, 2021), gamers’ divergent behaviour (Sharma et al, 2021), game mechanics and serous games for sustainability (Whittaker et al, 2021), game streaming (Yoganathan et al, 2021), game experience (Wang & Hang, 2021), and AI powered avatar (Butt et al, 2021). While searching in the databases, we came across hundreds of journals that published papers on digital games.…”

Simulated satiation through reality‐enhancing technology

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