VR Games in Cultural Heritage: A Systematic Review of the Emerging Fields of Virtual Reality and Culture Games

Abstract

In recent years, the use of VR games in cultural heritage has been growing. VR Games have increasingly found their way into museums and exhibitions, highlighting the increasing cultural value associated with games and the institutionalization of game culture. In particular, serious VR games have a variety of benefits for educational purposes. There are several studies that deployed VR games to improve visitor experiences in several contexts. However, there are not sufficient studies in the field that examine the benefits and drawbacks of VR gaming. This lack of classification studies is regarded as an obstacle to developing more effective games and proposing guidance on the best way of using them in cultural heritage. This review aims to analyze how VR games are used in cultural heritage settings, to explore the evolution and opportunities of this emerging field, the challenges and tensions these innovations present, and to collectively advance this work to benefit visitor experiences.

Metaverse in Multimedia Gaming: Quality of Experience (QoE) Challenges and Standards Requirements for Immersive Media Consumption

“…Huang, Zou, Cheng, & Xie, 2021;Jang & Park, 2019;K.C. Li & Wong, 2021;Parekh, Patel, Patel, & Shah, 2020;Pereira, Prahm, Kolbenschlag, Oliveira, & Rodrigues, 2020;Solmaz & Gerven, 2022;Syamimi, Gong, & Liew, 2020;Theodoropoulos & Antoniou, 2022;Wiederhold, 2022;Wohlgenannt, Simons, & Stieglitz, 2020;Yoo & Chun, 2022;Zarantonello & Schmitt, 2023;Zhang & Wang, 2021;Zhu, Cao, & Cai, 2020), as shown in Figure 8. Although both realities can easily collaborate, there are some significant challenges.…”

“…On the other side, VR takes the same reality components to the next level by designing, developing, and deploying entire computer-based simulations of a virtual space. Such developments consider an immersive simulation that can create an Algorithm 2 Proposed Algorithms 2: Gaming Competition Hierarchy and Rewards imaginary environment for gamers, and it can only be visualized when using special equipment, such as VR headsets, sensors, mobile devices, and wireless sensor-enabled gloves (Alfadil, 2020;Cannavo & Lamberti, 2020;Fu et al, 2022;Parekh et al, 2020;Syamimi et al, 2020;Theodoropoulos & Antoniou, 2022;Zhang & Wang, 2021).…”

Maximizing Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Video Games

“…A review of spatial games for cultural heritage from 2017 [20] noted that most had been published between 2008 and 2010 and focused on the local heritage, but the sample is now outdated and the analysis did not focus on engagement potential. A more recent review of VR games [60] noted a tendency to incorporate positive elements such as a focus on storytelling and visualization of cultural heritage assets, as well as their surroundings, but this review focused only on VR games. Finally, other game reviews focused on heritage as a whole [13,18,19] and, thus, their findings are difficult to contextualize regarding cultural heritage engagement.…”

Virtual Representations of Cultural Heritage: Sharable and Implementable Case Study to Be Enjoyed and Maintained by the Community

“…New platforms have now been absorbed within cultural dissemination workflows; the use of affordable headsets has grown the level of interactivity through software that manages visual program languages. The simplest tools found in the literature of even video gamers [69][70][71][72][73][74] range from interactions with objects, parts of the model, or the entire model, to third-or first-person factual enjoyment through increasingly immersive experiences. Increasingly refined textures applied to the Unreal Engine model can simulate real environments.…”