Immersive realities : an investigation in what makes virtual realities immersive for the users

Abstract

This dissertation aims to answer two main questions: What is Immersion? and What is needed to achieve Immersion? This research will answer these questions from a digital game perspective, particularly a virtual reality one. The study follows a grounded theory methodology approach and will gather three main types of data; literature-based data, experimental-based data and project testing data based on Human-Computer Interaction. The literature-based research is divided into three main parts. It will first start by understanding the existing theories of Immersion, particularly Brown’s and Cairn’s theory (2004) and the Flow theory (Pasch et al., 2009). Along with these, in this section, the study evaluates Immersion when compared with Addiction, Space and Presence. It will then continue to investigate how different types of realism intertwines with Immersion. More specifically, it will look into Social realism, Realism in Action/Movement and Realism in Aesthetics. Finally, the research will end the literature-based data by concluding how different mechanics engage and hook the users. With this research and various experiments, a prototype of a virtual reality casual fishing game is developed and tested to generate more data which is used to improve the project and finalize a definition that explains what is meant by Immersion in this scenario. Finally, in the discussion of findings, it will also look into how critical certain elements are to induce immersion. These elements include a narrative/context and realism in general. In the end, it will also create a detailed comparison between the definition generated in this research and the existing theories that are noted in the contextual review.