Porting and Enhancing a Mental Health Narrative Game for VR: Redesign Insights and New Features for the Meta Quest Platform
Resumo
This paper delves into the intricate process of porting and enhancing a mental health narrative game for the Meta Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) platform. We chose Meta Quest 2 due to its unique combination of user accessibility, standalone capability, and highperformance tracking and rendering—traits that align closely with our mental health education and engagement objectives. Our meticulous journey focused on adapting to the platform’s unique capabilities and limitations and innovatively incorporating new features to improve gameplay and enhance mental health awareness. These new features include updated object interactions, the integration of direct VR interactions, an overhauled user interface, and the incorporation of a virtual body to intensify the player’s sense of presence and immersion. Our work offers valuable insights and lessons for future VR game design and development, including performance optimization, aesthetics preservation, comfort and safety considerations, motion sickness prevention, player guidance, 3D tracking, object interaction mechanics, and immersion. Ultimately, these findings provide a roadmap for developers undertaking the challenging task of adapting and enhancing games for VR platforms.
Palavras-chave:
VR game redesign, performance enhancement, interaction mechanics, motion sickness prevention, player guidance, 3D tracking, agency, immersive design
Referências
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Julia Velten, Angela Bieda, Saskia Scholten, André Wannemüller, and Jürgen Margraf. 2018. Lifestyle choices and mental health: a longitudinal survey with German and Chinese students. BMC Public Health 18, 1 (2018), 1–15.
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ZA/UM. 2019. Disco Elysium. https://discoelysium.com/. (Accessed on 01/20/2023).
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Elizabeth H Chaney, J Don Chaney, Min Qi Wang, and James M Eddy. 2007. Lifestyle behaviors and mental health of American adults. Psychological Reports 100, 1 (2007), 294–302.
Dontnod entertainment Deck Nine. [n. d.]. Life is Strange: True Colors | SQUARE ENIX. https://lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com/pt-br/games/life-is-strange-arcadia-bay-collection/. (Accessed on 03/11/2023).
Devs United Games. 2019. Real VR Fishing. https://www.realvrfishing.com/. (Accessed on 06/27/2023).
T.J. Hafer. 2020. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Review. IGN (2020). https://www.ign.com/articles/the-walking-dead-saints-and-sinners-review.
Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, and Gert G Wagner. 2013. Choices which change life satisfaction: Similar results for Australia, Britain and Germany. Social Indicators Research 112, 3 (2013), 725–748.
Maria Elena Hernandez Hernandez, Erin Michalak, Nusrat Choudhury, Mark Hewko, Ivan Torres, Mahesh Menon, Raymond W Lam, and Trisha Chakrabarty. 2023. Co-design of a Virtual Reality Cognitive Remediation Program for Depression (bWell-D) With Patient End Users and Clinicians: Qualitative Interview Study Among Patients and Clinicians. JMIR Serious Games 11, 1 (2023), e43904.
Infinite Fall. 2017. Night in the Woods. http://www.nightinthewoods.com.
Jason Jerald. 2015. The VR book: Human-centered design for virtual reality. Morgan & Claypool.
Jo-Mei Games. 2017. Sea of Solitude. https://www.jo-mei.com.
Jonas De Araújo Luz Junior, Maria Andréia Formico Rodrigues, and Jessica Hammer. 2021. A storytelling game to foster empathy and connect emotionally with breast cancer journeys. In 2021 IEEE 9th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH). IEEE, 1–8.
Christina Kelley, Lauren Wilcox, Wendy Ng, Jade Schiffer, and Jessica Hammer. 2017. Design features in games for health: disciplinary and interdisciplinary expert perspectives. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. 69–81.
Joseph E LeDoux and Jack M Gorman. 2001. A call to action: overcoming anxiety through active coping. American Journal of Psychiatry 158, 12 (2001), 1953–1955.
Jonathan Linowes. 2015. Unity virtual reality projects. Packt Publishing Ltd.
Michael E McCauley and Thomas J Sharkey. 1992. Cybersickness: Perception of self-motion in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 1, 3 (1992), 311–318.
Meta. [n. d.]. Oculus Debug Tool. https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/native/pc/dg-debug-tool/. (Accessed on 07/11/2023).
Cubicle Ninjas. 2021. Virtual Reality Meditation. https://guidedmeditationvr.com/. (Accessed on 05/02/2023).
Nomada Studios. 2018. Gris. https://nomada.studio.
Federica Pallavicini, Alessandro Pepe, and Maria E Minissi. 2019. Gaming in virtual reality: What changes in terms of usability, emotional response and sense of presence compared to non-immersive video games? Simulation & Gaming 50, 2 (2019), 136–159.
Ye Pan and Anthony Steed. 2019. How foot tracking matters: The impact of an animated self-avatar on interaction, embodiment and presence in shared virtual environments. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 6 (2019), 104.
The Under Presents. 2019. Tender Claws. https://tenderclaws.com/theunderpresents. (Accessed on 03/27/2023).
Maria Andréia Formico Rodrigues, Thiago R. Carvalho de Oliveira, Daniel L. de Figueiredo, Edilson O. Maia Neto, Alexandre AA Akao, Guilherme HM de Lima, Vitoria LN Silva, and Anderson L Karl. 2022. An interactive story decision-making game for mental health awareness. In 2022 IEEE 10th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH). IEEE, 1–8.
James E Rohrer, J Rush Pierce Jr, and Claudia Blackburn. 2005. Lifestyle and mental health. Preventive Medicine 40, 4 (2005), 438–443.
Cristina Scheibler and Maria Andréia Formico Rodrigues. 2019. User Experience Evaluation Focused on Viewpoints and Embodiment. In Proceedings of the 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (Limassol, Cyprus) (SAC’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2340–2343.
Yvens Rebouças Serpa and Maria Andréia Formico Rodrigues. 2019. A draw calloriented approach for visibility of static and dynamic scenes with large number of triangles. The Visual Computer 35 (2019), 549–563.
Ygor Rebouças Serpa and Maria Andréia Formico Rodrigues. 2020. Broadmark: A Testing Framework for Broad-Phase Collision Detection Algorithms. In Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 39. Wiley Online Library, 436–449.
Maddy Thorson. 2018. Celeste. http://www.celestegame.com.
Trippinc. 2019. TRIPP. https://www.tripp.com/. (Accessed on 06/27/2023).
Anouk Tuijnman, Isabela Granic, Josh Whitkin, and Rutger CME Engels. 2017. Developing and testing scrollquest: a video game targeting rejection sensitivity in adolescents. In Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. 213–221.
Unity. 2020. Animation System Overview. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AnimationOverview.html
Marieke Van Rooij, Adam Lobel, Owen Harris, Niki Smit, and Isabela Granic. 2016. DEEP: A biofeedback virtual reality game for children at-risk for anxiety. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1989–1997.
Julia Velten, Angela Bieda, Saskia Scholten, André Wannemüller, and Jürgen Margraf. 2018. Lifestyle choices and mental health: a longitudinal survey with German and Chinese students. BMC Public Health 18, 1 (2018), 1–15.
Rina R Wehbe, Colin Whaley, Yasaman Eskandari, Ally Suarez, Lennart E Nacke, Jessica Hammer, and Edward Lank. 2022. Designing a Serious Game (Above Water) for Stigma Reduction Surrounding Mental Health: Semistructured Interview Study With Expert Participants. JMIR Serious Games 10, 2 (2022), e21376.
Qunyan Xu, Debra Anderson, and Mary Courtney. 2010. A longitudinal study of the relationship between lifestyle and mental health among midlife and older women in Australia: Findings from the Healthy Aging of Women Study. Health Care for Women Intern. 31, 12 (2010), 1082–1096.
Richard Yao, Tom Heath, Aaron Davies, Tom Forsyth, Nate Mitchell, and Perry Hoberman. 2014. Oculus VR best practices guide. Oculus VR 4 (2014), 27–35.
ZA/UM. 2019. Disco Elysium. https://discoelysium.com/. (Accessed on 01/20/2023).
Isaac Schankler Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey. 2013. Depression Quest: An Interactive (non)Fiction About Living with Depression. http://www.depressionquest.com.
Publicado
06/11/2023
Como Citar
DE OLIVEIRA, Thiago Narak C.; RODRIGUES, Maria Andréia Formico.
Porting and Enhancing a Mental Health Narrative Game for VR: Redesign Insights and New Features for the Meta Quest Platform. In: SIMPÓSIO DE REALIDADE VIRTUAL E AUMENTADA (SVR), 25. , 2023, Rio Grande/RS.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2023
.
p. 96–104.
