Measuring temporal variation in presence during game playing

A human-factors experiment has examined the effects of different sorts of technical anomalies, or breaks in presence(BIP), on user experience. Four different types of anomaly were investigated in an order-balanced experiment over two game types (violent versus non-violent game). A population of 36 volunteer participants was divided into two groups according to which game type they played first. After each game, participants were asked to rate the impact of the anomalies on their feelings of presence in the game experience and also of their effect on the recovery time by a video-cued slider rating method. There is evidence that participants feel different levels of impact and recovery from different sorts of technical anomalies. Most of all, the impact of BIP significantly depends on game mode; however there was no significant difference of recovery between the two groups. The additional results also indicate that BIP events occurred during the VR experience apart from those induced as part of the experimental design.