Deep Gaming - The Creative and Technological Potential of Stereoscopic 3D Vision for Interactive Entertainment

How to create a distinct user experience of Stereo 3D in Interactive Entertainment & Virtual Reality Gaming

Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) vision offers spatial visual perception by presenting two separate and different perspectives to the left and to the right eye. In combination with digital computer and video games, this technology promises to enhance user experience, automatically expediting perceived quality of existing games. However, the actual impact on how a user feels and reacts in S3D gameplay has hardly been explored, neither do we know which factors in game content contribute to such effects.

In contrast to common expectations, we propose that the actual potential holds no automatic benefit but depends on a significant amount of adaptation in game design, engineering technology and user interaction in order to create a measurable enhancement for the experience and play of digital games.

In support of this proposal, we provide

1. an S3D gaming development framework which describes factors in content creation, display technology and individual user requirements,
2. a scheme on S3D player experience and gameplay reaction that informs about expectable user reception based on the results of several comprehensive user studies,
3. a formalization approach for how user reception interacts with components of the framework,
4. a set of novel tools for prototypical experimentation with S3D video and a formal yet flexible design tool for S3D game graphical user interfaces suitable for Oculus Rift games,
5. three development cases which reveal important practical iterations in game creation, especially concerning depth-based game mechanics and interface design.

These contributions provide essential components and descriptions to significantly improve the development of S3D-specific games. A higher spatial presence in S3D gaming can potentially be used as a catalyst for other affective and behavioral impact. Controlling this effect by intention is difficult in practice but provides a substantial starting point for understanding S3D games as a distinct medium with its own potential.