We were interested in knowing if the use of live facial recognition technology to augment the perception of other players in tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) can create more immersive experiences during online video-call interactions, improving enjoyment, and thus reduce the user experience gap between physical-co-local and digital-online tabletop roleplaying game experiences.
According to previous board-game and video-game research, we know playing multi-player games in person is more fun than playing them online.
“We believe that the opportunity for social interaction and sharing experiences with others in co-located play is the main cause for these differences in player experience”
Gajadhar, De Kort, & IJsselsteijn, 2008
We conducted a study with 35 participants. Where they played a regular game of Dungeons & Dragons in groups of 4. Each participant is in an isolated workstation communicating through Skype.
Half the participants experienced the game using only audio communication, while the other half percieved each other using animated Avatars with face recognition technology in real time.
Our findings were suprising! Our statistical analysis showed almost no difference between the Audio-Only and the Live-Avatar experiences. We dug deeper into the results post hoc and found interesting interactions.
