You Better Eat to Survive

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"You Better Eat to Survive": Exploring Cooperative Eating in Virtual Reality Games
BACKGROUND: While Virtual Reality (VR) games are increasingly popular, interaction options within VR games are still limited (Lavelle 2016). In most VR games, software technology is used to build replicas of the real world through simulations but shielding the individual from sensing and interacting in physical reality (Gallace et al. 2012). This research investigates the integration of gustatory senses in the development of the VR experience. CONTRIBUTION: This project presents a world's first "You Better Eat to Survive!" a two-player VR game that involves eating real food to survive and ultimately escape from a virtual island. Unlike most VR games that stimulate our visual and auditory senses, "You Better Eat to Survive!" makes a novel contribution to HCI theory and game design practice by integrating the gustatory sense not just as an additional game input, but as an integral element to the game experience. SIGNIFICANCE: This work addresses the feeling of social disconnect in VR environments through the design and development of cooperative eating experiences that have the potential to add excitement (Wetzel et al. 2008) and contribute the feeling of social presence (Barden et al. 2012) to the VR experience. This work offers a tangible example of the value of using cross-modal gameplay experiences to create and/or augment physical experiences and has already produced an academic impact in the Human-Computer Interaction discipline as evidenced by 12 citations in the first year of publication. Beyond HCI, we see future possibilities for the research as the combination of food with virtual reality has the potential to create engaging cross-modal gameplay experiences that transforms the loss of a sense (i.e., not seeing the food) into an exciting game element. The work won the prestigious "Student Game Competition" and was exhibited at prestigious (approved) venues CHI 2017 and TEI 2018.