Virtual Reality Gaming

Perspectives on Immersion, Embodiment and Presence

Leighton Evans
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Hardback
9781835493779
21 February 2025
$97.00
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9781835493762
21 February 2025
$97.00
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9781835493786
21 February 2025
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  • Description
  • Contents
  • About

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter

Offering a comprehensive and research-oriented survey of the emergence of virtual reality (VR) into the gaming mainstream, Virtual Reality Gaming delves into the complexities of VR gaming, emphasising immersion, embodiment, and player presence.

As the first study to critically assess and systematically investigate the phenomenon of VR Gaming through the tripartite lens of embodiment, presence, and immersion, established and emerging voices in the field discuss the unique aspects of VR games and the challenges they present to researchers and designers with regards to re-conceptualising the relationship between system, player and game play – in essence, a reconsideration of the human-computer interface (HCI) of gaming. Each chapter develops the existing scholarship on all these areas, creating a discourse on each element of embodiment, presence, and immersion that will improve the understanding of all these concepts in the context of gaming and VR.

A major contribution to the fields of gaming, HCI, VR and media studies, Virtual Reality Gaming is of interest not only to scholars, students and academics researching within this area, but also to practitioners and professionals in the gaming industry.

Introduction; Leighton Evans

  • Section 1. Immersion
  • Chapter 1. Virtual Reality and the Hardcore Gamer; Marcus Carter and Ben Egliston
  • Chapter 2. Crossing the (Distanced) Digital Divide: Games, Art, and Immersive Engagement; Joanne Mills
  • Chapter 3. The Player’s Immersive Experience (PIE) model: Framing the Multidimensional Concept of Immersion in VR Video Games; Michael Walter
  • Chapter 4. A New Kind of Videoludic Presence: How VR is Breaking the Fourth Wall; François Martel Lacoursière
  • Section 2. Embodiment
  • Chapter 5. It is me, but not me: Self-representation as an Avatar in VRChat; Yueyao Hu and Leighton Evans
  • Chapter 6. Psychological Processes Associated with Avatar Choice in Virtual Reality Gaming; Juliana L. Vanderburg and Katherine A. Loveland
  • Chapter 7. The Feminine Embodiment of VR: Critiquing the Default Masculinity of VR Embodiment; Kate Euphemia Clark
  • Chapter 8. Embodying VR Avatars as a Dynamic (para)Social Interaction: Towards a Future Research Agenda; Mila Bujić OPEN ACCESS
  • Section 3. Presence
  • Chapter 9. Virtual Remote Presence (VRP): Exploring the Subjective Feeling of Presence in Virtual Reality Games; Saikrishna Srinivasan
  • Chapter 10. Unpacking Presence: Making the Theory of Presence Useful for VR Game Design; Robert Dongas and Kazjon Grace
  • Chapter 11. Video Game Aesthetics and the Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality; Rami El Ali
  • Chapter 12. The Presence Assemblage: Understanding Presence in VR Games Through Breaking It; Leighton Evans

Leighton Evans is an Associate Professor of Media Theory at Swansea University. Leighton’s research background is in the Philosophy of Technology and digital media, and he has published work on social media, location-based social networking, phenomenology, virtual reality, augmented reality, smart cities and gaming. Leighton’s primary research interests lie in the transformation of natural phenomena into data and digital environments through digital technologies, and how this transformation leads to a normalisation of the digital in everyday life.