{"id":5622,"date":"2019-06-12T18:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playlab.uta.fi\/?p=5622"},"modified":"2019-06-12T18:00:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:00:22","slug":"glued-to-the-screen-how-immersive-are-lets-play-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/glued-to-the-screen-how-immersive-are-lets-play-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"Glued to the Screen \u2013 How Immersive are Let\u2019s Play Videos?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Videos of people filming themselves playing games, or as they are more commonly known, Let\u2019s Play videos are a rather new form of entertainment, only having properly emerged within the last 10 years or so. Since the Let\u2019s Play genre as entertainment has become exceedingly popular, Priscilla N.Y. Wong, Jacob M. Rigby, and Duncan P. Brumby conducted a research to find out just how immersive these Let\u2019s Play videos are. In addition to the depth of the level of immersion a person experiences while watching Let\u2019s Play videos, the researchers wanted to find out if familiarity with the game at hand impacts the level of immersion experienced.<\/p>\n

To measure the immersion their test subjects experienced, the researchers used a modified version of the Immersion Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) by Jennett et al. The questionnaire measures immersion by giving a score based on the answers \u2013 higher scores indicating a deeper immersion. Immersion is defined in the research paper as a \u201cstate of high engagement\u201d and feeling as if the player is \u201cin the game\u201d.<\/p>\n

What was done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The researchers chose to look at three types of media exposure: playing a game, watching a Let\u2019s Play video of the same game, and watching a video of a real-world event of the same type (in this case a racing game vs. an actual racing event).<\/p>\n

The researchers had two hypotheses. Firstly, that the test subjects\u2019 IEQ scores would be highest after playing the game themselves, slightly lower after watching the Let\u2019s Play, and lowest after watching a related event on TV. Secondly, they expected players more familiar with the game to have higher IEQ scores after the Let\u2019s Play video than those less familiar with the game.<\/p>\n

To test their hypotheses, the researchers had forty students play Mario Kart Wii, <\/em>watch a Let\u2019s Play video of the game, and watch an actual racing event. Most of the participants were familiar with the game before the research. After each media exposure, the participants answered a modified version of the IEQ. The questionnaire was modified by removing questions that did not apply to all three media types.<\/p>\n

What was discovered?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the end, the first of the researchers\u2019 hypotheses was correct, but the second was not. The IEQ scores of the participants matched the researchers\u2019 expectations. However, unlike the researchers predicted, the participants familiar with the game had lower IEQ scores when watching the Let\u2019s Play video.<\/p>\n

The research seems to suggest that Let\u2019s Play videos function, as the researchers called them, as \u201ca bridge between the interactivity of playing games and the passive entertainment enjoyed by many when watching videos,\u201d at least when it comes to the immersiveness factor. The research also suggests that familiarity with the game moderates the level of immersion experienced when not directly playing the game, a factor that creators of Let\u2019s Play content might be interested in considering when shooting their videos.<\/p>\n

– – – – –<\/p>\n

The article Game & Watch: Are \u201cLet\u2019s Play\u201d Gaming Videos as Immersive as Playing Games?<\/em> by Priscilla N.Y. Wong, Jacob M. Rigby, and Duncan P. Brumby was published at the Chi PLAY 2017 Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play and can be read at: http:\/\/st.sigchi.org\/publications\/toc\/chi-play-2017.html?fbclid=IwAR3g1iBbWWtHKylOouaDHDDNieRHsdvuIkqZbgEGv1U_Kn_e9XpzGPqe1Ag<\/a><\/p>\n

The featured picture is taken from https:\/\/pxhere.com\/en\/photo\/948574<\/a> and is licensed for free use with no attribution needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of researchers take Let’s Play videos under their scrutiny and see whether they can be as immersive as actually playing the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":5624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[556,345,1046],"class_list":["post-5622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-research-highlights","tag-english","tag-game-research","tag-lets-play","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}