Prelims

Virtual Reality Gaming

Virtual Reality Gaming: Perspectives on Immersion, Embodiment and Presence

Edited by

Leighton Evans

Swansea University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 Leighton Evans.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chapter 8, Embodying VR Avatars as a Dynamic (para)Social Interaction: Towards a Future Research Agenda copyright © 2025 Mila Bujić, is Open Access with copyright assigned to respective chapter authors. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited.

This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this book (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83549-377-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-376-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-378-6 (Epub)

Leighton Evans is an Associate Professor of Media Theory at Swansea University, a Director of Centre of Digital Arts and Humanities (CODAH) at Swansea and a Co-lead of the Media and Communication department. His ongoing research interests are on the mediation of digital media on culture and everyday life. Leighton is the author of Locative Social Media: Place in the Digital Age – Palgrave (2015), The Re-Emergence of Virtual Reality – Routledge (2018) and the forthcoming Media Studies: Industries, Texts and Audiences – Sage (2025). Leighton is the co-author of Location-Based Social Media: Space, Time and Identity – Palgrave (2017), Intergenerational Locative Play: Augmenting Family – Emerald (2021) and From Microverse to Metaverse: Modelling the Future Through Today's Virtual Worlds – Emerald (2022).

Rami El Ali works on the philosophy of perception, technology and phenomenology. He is currently pursuing a second PhD focusing on virtual reality at the University of Arizona's School of Information. He was previously an Associate Professor and Head of the philosophy programme at the Lebanese American University, and received his first PhD from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami.

Mila Bujić is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Tampere University (Finland). Her interests focus on the enmeshment of humans and digital technologies and their impact on individuals and broader societies. Her work entails laboratory experiments, surveys, online ethnographies, meta-analyses and futures research methods. Apart from publishing in top-tier venues such as Internet Research, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and Interacting with Computers, Bujić is widely involved in international academic communities including chairing positions (e.g. Academic Mindtrek, GamiFIN, IMX). As a member of a project team, she has been successful in major funding acquisition (Academy of Finland – Postemotion; Kone Foundation – DIAL).

Marcus Carter is a Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at The University of Sydney and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. His research focuses on digital games and emerging mixed reality technologies, with a particular focus on VR data and VR sociotechnical imaginaries. Since 2019, he has led the Ethical Implications of Mixed Reality Technologies project with Ben Egliston, which received funding from Meta in 2022 to study disability in the metaverse. Their forthcoming MIT Press manuscript – Fantasies of Virtual Reality – provides a sustained critical interrogation of VR booster discourses. His other research interests include the monetisation of children in the metaverse, which received a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship award in 2022.

Kate Euphemia Clark is a feminist media scholar researching embodiment in digital media and the accessibility of new media. Her PhD explores a feminist phenomenological account of VRs embodiment. She also is interested in the regulation and governance of new media technologies. Kate is also a founding member of the Critical Augmented and Virtual Reality Research Network (CAVRN), which aims to produce accessible, critical articles on extended reality and has also worked with film festivals (Melbourne International Film Festival; Castlemaine Documentary Festival) to curate XR exhibitions.

Robert Dongas is a Designer, a Developer and a Researcher specialising in immersive technologies. Previously an Associate Lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, he has taught web design, information visualisation and interaction design courses. He recently completed a PhD focused on designing virtual reality experiences for education and entertainment. He now consults with brands and organisations to create immersive digital experiences, blending his academic insights with practical expertise.

Ben Egliston is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology in the Digital Media Research Centre. His research is focused on the political economy and social impact of video games and immersive media (such as VR and AR). Ben currently works across two projects. His first project examines shifting design models in the global game industry, particularly focusing on how data and automation influence production cultures, end-use practices and the cultural role of games. His second project, The Ethical Implications of Mixed Reality (in collaboration with Marcus Carter), accounts for how stakeholders in the VR and AR industries consolidate power, and what the impacts of AR and VR are for users across society (with particular focus on those at the margins).

Kazjon Grace is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Design and the Director of the Designing with AI Lab at the University of Sydney's School of Architecture, Design and Planning. His research interests include computational creativity, human–AI collaboration and design cognition. He was a 2018 recipient of a Discovery Early Career Research Award and is the lead on a follow-up ARC Discovery Project in creative AI. His current projects include Q-chef, an AI-powered mobile app that recommends surprising recipes in order to diversify your diet, and the Collaborative, Interactive Context-Aware Drawing Agent (CICADA), a real-time interactive AI drawing tool.

Yueyao Hu is a Lecturer at University of Wales Trinity Saint David and is also a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communication at Swansea University. Her research explores how VR environments impact user experiences, communication patterns and the broader implications for media and society. Her doctoral research focuses on virtual interaction and user identity, with a particular focus on impression management under the framework of microlevel social interaction theory. In her teaching, she combines emerging technology research with design education, aiming to bridge the gap between theoretical advancements and practical applications in the future.

François Martel Lacoursière is a Teacher at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean and a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History, Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Montreal. His main interests revolve around the immersive phenomenon experienced through a wide range of ludic media including virtual reality, video games, role-playing games, board games and pinball. His latest research focuses on the existence of a metaludic form of immersion. François believes that games possess a unique potential for entrancing players in spatial narratives and eliciting empathy for non-player characters.

Katherine A. Loveland is the Landmark Charities Professor of Autism Research and Treatment and the Director of the Lifespan Autism Clinic in the Louis A. Faillace, MD Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, McGovern Medical School, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). Dr Loveland is an internationally known researcher and clinician specialising in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She is best known for her work on social–emotional development and the neuropsychology of ASD. Her current research focuses on application of new technologies, such as virtual reality, to the treatment of mental illness in ASD, particularly in adults. Dr Loveland received her bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and her doctorate in Psychology from Cornell University.

Joanne Mills is an artist and an early career researcher whose research and practice concern the liminal space between the real and unreal and the relationship between spectator and artwork within physical, digital and hybrid spaces. She received her PhD from the University of Wolverhampton, where her investigation considered how two discrete areas within minimalism, music and the visual arts, contributed new knowledge on immersive forms of practice, placing the subversion of audience and performer from the 1960s within the concept of the expanded narrative – further exploring how advances in technology led to new affordances in immersive experiences through the creation of innovative, engaging works.

Saikrishna Srinivasan is a PhD graduate from the University of Waikato, specialising in VR applications in games and arts. His research focuses on VR's impact on space, subjectivity and presence in theatre performance compared to VR games. Saikrishna has a robust background in animation, visual effects and game design and has published articles and presented at international conferences. He has also worked as a VFX artist on Hollywood films like Avengers: Infinity War and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Juliana L. Vanderburg is a licensed Clinical Psychologist at OU Health/Oklahoma Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center. Her research interests include the application of novel technologies to clinical psychology, such as the use of virtual reality in engaging clients in psychotherapeutic treatment; autism spectrum disorders (ASD) across the lifespan, especially with regard to the presentation of severe mental illness in ASD; and community-based, participatory action research methods. Dr Vanderburg received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Psychology from Tulane University and her doctorate in School Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing her doctoral internship at UTHealth Science Center and her postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Michael Walter's PhD in Digital Culture & Media at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, focuses on the multidimensional experience of immersion in video games and virtual reality (VR). In his thesis, Walter proposed The Player's Immersive Experience (PIE) Model, a framework he developed from which to analyse the complex nature of the immersive experience in (VR) video games. Drawing from earlier models as well as his autoethnographic research, the model is sensitive to the unique immersive experience of VR. Walter, a South African academic, currently lectures in the Media & Creative Industries Department at the United Arab Emirates University in the United Arab Emirates.

This book would not have been possible without the contributions and dedication of the authors. I extend my deepest gratitude to the authors of each chapter. Your expertise, insights and hard work have been invaluable in bringing this project to fruition. Each of you has made a crucial and important addition to knowledge in this field, and working with every one of you has been an absolute pleasure. If only all projects were as fun and easy to do as this one!

This book is a product of the MultiPlay network. The network exists to foster collaboration between games researchers across disciplines and to develop the research of early career researchers in conjunction with experienced scholars. The range of chapters in this book is a testament to those aims. The discussions, shared resources and collective efforts of the MultiPlay board and editorial board helped this book become a reality. My wholehearted thanks go to Stephanie Farnsworth (founder) and Lisa Meek, Co-chairs of the MultiPlay network. In addition, my thanks go to my fellow editorial board members: Greg McGuinness, Adam Jerrett, Matthew Higgins, Jack Orchard, Elena Pasquini, Daniel O'Brien, Karl Hodge, Kevin Veale, Ewan Kirkland, Lewis Alcott and Austin Anderson.

Finally, to all the readers and supporters of this work, thank you for your interest and engagement. I hope this book is as valuable to you as it has been to me.

Leighton Evans

July, 2024