Immersivity and playability evaluation of a game experience in cultural heritage

Abstract

The introduction in the market of head-mounted displays (HDMs), originally used for gaming, opens the door to a wide set of application fields that could benefit of characteristics, such as immersivity, presence as well as a high degree of realism. In the field of Cultural Heritage, an immersive virtual experience can enhance playfulness and involvement in the fruition of a cultural experience, by determining a more efficient knowledge absorption and retention of the learnt content. In this work we introduce a prototype of a Serious Game in Cultural Heritage, named Hippocratica Civitas Game, designed and implemented to foster playfulness and learning effectiveness. We also performed an evaluation study to assess users’ perceived immersivity and playability, as well as the effectiveness when analyzing the acquired knowledge about the archaeological site structure and the proposed learning goal.