Embodied damage indicators in first-person shooting games

Abstract

We present an exploration of how first-person shooting game damage indicators – those that leverage the first-person, in-the-action perspective – impact gaming experience and immersion. We compared a traditional red flash mechanism that only indicates that an injury was taken, a less common paper doll mechanism that indicates where the character’s body was injured, and our original x-ray mechanism that indicates the character’s specific injuries via realistic-looking X-ray snapshots. These form points on a continuum from abstract information (injury was received) toward simulating the experience of receiving an injury. We conducted an exploratory study, and present the results on how the indicators impacted various aspects of gaming experience.