Streaming VR Games to the Broad Audience: A Comparison of the First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives

TL;DR

This study compares first-person and third-person VR game streaming perspectives, finding viewers generally prefer the first-person view for better focus and involvement, with implications for content creation and design.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into viewer preferences for VR streaming perspectives and offers design recommendations based on a comparative analysis.

Findings

Most viewers prefer first-person perspective for VR streams.

First-person view enhances focus on in-game actions.

First-person perspective increases viewer involvement.

Abstract

The spectatorship experience for virtual reality (VR) games differs strongly from its non-VR precursor. When watching non-VR games on platforms such as Twitch, spectators just see what the player sees, as the physical interaction is mostly unimportant for the overall impression. In VR, the immersive full-body interaction is a crucial part of the player experience. Hence, content creators, such as streamers, often rely on green screens or similar solutions to offer a mixed-reality third-person view to disclose their full-body actions. Our work compares the most popular realizations of the first-person and the third-person perspective in an online survey (N=217) with three different VR games. Contrary to the current trend to stream in third-person, our key result is that most viewers prefer the first-person version, which they attribute mostly to the better focus on in-game actions and higher involvement. Based on the study insights, we provide design recommendations for both perspectives.